Mate Signaling at a Gay Club

On the night of Black Friday, I was in New York City and my friend took me to a few gay bars and clubs — he’s gay, I am not. He had asked me if I wanted to go out that night and since I was crashing at his place for a few days, I wanted to buy him some drinks to thank him for his hospitality, so I took the offer.

We started the evening at a normal bar and there weren’t too many people in it given that it was the holidays and the day after Thanksgiving. We later moved on to a packed gay bar and given that it was my first time in a dedicated queer space, I made a few observations about the types of people and interactions I was seeing.

Taking an analytical look at the purpose of a bar as a space to meet new people, I want to dive deeper into how mate signaling works for queer folk and how to expand these ideas over the wider population. Mate signaling is a scientific theory that describes how a combination of behavior and appearance allows an individual within a species to attract potential mates. In the latter half of this blog, I describe my own experience with mate signaling.

The “Gaydar”

Colloquially, there’s this idea of a “gaydar”, a radar-like intuition that allows people to tell whether or not someone is gay (or rather, not straight). This is a combination of behavior, fashion, and speech. With behavior, most people will look at hand gestures, gait, and how someone carries themselves as they move around. With fashion, the way someone dresses is taken into account. For speech, the pitch of someone’s voice and the way they phrase or intonate different words are considered.

Now, you may be wondering how these factors make an impact. To frame this analysis, I will be using a Western gender role perspective. The average person will have expectations of how someone of a certain gender will behave, dress, and speak. Someone who identifies as a man will typically behave, dress, and speak in a masculine manner. By contrast, someone who identifies as a woman, would behave, dress, and speak in a feminine manner. When an individual decides to blur the lines between the expectations of their gender, it may cause others to be confused.

The “Gaydar” in Practice

At the gay bar, I saw many men dressed flamboyantly and in a way that would be typically attributed to feminine styles. The way they carried themselves would also be in contrast to the stereotype of how a man acts. Many of these people would also be communicating in a way that would be at a higher, more energetic pitch. That said, all of these three characteristics and the way they show up in gay men lie on a spectrum. Some people are more flamboyant than others.

There’s also a term called “straight-passing” which is used when someone who is not straight doesn’t trigger the “gaydar”. That person is said to be able to pass off in society as a straight person.

When we put all of these people in a queer space like a gay bar or club, the last contributor to mate signaling is eye contact. This will apply to anyone looking for a mate in any context, straight or queer. One person will use eye contact as a way to indicate interest and if someone meets their eyes, they’ll move closer to each other as a way to express mutual interest.

And when it comes to gaydar, it allows these queer folk to find each other — all of this is made easier in dedicated queer spaces where the opportunity to misdirect interest is lower than in public or at the average bar.

Mate-Signaling as an Ace

Disclaimer: I’ll preface this section by stating that there exists a correlation between queer-identifying folk and neurodivergent folk. Both live on a spectrum, and an individual can exist anywhere on the queer and neurodiversity spectrums. I will also only be sharing my personal experience with signaling interest.

Have I ever mate-signaled? If I ever had, I would have tried to intentionally put myself in situations with the target of my interest and try to make them laugh by cracking jokes and sharing memes. I’ll also generally be very observant and remember the things they do or say. Eye contact is sometimes overwhelming for me, so I’m quite inconsistent with how I use it. Sometimes, it’s a conscious effort for me to make eye contact with someone in conversation.

Mate-signaling in general is a passive way to indicate interest. When it comes to appearances, I will make an effort to dress in a way that makes me feel confident. This helps me with interacting with my romantic interest and also allows me to see if I’ll get compliments on my attire. Compliments, no matter how subtle, feel different coming from the target of your affection.

A lot of passive methods to show interest are colloquially deemed as dropping “hints”. Sometimes, due to fear of making someone uncomfortable, I’ll ignore these “hints”. Therefore, I generally end up trying to casually learn enough about a person before bluntly telling them that I’m interested in getting to know them more.

An Ace in a Gay Bar

As someone who is hetero-romantic and sits somewhere on the ace spectrum, my experience of the gay bar truly solidified my own sexuality and romantic interests. While at the gay bar, I was actively avoiding any advances anyone was trying to make and also acting in a way that would hopefully show that I wasn’t interested in any sort of shallow physical intimacy.

The typical interactions one would have at a bar or club generally involve having a very intense make-out session with an attractive stranger. Setting a boundary around physical intimacy would be drawing a line with whom you kiss while being interested in the idea of kissing any attractive person. In addition to having a stranger-danger boundary for health reasons, I generally have no interest in kissing anyone until I already know someone. It’s this lack of interest in physical intimacy that defines my asexuality.

When I go about my life, I will notice appearances. That said, I don’t think about sexual interest at all even when I notice someone who aesthetically looks attractive to me. To be interested in anyone, I have to know a person’s personality — how they treat their friends, family, and strangers. What are their instinctual reactions in different situations? What are they like under stress? Many of the latter questions are for a more serious commitment; however, at the most surface level of any romantic interest, there’s generally already an understanding of the person’s aura.

Through my experience at the gay bar, I learned that I did not find feminine, flamboyant men aesthetically attractive. I also learned that while bars of any kind are fun to go to with friends, I wouldn’t be trying to find a romantic partner at one. It doesn’t foster the type of conversations and interactions I would want to have when trying to determine romantic and lifestyle fit.

Caveat: Many ace folk are okay with participating in the BDSM/kink community due to the explicit boundaries that are typically discussed before engaging in any type of physically intimate activity. This is mentioned in the book by Angela Chen, “Ace”. I find BDSM/kink to be about the personality dynamics between people.