What is gay face? YouTubers claim a person’s sexuality can be identified by facial features
Say goodbye to gaydars, in 2024, it’s apparently okay to claim that you can tell if someone is gay just by looking for certain facial characteristics. Content creators Mitchell Moffit and Gregory Brown have been on the internet for over a decade now, and are known for their YouTube channel AsapSCIENCE, which serves as a go-to source for fun and engaging scientific investigations and conversations. In this role, the pair have educated their 10 million subscribers on topics such as renewable energy, lip fillers, and anxiety. But it’s their most recent scientific discovery that has people gagging—and for good reason.
For context, Moffit and Brown are partners in both business and life, and have previously made numerous YouTube videos delving into different topics regarding the LGBTQIA+ community. Their latest video currently going viral on social media, titled Why do gay people look like that?, specifically considers the research available online that looks into the physical facial structures of homosexual people versus heterosexual people.
What does ‘gay face’ mean?
One study that the duo mention was a 2015 research project wherein scientists used software to map the physical structure of faces. The subsequent findings revealed a distinct pattern that gay men had “shorter noses and larger foreheads” than their straight counterparts and lesbian women had “more upturned noses and smaller foreheads.”
There was also a study in 2017 from Stanford University. In this case, researchers trained an algorithm using the photos of more than 14,000 white Americans taken from a dating website. The scientists said the resulting software appeared to be able to distinguish between gay and heterosexual men and women.
Indeed, in one test, when the algorithm was presented with two photos where one picture was definitely of a gay man and the other heterosexual, it was allegedly able to determine which was which 81 per cent of the time. With women, the figure was 71 per cent.
The pair’s video on YouTube currently has almost 200,000 views and while some of the comments were jovial and positive, many users expressed their discomfort with the research and evident abundance of bias. One netizen wrote: “Am I the only one finding this sort of research uncomfortable? Do we actually want technologies/systems to recognise our sexuality based on our features? This is frightening technology in the wrong political climate.”
Another noted: “I feel like maybe we should be more scared of this than impressed tbh,” while a final user stated: “I think this needs a lot more discussion on ethics.”
And I will say, I agree. A lot of Moffit and Brown’s content is quite light-hearted and it’s obvious that they’re just commenting on a sector of scientific research that has been going on for almost a decade. However, it’s true that this discussion could have negative implications. Queer individuals are already victims of extreme marginalisation and discrimination without the concept of “gay face” becoming simply another trend online.
