When a male has an ear pierced, is there implied meaning attached to it being on the left or the right side? How about when both ears are pierced?

I don’t know what others may say, but I say no. It means something only if people know what the meaning is; otherwise, it doesn’t communicate anything, right?

When my husband decided to pierce one ear, he chose the left side. Is the left side inherently less mainstream than the right? Who knows? That’s what he picked. So I pierced it for him. He isn’t gay, and I don’t think anyone has ever thought he was.

If someone pierces both ears instead of just one, I’d say it means the person wants to wear two earrings.

I remember there being one side that was “gay” and the other was fine. Both never had a stigma attached to it in my memory. Going by the previous rules, it should have meant they were bi lol. But is it tried and true? No.

What something means varies from social group to social group, of course, and implicit signals like this evolve. The most commonly known evolutionary stage of the ear piercing signal among gay men is that a pierced right ear signals that one is gay (or, in cases where both ears are pierced, having more piercings in the right ear than the left). As piercing body parts has become more common, however, this method of signaling has become less useful. As such, it is largely extinct these days.

Back in the eighties, when guys with pierced ears first became mainstream, the left ear was the ‘straight’ one and the right ear was the ‘gay’ one.

Things have changed so much since then that it doesn’t have any significance today. Plenty of straight guys have both ears pierced, and no one thinks anything of it.

It doesn’t mean anything any more. These sorts of signals faded into obscurity when homosexuality was legalised and it was no longer necessary for gays to give secret signals to identify each other.

Back in the olden days (the early 80’s and before) it was common “knowledge” that only gay men had their right ear pierced. Now it doesn’t mean much of anything, because both gay and straight men have either ear, or both ears pierced. The meaning has fallen by the way side.