Gay Teeth
How to identify gay teeth in the wild.
What are Gay Teeth?
Gay Teeth — is a specific pattern of dentition appears overrepresented in queer folks.
I don’t think that everyone queer has gay teeth, but I do think that everyone with gay teeth could be on the queerer side of the scale.
I am a doctor person, but this is not a doctory-article. This is my perception as a regular, non-doctory human.
Gay teeth have been on my mind for over 25 years now.
Long before I knew that I was also a gay. My friends from freshwoman year of college remember the day that I shared my ‘Gay Teeth Theory’ with them. It was in the 90s, ok?
PSA: I am not trying to out or outrage anyone who is currently sporting said pattern of dentition.
A Problem with Self-Reporting
It is unclear if all people with gay teeth are queer.
Folks would have to self- report, or self identify, and because there are so many latent, dormant and closeted queers and those that have internalized homophobia choking the living gay shit out of them, so that’s gonna be hard. And maybe inaccurate. Though, how can you be ‘accurate’ when you’re not dealing with a yes gay or no gay situation, right? IT’s not a binary either goddamn it, It’s a spectrum. Gender and sexuality can be fluid and a bunch of other words we probably don’t use yet, but will in another decade.
If I’d asked me well into my early adulthood if I were gay, I would have said no.
And I would have been absolutely wrong.
See?
So, self reporting is not the most reliable in this example.
But this is Medium make-believe article-land — so for the purposes of this exercise: Here goes —
The presence of ‘gay teeth’ pattern of dentition is correlated with a higher incidence of gayness/queerness on the Kinsey scale. The prevalence of gay teeth within the self reporting queer population is significantly higher than within the general cis/het population.
Origins of Gay teeth: Childhood theory
As a child I noticed a few members of my extended family who had this specific pattern of dentition.
While I am not trying to out anyone in my extended family — I’ll just say that the family members with this pattern of dentition gave me REAL big gay vibes.
At the time that I noted this, I did not identify as gay and neither did any of these people. But I picked up a vibe, ok? Trust that.
I can’t really apply this gay teeth theory to myself, because I sucked my thumb until I was 12 and my buck teeth were large and in charge and definitely not angled back — they were sticking straight out of my face like walrus tusks.
And then I had braces.
Now my teeth are straight. Unlike me.
I’ll attempted to find images online, or pictures of folks with gay teeth — for those of us, like me, who are visual learners. Alas, I also feel obligated to try to describe gay teeth, with words. So here goes.
The top two front teeth, otherwise known as maxillary incisors #8 and 9, or the central incisors, are angled back. They emerge from the gum line normally but coarse angling back towards the base of your tongue/throat area with the bottom of the tooth being positioned a few millimeters behind the plane of tooth erupting from the gingiva. AND/OR the lateral incisors (the neighboring ones) are angled slightly forward.
It’s common.
Lots of high profile actors have gay teeth. Primary example — Cynthia Nixon — she’s got more of the lateral incisors angled forward relative to what appears to be a very slight back deviation of central upper incisors. And she’s gay. So I don’t feel bad using her as an example here.
This is all tongue in cheek, obviously, and also all of the puns are intended. While I am saying this, I also suspect there’s some kind of connection. For real.
I noticed this when I was a kid, ok?
Queer-Teeth
Let us also note that I coined this term in the early 90s — back when queer was generally regarded as an insult or as a synonym for weird. I think now in 2022 queer teeth would be a more appropriate name.
So, in case you didn’t notice, I am officially interested to know if there’s any connection or gene linkage between gay teeth/queerteeth and queerness.
And while we’re at it:
Yes, I do think that queerness is genetic. It’s not a choice. It’s a choice to realize it and be open about it, but it’s not a choice we queers make inside of ourselves to be the way that we are.
Those choices are already made — it’s up to us to be the conduits for queerness and let it out of our bodies and into the world.
In my childhood I loved cataloguing all the folks I could find who had Gay Teeth.
In my adulthood — I see gay teeth less frequently, but I still always get excited about it. Because orthodontia and the newer rage, invisalign, have put a major dent in the number of gay teeth I get to see in any given time period — I fear that gay teeth will become extinct someday. Please go and see some while you can.
I look forward to traveling and taking my Gay Teeth tour international!
Now that Covid is doing whatever it’s doing, I can travel again *AND* I can see folks’ mouths because not everyone is covered in a mask all the time.
Gay Teeth. Have a think on that, will ya?
