gaydirt -- new word?

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Oct 1, 2004, at 5:17 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:

> At 1:51 PM -0700 10/1/04, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:

>> "gaydirt" looks like a creative innovation to me.  "gaydar" (not in
>> HDAS, but in Green as from the 1980s) has been around for some time;
>> pretty much all lgb people who aren't socially isolated are familiar
>> with the word (and the concept).
>>
>> arnold, who'll check his "gaydar" sources later, when he's where they
>> are
>
> We had a thread on "gaydar" some years ago.  I don't recall coming
> across "(flying) under the gaydar" for someone not yet outed, though.
> Pretty clever, I thought.

yeah, me too.

the archives since 1999 don't have any discussion of early cites for
"gaydar"; maybe there's something in the currently unavailable 1992-99
archives.

i was surprised to find nothing in any of the editions of The Joy of
Gay Sex (1977, 1992, 2003), though there's a recent (supremely silly)
book specifically devoted to gaydar.  all three editions of Joy have an
entry on Cruising, and the 1977 edition has one on How to spot another
gay man, which begins promisingly:
   In their paranoia straights imagine that gays are able to idenify one
another instantly.  Presumably we're supposed to emit supersonic bat
cries by which we locate our playmates.

close, but "gaydar" never gets mentioned.

arnold