Ever wonder if you’ve specialized yourself into a career corner?

You could be P. Joseph Potocki, a guy who worked his way through a human sexuality Ph.D. program as a library intern, archiving his university’s expansive collection of old stag films. As he describes in a light and amusing piece for Metroactive, he later finds himself guest lecturing to a class of blank-faced undergrads at San Francisco State about “American Cinematic Pornography,” which prompts him to muse:

“Could it be that the 21st-century student no longer finds bulbous men in leisure suits or hippie chicks sporting furry armpits and fat pimply butts sexually enticing? Odd, but demonstrably true. Following this scientific line of inquiry to its logical conclusion, I finally had to ask myself: Just where was my narrowly gauged expertise taking me in life?”

—Jason Ericson

When people claim to have an acute “gaydar,” they may not be referring simply to their intuition. Long accepted as a fact in pop-culture lore, the ability to perceive homosexuality in others could be scientific. The Jan.-Feb. issue of Psychology Today (not available online) reports on a study by the Monell Chemical Senses Center where volunteers sniffed the armpits of sweaty T-shirts and rated how attracted they were to the scent. Lesbians were most attracted to the scent of other lesbians, gay men to the scent of other gay men, and straight people to the scent of straight people of the opposite sex. “This kind of scent-based gaydar enables gays to pinpoint potential partners instantaneously,” writes Psychology Today of the study. In the same vein, an article from Science Daily reported that homosexuals can be identified by gender-incongruent body types and walking styles. However, the way these ideas of gaydar differ from “straightdar,” if such a term existed, remains unclear.

(Thanks, The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide)

—Sarah Pumroy