MIT Project "Gaydar" Shakes Privacy Assumptions 508
theodp writes "At MIT, an experiment that identifies which students are gay is raising new questions about online privacy. Using data from Facebook, two students in an MIT class on ethics and law on the electronic frontier made a striking discovery: just by looking at a person's online friends, they could predict whether the person was gay. The project, given the name 'Gaydar' by the students, is part of the fast-moving field of social network analysis, which examines what the connections between people can tell us, from predicting who might be a terrorist to the likelihood a person is happy, fat, liberal, or conservative." MIT professor Hal Abelson, who co-taught the course, is quoted: "That pulls the rug out from a whole policy and technology perspective that the point is to give you control over your information — because you don't have control over your information."
I beg to differ (Score:5, Insightful)
"That pulls the rug out from a whole policy and technology perspective that the point is to give you control over your information -- because you don't have control over your information."
I have control over my information. And that is why you wont find be on Facebook.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Arg. Find me on FB...
Re:I beg to differ (Score:5, Funny)
I just assumed you had a cold.
(And a speech-to-text interface.)
Re:I beg to differ (Score:4, Funny)
I just assumed you had a cold.
(And a speech-to-text interface.)
He probably double the killer delete select all.
Re:I beg to differ (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I beg to differ (Score:5, Funny)
"And yet you registered for a slashdot account."
My social interaction is restricted to 4chan where my info will be respected.
Re:I beg to differ (Score:4, Insightful)
I have control over my information.
No, no you don't. Ever heard of a credit report? We've never had control over our information.
Anyways, the ability to keep in touch with important people in my life, for me, is worth the risk of whatever doomsday privacy issue others see. So what, some sketchy advertisers get some info on me? Uuuh, I have multiple websites, registered with my name and address. I have no doubt that my grocery shopping is closely tracked based on my credit card number. I'm sure that my contact info has been sold between companies hundreds of times. My phone company knows who I talk to and for how long. My insurance company knows my driving record. My fingerprints are on file in Oregon.
I happen to like the fact that I am able to call up and old friend and meet him for drinks while driving through town on a road trip, thanks to facebook. That's worth it, in my opinion.
Says more about the authors than about privacy... (Score:3, Insightful)
Namely, the project shows that its authors consider "gayness"/homosexuality to be something that many people would like to hide, to the point that they would suffer embarrassment or worse if someone else was able to infer it from other data.
Why not make "Project White-dar"? I'll bet you could figure out if someone is white (or black, or Hispanic, or Zoroastrian) based on their Facebook friends. Most white people don't go around online pointing out loudly that they're white. You don't see too many Slashdo
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People tend to point out ways in which they are NOT the default for a given venue. So you can reasonably conclude that those who don't point out their differences probably don't have said differences. Rather like how here on Slashdot, we can reasonably assume posters are g
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Namely, the project shows that its authors consider "gayness"/homosexuality to be something that many people would like to hide.
I don't see that implication myself. The summary mentions other factors that can be predicted by this kind of research: whether a person is "happy, fat, liberal, or conservative". Are these also things which the researchers believe people wish to hide? Although being outed as a conservative might be considered embarassing by the average Slashdot poster.
Re:I beg to differ (Score:5, Funny)
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How about your friends?
I'm skeptical. I have a few gay friends, and no doubt have friends I don't realize are gay (to tell the truth I'd rather not know, it's none of my business). I'm not on facebook, but if I was it seems possible that this program could peg me as gay, just because some people I know are.
Re:I beg to differ (Score:5, Insightful)
But your friends know you. And they may, in fact, be posting information about you. Everything from tagging pictures to leaving notes. You have no control over this.
Re:I beg to differ (Score:5, Interesting)
But your friends know you. And they may, in fact, be posting information about you. Everything from tagging pictures to leaving notes. You have no control over this.
That's true to a point. But on some level that's not 'your information' that's others information about you. You couldn't stop your friends from outing you as gay or communist or vegetarian in the 60s and you can't today. Facebook isn't really a factor.
However, in terms of data mining and automated profiling etc its worse if you have a facebook account than if you don't. If someone tags a non-FB member its just a name attached to a photo. It doesn't really go anywhere. Its true that someone could see it or read a note mentioning you and connect it to you, or do sophisticated data mining to link all those references together and assemble a profile... but if you tag someone who is a fb member (the way they want you to) it creates a link back to that account, making it utterly TRIVIAL to connect it back to you.
I'm not on facebook. So while there may be some pictures on it with my name tagged to them, its not really any worse than the web in general. My name/photo is together in a few places online, but they aren't all linked together back to a single 'account' somewhere. If there are tagged photos of me on fb its the same, they are their but all disconnected. If you have a facebook account they'd all link back to that.
My 'privacy' isn't absolute. I don't expect it to be impossible for people find stuff about me online. But I do object strongly to stuff like facebook where a single company is handed tons of data self-documented by its own users... its idiotic that anyone would participate.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The fact that other assholes don't respect my priva
Re:I beg to differ (Score:5, Insightful)
And people can still google it and it can still ruin your life.
Do you feel beholden to the idiots who make snap judgments of others based on indirect or second hand information? These McCarthyists with their lists of Facebook URLs have the power to ruin your life? How so? Why is it you've delegated this power to others who lack the wits to exercise considered judgment? Or is it instead the case that the photos from your personal life present you doing things that no reasonable person would do?
There's an element of chicken shit to take the anonymous court of public opinion quite so seriously. It often stems from the desire to substitute dignity with irreproachableness. Part of the deal with dignity is accepting that you can't force others to draw the right conclusions. If you take the opposite approach and try to control what people conclude about you, you'll discover one of two things: a) you're sucking up to the rich and powerful, or b) the people whose opinions you have successfully shaped have no significance. Option (a) works, if that's what you want.
I'm personally looking forward to the generation where when you look for someone on the web, and find nothing at all, you judge what that person might be hiding more seriously than you judge the ordinary defects of those who fear less to make themselves known.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You are an idiot. If some people want their privacy then it doesn't mean they are hiding something and you need to respect that. Some of us have enough self-esteem that we don't need to post our entire (overly glamourised) lives online in order to make hundreds of "friends" with people we have never met, will never meet and who really have little in common with us just so we can say "look how popular I am".
Why don't you go install cameras into every room of your house and stream them over the net? After all
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
- You shouldn't have posted the pictures on the internet
- You shouldn't have taken pictures,
- You shouldn't have been involved in whatever the situation was in the first place.
Seems like completely bad judgement on your part, IMHO.
FWIW, I've seen the pictures of my employer completely wasted at the Christmas party. I took them, and we had a
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
2. I didn't take those pictures, my ex-GF did.
1. She also posted them, without my consent.
3. Yes, it was probably a bad idea to let her get me drunk and take all those incriminating pictures of me, but one doesn't think about such things 24/7.
BTW, these days, many people don't have the luxury of working for "decent" employers. And it
Re:I beg to differ (Score:5, Funny)
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As for minors, I don't see the value in mining their data, but it's still wrong.
There is indeed no reason to market anything to people under 18, and that's why no company has ever done so.
Re:I beg to differ (Score:4, Insightful)
But your friends know you. And they may, in fact, be posting information about you.
Correction: People who claim to be my friends may be posting information about me. The only ones who are my friends are those that I acknowledge as such.
The world is full of people who claim to be the friend of some rich, influential or important people. That you or any others actually believe anything they have to say demonstrates your gullibility and susceptibility to scams or cons. Although this has been going on for ages, th Interweb has made this both easier and more difficult to exploit. Easier, because many people are gullible enough to believe someone when they say, "I know so and so" without checking the veracity of their claim. More difficult because the structure of some social networking sites makes it easy to verify the bidirectionality of these links. Blow hards who claim to know everyone, but are unkown, or just not acknowledged, by the other parties are easy to expose.
I value my privacy. And my true friends know this. So the more information a person posts about me in public, the less likely it is that they are a friend. And the more likely it is that the info. may be incorrect.
Re:I beg to differ (Score:4, Informative)
You can tag them, but I don't think it's searchable. Even if it were, unless your name is Zaphod Beeblibrox, chances are there are hundreds of people tagged under the same name, so it'd be rather difficult to go through them and figure out which one is you.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
No, each group of friend would probably only know one person with the same fullname. Now we have your name, friends, location, locations at certain times if the images have GPS in them, rough locations if no GPS (using flickr pool). We can do face matching to find out which one is you. We could find out your partner from these photos, with an error margin, and if they are on facebook we could get a lot from that, including here dob. From that we could find her address, and if you are sharing an address, you
Re:I beg to differ (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"That pulls the rug out from a whole policy and technology perspective that the point is to give you control over your information -- because you don't have control over your information."
I have control over my information. And that is why you wont find be on Facebook.
Who cares, only an american would care about anothers sexuality. Bigotry inequality discrimnation and trusting in god, did we mention american greed, well no, that's a whole other story
Do you actually have the slightest idea what you just said? I understand that America-bashing is fashionable these days, but if not done with a minimum of facts, it only makes the basher look like a fool.
Ask Alan Turing about how tolerant Europeans can be about sexual orientation. Furthermore you're the one making blanket assumptions about a nation of some 300 million people. Might want to check that bigotry at the door next time you feel the need to foam at the mouth. Truly, it's not a pretty picture.
Re:I beg to differ (Score:5, Interesting)
"Do you actually have the slightest idea what you just said? I understand that America-bashing is fashionable these days..."
It would help if we didn't make it so easy. Like it or not, America is the gold-standard for 'sex is bad' (and 'skin = sex', therefore 'skin = bad'). Of course we inherited a goodly part of the from our English cousins, which brings us to:
"Ask Alan Turing about how tolerant Europeans can be about sexual orientation."
Alan lived and died in England, where his sexuality was illegal. I'm not sure if England considers themselves 'European' yet, but certainly most countries (not all) in continental Europe were more tolerant about sexual preference 50 years ago than most Americans today.
A.
Re:I beg to differ (Score:4, Funny)
> certainly most countries (not all) in continental Europe were more tolerant about sexual preference 50 years ago than most Americans today.
Indeed, the Germans INVENTED the fabulous pink triangle symbol that gays wear so proudly today!
Re:I beg to differ (Score:5, Insightful)
Too late. If it's bad, I don't care where it's worse. It's bad in the US. Go to some place like New Zealand. You'll find many straight people saying "partner" in relation to their spouse or unmarried life partner. When the terminology is such where a committed pair of gays and a committed straight couple can talk without having the words they choose reveal something about themselves, then you know you are free. The US still pushes terminology that separates gays. If they want to talk family at work, they either have to lie, or they are revealed in the first sentence. Tolerance isn't trying to pretend it doesn't matter. Tolerance is an apathy of the personal details of others. Masturbate to wildlife videos of seals mating? I don't care. Don't hurt seals, and I'll never bother you. But in the US, someone that thinks oddly is persecuted. For a country that prides itself on the freedom of speech and the freedom of thought that's considered even more important, there's a lot of persecution for thoughtcrimes like liking someone in "that way" that you don't approve of.
Solution (Score:4, Funny)
Friend Everyone...
Re:Solution (Score:4, Funny)
Friend Everyone...
At best that will categorise you as 'angsty teenager'.
At worst, as 'All things to all men - especially those free and easy men at MIT'.
MIT Gaydar should be Facebook app (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, it sounds like it just adds up the number of gay Facebook friends you have. You could do that.
Re:MIT Gaydar should be Facebook app (Score:5, Funny)
Re:MIT Gaydar should be Facebook app (Score:5, Funny)
Or whether your last session originated from a Mac or not? And how about if you talk about, or have pictures of, Mazda Miatas in your profile?
Re:MIT Gaydar should be Facebook app (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, you know, you could just take the time to get to know someone a bit before asking them out. 'Course, you'd have to log off and go out into the real world to to that.
Re:MIT Gaydar should be Facebook app (Score:5, Funny)
Re:MIT Gaydar should be Facebook app (Score:5, Funny)
The.Real.World.S22E01.DSR.XviD-SAiNTS.avi [thepiratebay.org]
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:MIT Gaydar should be Facebook app (Score:5, Funny)
It's not worth it it only comes in lo-def and you only get a trial version that expires after a short period, but worst of all its closed source so you never know whats going on!
Re:MIT Gaydar should be Facebook app (Score:4, Interesting)
The whole topic of gay and not gay has always been interesting to me because the line of thought is alien to me. I consider myself hyper-straight in the sense that I have been sexually attracted to women since before the age of 4... I always knew I liked looking at women... I liked the way their pants fit :) just didn't actually know why until I was 8 or so. But the notion of seeing men sexually has always been fascinating to me because I stretch my mind and still cannot see it. What do women see in men? I don't know. What do men see in men? I don't know. But as a man of the U.S. I have always believed that being gay was an identity based on what you do. A recent NPR show was discussing being gay in the middle east. There they did not so much identify gay as what you do but as who you are. That's a tough thing to wrap one's mind around... identity not based on what one does. Just about every kind of identity in the U.S. seems wrapped around what one does, what one has or his position.
So given this new mind-twister, the MIT Gaydar makes assumptions based on what? I'd be interested to know. Surely it can't be based on associations alone. If all my friends were black, would that indicate that I am also black? My tendency to burn in the sunlight would tend to disagree with that. I'd be interested to know how MIT defines gay to better understand how it makes determinations.
Re:MIT Gaydar should be Facebook app (Score:5, Insightful)
Some act gay but aren't, some explore 'alternative' sexualities but never feel that they aren't straight, some clearly self-identify as gay but don't actually have same-sex intercourse. Despite the world's efforts to put us all into convenient pigeon holes, sexuality is a complex spectrum that doesn't lend itself well to assumptions.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It's said that a lot of the undergraduate girls at college in the US are "gay until graduation" because it's supposed to be so hard to find a decent boyfriend (one figure I heard quoted is that there are on average 1.3 girls to every guy in undergraduate college in the US).
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
But the notion of seeing men sexually has always been fascinating to me because I stretch my mind and still cannot see it.
It was a couple years ago that I had a similar realization. I remember I was watching a TV show and a guy took his shirt off. Big pec muscles, like all shirtless actors, and I didn't think a thing about it. But a nearby woman in the show seemed to be distracted by it. The scene took a minute or two to go by, so I took note.
Later that year in the summer I noted lots of people running around without shirts on. Most were older people with huge beer guts, mowing the lawn and stuff. Some were scrawny teens, and
Re:MIT Gaydar should be Facebook app (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, because we don't have things like gender, race, or age in the US.
Anyway, sorry to disrupt the "I'm so damn straight!" fest.
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I would expect that your tendency to burn in sunlight would indicate that you are in fact, a vampire.
Possible answers:
- You know, being a vampire isn't a black-and-white issue.
- That tendency to burn in sunlight is a bloody nuisance.
- I got HMHVV [wikipedia.org] via a blood donor.
- I don't bloody care whether it's a he or a she
Haha very funny. Laugh. Please try the veal.
Re:you are wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
You have two concepts confused:
1) What features women say they find attractive in men
2) What features women *actually* find attractive in men
The two are not even remotely close to the same.
Re:you are wrong. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:you are wrong. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yup, that is what they all say. It isn't what they want though. Guys like that live exclusively in the friend zone.
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You also post on Slashdot, which would suggest you are more logical than 99% of women.
My wife is pretty logical. She understands that many things women do are ridiculous and illogical. The problem is that even understanding that, she still does them sometimes.
Re:you are wrong. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:MIT Gaydar should be Facebook app (Score:4, Insightful)
That's not just a gay issue.. just ask any teenager (and quite a few adults)
Re:MIT Gaydar should be Facebook app (Score:5, Funny)
Re:MIT Gaydar should be Facebook app (Score:5, Insightful)
My Kingdom for a mod point! Not being able to ask someone out for fear of mutual embarrassment and summary rejection is surely a weighty cross to bear.
That is solved by socially accepting homosexuals, not by probing them.
Re:MIT Gaydar should be Facebook app (Score:5, Funny)
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[Kirk scenery chew]
Re:MIT Gaydar should be Facebook app (Score:5, Insightful)
My Kingdom for a mod point! Not being able to ask someone out for fear of mutual embarrassment and summary rejection is surely a weighty cross to bear.
That is solved by socially accepting homosexuals, not by probing them.
Do you think that heterosexuals don't hold back from asking people out for fear of mutual embarrassment and summary rejection?
Maybe it's because you're skinny or have acne, not much money, not socially confident etc, etc. No matter how well gays are accepted everyone still risks rejection when they ask someone out. I'm not sure that "No, I'm not gay" is more hurtful than "No, I don't like you" as a rejection. I think there is no way to make rejection more palatable. You just have to learn to deal with it, part of that being more selective who you ask.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you think that heterosexuals don't hold back from asking people out for fear of mutual embarrassment and summary rejection?
I'm pretty sure that heterosexuals do. However, I'm equally sure that heterosexuals don't hold back from asking people out for fear of getting their ass kicked simply for daring to ask out someone who doesn't match their sexuality.
Unfortunately, we still live in a world where homosexuals do have that fear.
Re:MIT Gaydar should be Facebook app (Score:5, Funny)
It was probably a surprise when it went in too.
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Well, that seems cut & dried... (Score:5, Insightful)
From the article:
I once wrote a computer program that predicted coin tosses. I didn't check, but I'm pretty sure that if I had tossed a coin that the predictions would have been accurate.
Re:Well, that seems cut & dried... (Score:5, Informative)
Also according to the article, they ran it against 10 friends who they know to be gay but who aren't "out" on Facebook. It hit 100%.
Too small a sample to be sure, but still significant.
The whole thing just boils down to "people who are ____ tend to have friends who are also ____.
Insert gay, straight, Christian, Moslem, male, female, old, young, black, white, whatever.
Re:Well, that seems cut & dried... (Score:5, Interesting)
A couple friends of mine once wrote software to predict market commodities price changes. They had a huge dataset, the last 10 years worth of every commodity price. They tweaked it, and tweaked it, and tweaked it, and in the end it made a consistent profit over their entire dataset. Then they both invested $2,500 each, and it steadily lost every cent of it over less than a year.
It's easy to come up with a model that matches your data without even realizing it, this sounds like the exact same thing.
Incomplete headline (Score:5, Insightful)
in the latest issue of DUH.... (Score:4, Insightful)
You mean if people can view your social networks on facebook they can deduce some basic facts about you? Shocking! People really need to think about the compromise that they are making when they make their FB profiles and info visible to anyone but their immediate friends. It's ok if you want to do it, but just realize what you are doing.
Being on a social network site at all exposes you a lot. I decided I didn't give a crap, but I have everything set to 'friends only' and I don't use apps or quizzes. Reasonable compromise for a non-tin-foil-hatter.
de-anonymizing (Score:2)
I just read that you can tell with about 87% accuracy who a person is, based on their date of birth, gender, and zip code. How's this much different - it draws on public information in a meaningful way.
Not exactly rocket surgery! (Score:2)
Re:Not exactly rocket surgery! (Score:5, Insightful)
Likewise, if twenty-five of your thirty Facebook friends are gay and of the opposite gender as you, they conclude you're probably single.
Dissecting the rocket. (Score:3)
So twenty-five of your thirty Facebook friends are gay and of the same gender as you. And they conclude you're probably gay! Wow!
Twenty-five of your thirty Facebook friends who say to be gay, who are said to be gay or which the system assumes to be gay?
In the last case, we will have lots of people being indicated as homosexuals based on distant associations. It might even end up saying everyone is gay. All the system does is speculations.
The great majority of my friends drink beer often and likes soccer. I do not.
I'm still safe... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I'm still safe... (Score:4, Insightful)
With a username like "celibate for life", they don't really have to invent anything to tell you're a virgin.
Re:I'm still safe... (Score:5, Funny)
If you're posting on Slashdot you've already been outed.
Re:I'm still safe... (Score:4, Funny)
+5 Virgin
It's simple really... (Score:5, Funny)
There are a couple of fields of personal data in facebook which state your marital status, and whether you are looking for a man or woman. It might just be possible from analyzing these details, which way you swing.
Technology still too slow (Score:3, Insightful)
A computer fed with a few hundred megabytes of personal data can now determine in minutes what most of us in the life know as soon as we see the person. I should be impressed, except I'm totally not. Don't worry about this ever becoming popular though -- sooner or later someone will feed the program a list of US senators and then magically the next day all traces of the program, its authors, and the results will be declared illegal and the arrests will begin -- effective last tuesday.
More seriously, the problem isn't that people may be able to infer a person's sexual orientation -- it's the fact that this society still refuses to label those who use this type of information to slander, attack, and in some cases kill, other people. Our transparent society has brought a lot of social issues right out in the open where everyone can see them. And we can no longer afford to turn a blind eye to the injustices perpetuated by one group onto another. This, fundamentally, is what the fight over privacy is about: It's not what we are (or are not) that matters, but rather the correlations between those facts and the social meanings and messages attached to them. The fight for privacy is really founded upon the belief that the average person is insecure, full of prejudice and bile, and is generally a manipulative bastard who'll stab you in the back given half a chance.
And I can't find any fault in that statement. Most people are, and thus... Privacy will remain an important thing to fight for so long as we have reason to fight amongst ourselves.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
A computer fed with a few hundred megabytes of personal data can now determine in minutes what most of us in the life know as soon as we see the person.
That must be a nifty trick, to be able to tell what someone's sexual orientation is just by looking at them. How do you do that?
Falcon
Give us the study (Score:2)
Unless we can see the entire study, accuracy is suspect.
Seems like an obvious privacy hole... (Score:2)
The whole friend thing is kind of an obvious privacy hole, isn't it? I have only used Facebook a little, because I only joined at the request of my brother, and most of my "friends" on Facebook are professional and semi-professional connections. Also, because I only use it to keep up with my brother, I haven't bothered digging into its capabilities... but I certainly would have expected that there was an option to hide your friends list. Even if I was interested in using it more broadly the lack of such a f
I buy my gaydar... (Score:4, Funny)
They'll really have something when... (Score:3, Funny)
Sean
FB's datamining for ads works the same way (Score:5, Informative)
When I first used FB, I kept most of the personal information blank. I only told it my age, that I was male, and that I was in a relationship and not looking for one.
FB at once started serving up gay-oriented ads. I never clicked on any of them or in any other way expressed interest, yet over time the percentage of these seemed to increase.
I finally gave up, and filled in the "interested in" section. The moment that field went from blank to "women", the gay ads vanished.
It isn't clear whether FB actually thought that I was gay, or just sought to pressure me into answering more questions about myself. If the former, its algorithms are entirely too simplistic. If the latter, it's evil.
Re:FB's datamining for ads works the same way (Score:4, Insightful)
Have you considered that the algorithm might just be
a) "If user is hetero show ads from companies that want to reach hetero males"
b) "If user is gay show ads from companies that want to reach gay males"
c) "If unsure show both"
with your area, at the time, having no businesses that wanted to reach people through facebook?
I know I've yet to see a titty bar advertise on FB, and you had excluded the dating sites by saying you were in a relationship.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Best.Euphemism. Ever.
Old news (Score:5, Interesting)
Party games (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is when we start using these perfectly reasonable tools to begin to make real decisions. You are guilty because the runes said so. Most of us tend to believe that decisions should be made on some direct evidence, not indirect assumption. I mean it is not liek some guys think, that every girl that won't go out with them is a lesbian and every guy that hates football is gay.
There is the issue of what makes a person gay, straight, or bi. Just like sleeping with large numbers of the opposite sex does not make one straight, and may indicate a deep seated concern, there is nothing other than a self identification that can suggest a real sexual preference. I don't think a professional, or computer program, or parent can within a reasonable certainty state a sexual preference for another person. And this has nothing to do with the controversy. It has to do with weather we live by reason and evidence or by superstition and hearsay. I think the MIT people are simply too infatuated with cult of technology.
Re:Party games (Score:5, Funny)
Just like sleeping with large numbers of the same sex does not make one gay
fixed that for you
--Ted Haggard
Rick Romero is on the scene. (Score:4, Funny)
I think the MIT people are simply too infatuated with cult of technology.
This just in, people at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology love technology!
gender preferences (Score:3, Informative)
There is the issue of what makes a person gay, straight, or bi.
It goes beyond that. Unlike what most people think not everyone is either male or female. Some people are born with body parts that are "male" and "female". Genetically females are said to have two X Chromosomes, XX, while males have an X and a Y, XY. However some people are born with XXY, XXXY, and XXXXY karotypes. These people are said to have ambiguous genitalia [medscape.com] and are called Intersexuals [isna.org]. The more commonly known name for them is herma
Will it Out People in Denial? (Score:3, Interesting)
Confirming sayings (Score:4, Insightful)
My program predicts much more (Score:3, Funny)
Oblig. Futurama (Score:4, Funny)
Amy: This is Bolt Rolands. Bolt is a hyper-sled racer with ten wins on the pro circuit.
Bolt: Hello, beautiful!
Bender: (whispers) I think she means ten wins on the gay circuit.
Bolt: (chuckling) I wish! Those cats can really fly.
Prof. Hal Abelson (Score:3, Interesting)
And this is why the closet is bad... (Score:3, Informative)
For gay Slashdot readers like me, this article is a good reminder why (situation allowing!) it's best to be out of the closet and upfront with everyone. I came out to my folks when I was 16, and have always been upfront about my gayness, and I've reaped the benefits of this:
1. no having to lie/watch everything I say
2. no worries about been "found out" if I use some gay-oriented website (such as gaydar.co.uk)
3. no blackmail is possible (I remember that it was an excuse used by government agencies in order to deny hiring gays, as they could allegedly be blackmailed about their sexuality).
4. being an out gay man, straight people who get to know me learn that gay is good/they tend to get rid of their preconceptions about gays.
5. I can use Facebook/Flickr and not give a damn about who can see who my friends/groups are.
Basically, as an out gay man I can read the article, ponder on my Facebook account, and can calmly think "So f*ck*ng what??"
This is because being out of the closet defangs homophobes in many ways..
Of course I understand why some gay/lesbian/bi folk would be in the closet (live in a small town, close-minded friends/family/employers, work for the US military etc.), but if you're in the closet and reading this, realize that in the long run it's so much nicer to "thine own self be true", and I've been so much happier since I came out all those years ago.
I'm here, I'm queer, I'm a geek my dear! ;-)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It's the basic unit of making an ass out of you and me.
Re:The sound of gay men's voices and "Gaydar" (Score:4, Informative)
The thing that is 'already obvious to others' is that you are a pretentious dolt with vainglorious delusions and a gross ignorance of the existence of confirmation bias.