Which ear piercing is the gay side

On the playground, it was a truth so firmly established that defying it meant social suicide: If you have an earring in your right ear, it means you’re gay. We accepted it as gospel and never questioned its validity.

It may have been the subtle homophobia of my Illinois community in the ’90s. But as I grew up, it seemed love everyone I met, no matter their place of inception, knew and understood the earring code, as arbitrary as it seems.

It was even solidified in the New York Times: A 1991 report said male lover men “often [wore] a single piece of jewelry in the right ear to indicate sexual preference.” In 2009, the Times covered it yet again, in TMagazine: “the rule of thumb has always been that the right ear is the gay one,” the author wrote about his own piercing journey.

Historically speaking, the truth is more complex. Earrings on guys have signified many things over the years, such as social stature or religious affiliation. In his book The Naked Man: A Study of the Male Body, Desmond Morris explains that earrings have indicated wisdom and sympathy in the stretched earlobes of the Buddha, while pirat