Gay side of ear piercing

Robbie (Normal) on X (Twitter) captures a contemporary view by asserting, “either ear is the gay ear if you're gay.” It’s significant because it emphasizes how ear piercings related to sexual orientation are outdated and irrelevant–a sign that societal norms are shifting away from traditional views. Our gay ancestors came up with coded signals to tell others that you’re safe, supportive, or maybe even DTF, depending on the context.

A notable example is the “gay ear.” The suggestion is that if a man had a specific ear pierced, it would indicate his sexual orientation. It became chic for gay men to discreetly display their sexual orientation by wearing a single earring in their right ear. However, because males are increasingly accepted for wearing earrings and because both ear piercings are becoming more and more common, this tradition has mostly disappeared.

In , earrings are about style, not sexuality. Explore the historical significance of choosing a specific side for a gay earring. Uncover how this accessory acts as a badge of identity and expression today. Get styling tips to integrate the gay earring into modern fashion sensibilities. One common belief is that the right ear is the “gay ear.” This idea likely stems from past cultural codes where the right side was seen as symbolically linked to queerness.

In this view, piercing the right ear quietly communicated one’s identity to those who knew what to look for. The “Left is Law” Counterargument. How did having piercings in the right ear become associated with homosexuality? There were some hippies wearing them but that was more of a protest of social norms than anything else.

I remember hearing about the one earring means homosexual thing in the late 70s so it dates back at least until then. A lot of the punk rockers of the late 70s sported earrings. As new wave was a bit more mainstream than punk, the fashions that came with it, including earrings for men, were also a bit more mainstream.

left ear piercing meaning guy

Of course, in some crowds, a man wearing any earrings was considered homosexual. The working class coal miners and steel mill workers in the area I grew up in tended to share that view. Back in the 80s you were very likely to get comments about it if you only wore one earring. Watch the movie Fierce Creatures. The fiercely hetero Kevin Kline character has an earring in the right ear.

It must vary quite a bit. Or his character was being in idiot, which was pretty much who he was. Then at some point conventional wisdom shifted decisively to the other ear, but at that point nobody got just one ear pierced. That gorgeous hunk Mr. Clean has been wearing an ear ring conspicuously in his left ear since All the ladies loved him, but did he love them? On several occasions over the course of a year several men randomly tried to chat me up in the street, including one older foreign guy who stopped me as i was coming out of a shop and pretty much invited me back to his hotel room there and then.

So i was none the wiser. Then at a party a girl who i was talking to who expressed surprise at my obvious interest in her explained the significance of the earring. The light dawned, i removed the earring, and suddenly my overwhleming appeal from gay men vanished. Northern Indiana resident here. I remember going to Indy in or so and our waiter at the bar had hoops in both ears.

That was kind of jarring even though I knew rock stars were doing it at the time. Soon after that it was multiple piercings in both ears for both sexes. I pierced my left ear to celebrate my divorce in but stopped wearing an earring in the mid 90s when I started wearing my hair really short. My understanding as a kid was that wearing earrings at all, in either ear or both, was pretty questionable. I got my left ear in pierced in freshman year of college—this was in the Northeast.

Got the left one done when I was 16 in and the right when I was Which led the creative minds of schoolboys to invent nonsense about it being a sexual code. Goodness know how these things get started. A driver where I worked, who always jumped on any fad going, soon had some fitted. He promptly ripped them out and threw them in the skip and I could not convince him that it was just a joke.