Out of the Closet and Onto the Street

Debuting as the hottest handheld electronic device since Tamaguchi, Gay Raydar, a hand held buzzer that alerts its wearer when another Gay Radar wearer is close by, is all the rage in California. Entrepreneur Michael Borer has tagged the item a must have in an effort to take anonymous venues for meeting other gays out of the chat rooms and onto the street. Gay men, and even lesbians, concedes Borer, will be able to carry a personalized detector of other gay people also carrying the device within fifty feet.

This hand-held icebreaker, sold in pink and blue, works like a walkie-talkie, simultaneously sending and receiving information from other carriers. Users can select preferences, such as “dance,” “butch,” or “horny, “ in order to screen potential hookups. The Gay Radar responds more forcefully when the person detected fits those preferences. When it zones in on a particularly hot homosexual, Gay Radar goes wild, beeping, flashing, and vibrating, a particularly subtle signal that there may be love at first detection.

But is Gay Radar really necessary? Whatever happened to good old-fashioned intuitive gaydar? “My mama always said that if it looks like a gay duck, walks like a gay duck, and talks like a gay duck, then it probably is one real gay duck. Thus, I think Gaydar would be a tad gratuitous,” commented Ryan Wilkes ’03. Other students appeared to agree with Wilkes. “If you want others to know you’re gay, an extra-small T-shirt from the Gap seems sufficient....a “gay homing device” might be helpful, but slightly redundant,” Jim Stilwell ‘03 wrote in an email. Will Gay Radar become the next big thing here on campus? We’ll only know when their wild beepings start interrupting Ec 10 lectures.