In the ethnography, "Beyond Gaydar", Harter explores how people can identify members

of a certain group or subculture by more than just intuition. She focuses on one group or
subculture, homosexual individuals, and uses the interviews to explore how people can identify
that group by appearance or actions.
Harter purposefully arranges her essay in sections of certain identifiers and uses those
sections to show the different ways a person can identify an individual in a group. She uses
identifiers as sections such as "Action" and "Clothing and Personal Style" (374-375). In the
sections she puts the answers of her interviews to validate whether or not that identifier works.
She makes a point and uses the interviews as evidence for the points she makes. Using the
interviews makes the essay more believable because they were used as evidence. Also, using
different sources validates her points on how the people of the homosexual community are
identified based on appearance and actions. Harter doesn't just rely on one source to make her
points which shows more opinions than of just one person.
The use of her sources and interviews also makes her essay unbiased because she focuses
more on the sources she used rather than her own opinions. She also uses the library resources to
compare and contrast with the interviews. She compares the information she has gathered from
the interviews and the library sources to come to an conclusion. By using the interviews and
library resources, Harter makes the conclusion: is gaydar a real identifier? And by her research
she concludes that gaydar is not a real identifier.