I'm not a psychopath, but...
Mar. 25th, 2010 11:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stephbgI've just watched a not terribly inspiring or educational documentary on the ABC called I, Psychopath, although to be fair it worked reasonably well as a behind-the-scenes-why-we-couldn't-make-the-documentary DVD extra. One thing, however, caught my attention.
Our subject (and therefore the audience) was shown half a dozen short bits of video of individuals walking down a hallway, as shown from behind. One of the people was a victim of crime. The task was to identify the victim just by their walk, but the leadin to the test was a quote from Ted Bundy about picking victims by the angle they held their heads. I don't recall how well the allegedly-psychopathic subject went on the test, but I spotted the ex-victim immediately and confidently.
That kind of gives me the heebeejeebies, partly because the reason I think I picked her seemed both compelling and yet trivial: she was clutching the edge of her sleeve in one hand. The researcher said she ws different because of her idiosyncratic arm and leg co-ordination, so maybe I was responding to that. I know from previous experience of such tests that I'm very aware of movement in others. It doesn't take much to set off my cognitive dissonance alarm bells.
For example, there was a study where you had to choose a figure's gender, where broad gender characteristics in sillouetted body shape and movement styles were combined in various ways. The body shapes varied in shoulder-hip-waist ratios, and the movement styles varied in the amount of rotation through shoulders and hips. There might have been more to it, but that's what I recall. The test drove me *nuts* because I found it almost impossible to collapse a set of mixed traits into just a single choice of "male" or "female".
And now for an unplanned public confession: in the privacy of my own loungeroom I will often--and with great confidence--point to a male on the screen I've seen for mere seconds (and certainly doing nothing particularly suggestive or campy) and announce "Gay!" To which Husband responds automatically "How can you say that? You can't say that!" with which I totally agree. It's not just the well-groomed and buff ones either, but they at least tend to be well past adolescence.
I don't have Gaydar. No-one has Gaydar. But occasionally something presses that feminine button and I haven't quite figured out what it is. To be honest I haven't thought about it much except to assume that it's Somehow Deeply Wrong. Perhaps it was my relatively early exposure at age (ED17) 16 to drag queens. Wow, I just got flooded by a whole bunch of vivid memories of disco-lit jawlines, collar bones, wrists and ankles...
It's probably somehow revealing that someone I identify as female can have any number of masculine traits without raising a mental eyebrow (least of all make me shout "Lesbian!"), but feminine traits on someone I identify as male seem to leap out as interesting.
Or I'm an evil priviliged western white middle-aged middle-classed etc hetero female with an appalling lack of sensitivity to something (if I knew what it was I wouldn't be quite so oblivious). Be honest: this is for science.
If you're interested in gender identity and movement (and pretty historical costumes), watch Stage Beauty.
Well. This post certainly went to unexpected places.
Our subject (and therefore the audience) was shown half a dozen short bits of video of individuals walking down a hallway, as shown from behind. One of the people was a victim of crime. The task was to identify the victim just by their walk, but the leadin to the test was a quote from Ted Bundy about picking victims by the angle they held their heads. I don't recall how well the allegedly-psychopathic subject went on the test, but I spotted the ex-victim immediately and confidently.
That kind of gives me the heebeejeebies, partly because the reason I think I picked her seemed both compelling and yet trivial: she was clutching the edge of her sleeve in one hand. The researcher said she ws different because of her idiosyncratic arm and leg co-ordination, so maybe I was responding to that. I know from previous experience of such tests that I'm very aware of movement in others. It doesn't take much to set off my cognitive dissonance alarm bells.
For example, there was a study where you had to choose a figure's gender, where broad gender characteristics in sillouetted body shape and movement styles were combined in various ways. The body shapes varied in shoulder-hip-waist ratios, and the movement styles varied in the amount of rotation through shoulders and hips. There might have been more to it, but that's what I recall. The test drove me *nuts* because I found it almost impossible to collapse a set of mixed traits into just a single choice of "male" or "female".
And now for an unplanned public confession: in the privacy of my own loungeroom I will often--and with great confidence--point to a male on the screen I've seen for mere seconds (and certainly doing nothing particularly suggestive or campy) and announce "Gay!" To which Husband responds automatically "How can you say that? You can't say that!" with which I totally agree. It's not just the well-groomed and buff ones either, but they at least tend to be well past adolescence.
I don't have Gaydar. No-one has Gaydar. But occasionally something presses that feminine button and I haven't quite figured out what it is. To be honest I haven't thought about it much except to assume that it's Somehow Deeply Wrong. Perhaps it was my relatively early exposure at age (ED
It's probably somehow revealing that someone I identify as female can have any number of masculine traits without raising a mental eyebrow (least of all make me shout "Lesbian!"), but feminine traits on someone I identify as male seem to leap out as interesting.
Or I'm an evil priviliged western white middle-aged middle-classed etc hetero female with an appalling lack of sensitivity to something (if I knew what it was I wouldn't be quite so oblivious). Be honest: this is for science.
If you're interested in gender identity and movement (and pretty historical costumes), watch Stage Beauty.
Well. This post certainly went to unexpected places.
