Which earring side means your gay

But as I grew up, it seemed like everyone I met, no matter their place of origin, knew and understood the earring code, as arbitrary as it seems. 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 compassion in the stretched earlobes of the Buddha, while pirates wore them in the belief it would protect them from drowning. In the Elizabethan era, earrings were quite fashionable for men, he writes. In the Western world, earrings, so long a purely female adornment, have recently been seen on increasing numbers of male ears.

At one point in American history, there was supposedly an encoded message about sexuality contained a man's choice of the left or right side, but today, having an earring on either side means only that you have a hole in your ear.

The notion of the 'right ear rule,' in which heterosexual men pierce only their right ear and homosexual men pierce only their left ear, may have originated in the s. At this time, other fashionable forms of coded messaging about homosexuality were also in use, such as the "handkerchief code," wherein gay men wore different colored handerkerchiefs in their back pockets to indicate different sexual preferences.

This system of encrypted messages enabled gay men to find each other while going unnoticed by those who might judge or oppress them. Depending on how a man wore his hair, he could easily hide his ear and any earring he chose to don.

Alternatively, slipping off an earring before going into the workplace or some other area where a man was afraid of being outed was a quick and easy task. However, these subtle methods did occasionally suffer when gay individuals either wanted a more comprehensive demonstration of their gay pride or when straight people found out about the trend.

Still, it also led to a decent number of straight men mimicking the style for reasons of their own. As you can imagine, this led to a certain amount of confusion in society for quite some time. On top of that, people also began to start piercing both ears as signs of bisexuality or to show that they were transgender. By the s, the definition of the gay ear had become so confusing that most people just shrugged off the idea and decided that any man who had any part of his ears pierced must be queer.

So, if you want to get one or both of your ears pierced but don't want to give people a reason to make assumptions about you, you don't have to worry anymore. Most people have completely forgotten about the gay ear fad or are too young to even remember it. Pride statement rings are a fantastic way to subtly show off your identity without feeling like you have to hide it, and they have remained a classic way to show off that pride for decades now.

So, what's the statement ring really about? Statement rings allow the owner to truly reflect who they are and creatively express a little bit of their persona.