Are your hands gay? | Metro News

Contents:

• WHAT DO LIMP WRISTS HAVE TO DO WH GAY MEN?
• A BRIEF HISTORY OF GAY SIGNALG, OM HANKY S TO THAT 'WHAT GAY GUYS ARE ACTUALLY LIKE' VIO
• ARE YOUR HANDS GAY?

WHAT DO LIMP WRISTS HAVE TO DO WH GAY MEN?

After enuragg fathers to “punch” sons who exhib stereotypilly gay behavr, North Carola pastor Sean Harris said on Tuday that he should have chosen different words. ” Why do we associate a limp wrist wh male homosexualy?

This had nothg to do wh homosexualy—the Romans didn’t nsir gay sex, per se, unmanly. In the 18th century, however, Europeans me to thk of homosexualy as a character tra rather than an ocsnal behavr, and gay sex beme the anthis of manls. Durg this time, limp wrists me to signify not jt ill disciple, but var other supposed failur of manhood, such as homosexualy, exhibnism, and foppery.

) As the ornamentatn and leisure of urtly life fell out of favor wh men, a limp wrist—often wh the other hand placed on the hip an “I’m a Ltle Teapot” pose—me to symbolize the unmanly homosexual stereotype. Whatever s origs, the associatn of limp wrists wh male homosexualy was very well-tablished the Uned Stat by the begng of the 20th century.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF GAY SIGNALG, OM HANKY S TO THAT 'WHAT GAY GUYS ARE ACTUALLY LIKE' VIO

” At some pot—certaly by the early 20th century, but maybe even earlier—gay men -opted stereotypil postur and hand gtur as a way to signal their sexual orientatn. In a 1919 homosexualy trial New Hampshire, for example, the judge asked a wns how gay men intified each other. The wns said a gay man “acted sort of peculiar, walkg around wh his hands on his hips… the exprsn wh the ey and the gtur.

In his ntroversial stctns on how to al wh gay-actg children, Pastor Sean Harris picked up on a recurrg theme popular culture: how to tra apparently gay men to assume stereotypilly heterosexual mannerisms. Meanwhile, among the male tws, the bisexual or gay brothers had more "male-typil" hands than the straight on—ntrary to what the rearchers expected—although the difference was not signifint. "Rearch suggts that our sexualy is termed the womb and is pennt on the amount of male hormone we are exposed to or the way our dividual bodi react to that hormone, wh those exposed to higher levels of ttosterone beg more likely to be bisexual or homosexual, " the thors wrote.

However, is important to strs, that the evince is currently not strong enough to accurately predict whether someone is gay, straight or bisexual by lookg at the rat between their fgers. "Some work has shown that gay men have more "male-typil" rats than straight men; other work has shown the oppose pattern; and still further work has shown no difference at all. As such, is not clear whether there is any real difference the level of ttosterone exposure between straight and gay men or how ttosterone exposure might map on to sexual orientatn differenc.

ARE YOUR HANDS GAY?

Maybe you've seen the recent vio that purports to show "what actually happens when gay guys see other gay guys and straight people aren't around. " While I n't nfirm or ny the accuracy of the clip's subject matter (still wag on clearance om the Gay Agenda), I n say that s edy is rooted a rich history of signalg, flaggg, and other forms of non-verbal munitn between gay Pulls a CharlottvilleThe vio fds actors/edians Brian Jordan Alvarez, Stephen Guaro, and Mch Silpa nng to one another their apartment buildg's regnizg one another's gayns, and realizg they're a space utterly void of heterosexualy, the three men lnch to some light nway……'80s face-molg 101……talog at-hangg……and low-key Bernatte-ery……wh a llective "Bnch!

" at the unrlyg tensn of the scene stems om the ia that the men are only ee—or perhaps safe—to unleash their purt gay selv the pany of others like them. Halper wr How to be Gay.

)The need to navigate one's inty through different social suatns, mixed wh the sire for regnn, has led gay men (and women, obvly, but this article is foced on the male si of this phenomenon) to velop subtle, often wordls methods of munitn wh others the of the systems have been historilly ed to broadst sexual sir, like the hanky , which saw s peak age the 1970s and '80s. In Gay New York, Gee Chncey c red neckti as one of the major "fairy" signifiers of the 1890s, and the 1930s there was "practilly a homosexual monopoly" on dark brown and gray sue sho the 1930s. Physil mannerisms,, why do gay men ntue to create and cultivate the systems of mostly non-verbal munitn wh each other?