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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 04/05/2013 15:31, spike wrote:<br>
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<span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D">Note
the original meaning of the term gay is colorful and
cheerful. Regarding why gay men should be able to distinguish
more colors, I will be absolutely damned, which I suppose
would be symbolized as spike = |damned|, if I can figure out
any explanation for why those two things should be
correlated. Gay men still have the short Y chromosome, same
as I do, which I have long suspected as being the root of my
non-hiptitude.<o:p></o:p></span>
<pre><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D"><o:p> </o:p></span></pre>
<pre><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D">Or perhaps it is just an illusion. ... So I don’t know, perhaps if you took a bunch of straight guys, you might get 20%-ish who grok the incomprehensible subtleties of fashion, I don’t know.</span></pre>
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<br>
I think it is largely an illusion, or perhaps, a trained phenomenon.
<br>
<br>
While there seem to be some biological reasons why women on average
are a bit better than men at color (some women with terachromacy,
more men with colorblindness) - see
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2005/09/27/do-women-perceive-color-differ/">http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2005/09/27/do-women-perceive-color-differ/</a>
- I think there is also plenty of training from culturally imposed
games and tasks that rewards girls more than boys for being good
with colors. And I think this is definitely true for fashion or mere
clothing skills. So we get trained early on to be good at certain
things... or that it is slightly "off" to be good at something your
gender is not supposed to specialize in. <br>
<br>
However, when leafing through the Encyclopedia of Clothing and
Fashion for my post on fashion dynamics I found a rather extensive
entry on Fashion and Homosexuality. One thing that struck me was
that for a long time homosexuals relied on codes or signifiers to
signal to each other - a green carnation, a red necktie, suede
shoes, etc. Good for staying hidden but also requiring a sharp eye
to detect these often small details (which also changed over time,
since they might become too well known among outsiders). This might
have acted as a reason to stay on top of clothing. While this makes
for a satifying theory, I doubt it is a complete explanation.<br>
<br>
In looking at this I also came across the article "Human preference
for individual colors" by Stephen E. Palmer ; Karen B. Schloss,
Proc. SPIE 7527, Human Vision and Electronic Imaging XV, 752718
(February 17, 2010); doi:10.1117/12.849110 They found some gender
differences in what colors people like, with men preferring more
saturated colors and women preferring more muted colors. This leads
to the following interesting hypothesis:<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">Some readers may wonder at the seeming
conflict between these preferences and male versus female dress<br>
patterns, given that males tend to wear more muted colors and
females more saturated colors. The data make perfect sense,
however, once one realizes that most people dress to attract
members of the opposite sex. If the color preferences of gay men
and lesbians are similar to those of straight men and women,
respectively, then it would be consistent with our interpretation
of the relation between dressing patterns and color preferences if
gay men tend to wear more saturated colors (because they are
dressing to attract other men) and lesbians tend to wear more
muted colors (because they are dressing to attract other women).
We know of no data on this subject, but it is consistent with
cultural stereotypes about how gay men and lesbians tend to dress.<br>
</blockquote>
I don't know if this actually works, but it is a cute idea. And this
might actually give some reason for listening to fashion advice from
same-gender people with different preferences.<br>
<br>
<br>
At the time of writing this I am wearing a tan shirt, dark olive
pants, and a grey herringbone jacket... I am so going to lose my
gayness certificate :-)<br>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Anders Sandberg,
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Faculty of Philosophy
Oxford University </pre>
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