Talk:Handkerchief code

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Colors

There in an interesting implication here that gay men have extremely fine perception of colours in the blue-green range, even under disco lighting.

Maybe they carry Pantone color chip sets along with the condoms and poppers.

Kleenex

It was my understanding that a kleenex in the right hand pocket is masturbation in front of a sexual partner and that a kleenex in both pockets signified an interest in mutual masturbation.

--86.16.194.235 (talk) 19:50, 24 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Commentary

There are a number of references in the table of hanky codes that seem to just be general commentary. For now, I've simply grouped them out for easier reading, but I would support paring them down to those that really deal more with the hankies themselves, rather than things like "double-fisting is possible...", which really has nothing whatsoever to do with the hanky code. Does anyone else have any opinions on what can stay and what can go?

Also, where do all these colours come from? If these are being cited solely from blogs and similar sources, it probably constitutes unnotable material or at best something that should be linked to as "Further Reading". I know the list has evolved over the years, but some of these seem really...well...to be polite, let's say "unlikely" colours to be seen in practical use. – RobinHood70 ^talk 06:34, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Strictly gay

The term "strictly gay code" in the 1970s is misleading, pointless, wrong, and contradictory especially since later in the sentence it says that it's used by bisexuals and gay people. Bisexuals also used the hanky code in the 70s as well I was around then and I remember bisexual men using the hanky code. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.185.47.133 (talk) 08:17, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You're absolutely right. Anybody can change Wikipedia, so next time, feel free to change the sentence structure as you see fit. I'll go have a look at it now and see what I can come up with. – RobinHood70 ^talk 16:19, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal to trim unsourced and apparent jokes

Many of the codes in this article look like jokes made up for this page. I propose that all codes without reliable sources are trimmed from the list until someone can provide a credible reference. --Fæ (talk) 22:50, 24 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Looking over the extended table, by and large it's the last bunch that I find questionable. Most of the first 3/4 of the table constitute reasonably common practices in the gay BDSM community, so it's not difficult to imagine that they might have developed hankies to go with them. Nevertheless, as is stated in the text itself, the entries in the second table seem to be an amalgamation of web sources, are most likely not commonly used/known colours, and are not reliably sourced at all. Rather than trimming selectively, which no one can really authoritatively decide on, I'd suggest we remove the entire second table and any related text for the time being. I'm sure there's something more recent than The Leatherman's Handbook II to use as a source, which may list a few more colours/patterns that have come into common use. I'll ask around and see if someone can provide a recommendation for a modern reliable source. – RobinHood70 ^talk 03:17, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Having now asked a large number of gay BDSMers, the general consensus is that anything more than the older ones are unreliable at best and generally unused or minimally used in real life, and for that reason, anything "authoritative" is probably out of the question. There are numerous websites devoted to the hundreds of wild ideas that everyone and their dog has had since the advent of the Internet, but besides the Leather Man's Handbook II, already mentioned on the article, only one book was mentioned: Leatherboy Handbook by Vincent Andrews, which apparently has a list of 41 hanky codes. All the other recommendations were websites, most or all of which were self-published or otherwise non-authoritative. As such, I would recommend that we remove the entire second table (which appears itself to have come from two different websites) and reduce it to a small blurb that says something to the effect of their being a wide variety of more expansive lists available on the web. – RobinHood70 ^talk 03:52, 2 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]