Filmmaker And Speech Pathologist Weigh In On What It Means To 'Sound Gay' : NPR

Contents:

• IS THERE A “GAY VOICE”?
• WHAT'S THE LK BETWEEN HOMOSEXUALY AND HAVG A 'GAY VOICE'
• THE GAY VOICE
• WHAT MEANS TO ‘SOUND GAY’
• THIS GUY JT WANTS TO KNOW IF HE SOUNDS GAY
• DO YOU SOUND GAY? WHAT OUR VOIC TELL – AND WHAT THEY DON’T
• A LGUISTIC INVTIGATN OF "THE GAY VOICE"
• GAY VOICE: STABLE MARKER OF SEXUAL ORIENTATN OR FLEXIBLE COMMUNITN DEVICE?
• MY GAY VOICE AND YOURS
• FILMMAKER AND SPEECH PATHOLOGIST WEIGH IN ON WHAT IT MEANS TO 'SOUND GAY'
• WHAT DO IT MEAN TO SOUND GAY?
• SPEECH ATIC FEATUR: A COMPARISON OF GAY MEN, HETEROSEXUAL MEN, AND HETEROSEXUAL WOMEN
• MY GAY VOICE

IS THERE A “GAY VOICE”?

Stay ahead of the trend fashn and beyond wh our ee weekly Liftyle Ed newsletterStay ahead of the trend fashn and beyond wh our ee weekly Liftyle Ed newsletter After a particularly bad break-up, David Thorpe, a journalist who’s his forti, cid to take his md off thgs by leavg his ts his Manhattan apartment and drowng his sorrows at a gay beach town on Fire Island. ”It was the start of a four-year journey of self-disvery durg which Thorpe tried to figure out his so-lled “gay voice”: when did he start talkg that way, what ed , how exactly did sound, and, fally, what was so wrong wh anyway?

The rults n be seen his new documentary, Do I Sound Gay?, which featur terviews wh lguists, amics, fay and iends, as well as a number of high-profile personali, cludg David Sedaris and Dan Savage.

WHAT'S THE LK BETWEEN HOMOSEXUALY AND HAVG A 'GAY VOICE'

Another expert that he terviews for the film is a Canadian lguist who studi vol microvariatns between gay and straight men and speculat that many gay men more readily pick up speech s om women. It rais a plited discsn about gay pri, lgerg homophobia, disguised misogyny, and the extent to which we all alter the image that we prent to the the film begs, Thorpe is disturbed bee he realiz he don’t like his voice any more. He rri out thoughtful nversatns wh his iends and proment gay and lbian figur – cludg Gee Takei, David Sedaris, Dan Savage, Margaret Cho and Don Lemon – about what means to “sound gay.

But so dog, v everyone to thk about what their own voice says about who they are, where they me om, and where they want to science of “the gay voice”To start wh, the stereotypil “gay voice” isn’t necsarily a study published 2003, Ron Smyth, a lguist at the Universy of Toronto, found that participants readily separated rerdgs of 25 diverse voic to those who “sound gay” and those who “sound straight. In Smyth's study, people rrectly gused a man’s sexualy about 60 percent of the time, only a ltle better than another small study at the Universy of Hawaii, both gay and straight listeners were equally as likely to misclassify people as gay or straight.

In fact, the straight men wh so-lled gay voic weren't aware that people thought they sound gay at turns out that what most people perceive as a stereotypil "gay voice" is jt a male voice that sounds more stereotypilly feme -- maly, higher pched and more melod.

THE GAY VOICE

And that often has more to do wh the voic that a person intified wh as they grew up, rather than and other rearchers say some men, both gay and straight, velop more feme voic bee they are fluenced by women when they are young. If you've ever found yourself talkg to someone wh a different accent and gradually emulatg them, you're faiar wh the gay men, adoptg what's lled "mp" -- a theatril gay accent, like an old-school starlet -- n be a way of embracg their inty.

WHAT MEANS TO ‘SOUND GAY’

However, the difference wasn’t the stereotypil “gay voice, ” but a tenncy to e a more ntemporary, pan-Amerin accent, rather than the old-fashned Mnota accent (like  the movie “Fargo") says that the gay men he terviewed may have wanted to nvey an inty that is more stylish and cuttg edge. “As speakers of a language, we have lots of eedom how we pronounce sounds … People explo that variatn to create different social meangs, " he those who are proud n still feel stigma“Do I Sound Gay?

” shows that even men who are out and proud may still rry wh them some shame about havg a stereotypil “gay voice, ” even if those feelgs are Savage, a gay activist and thor, argu  the film that this is a natural nsequence of boys beg bullied for walkg and talkg a certa way when they are young. As Thorpe pots out the film, there have long been public entertaers or artists wh stereotypilly “gay voic” – Liberace or Tman Capote, for example -- but few people openly talked about their when characters wh “gay” mannerisms or voic appeared popular culture, they were sometim d wh negative or sid the 1940s on, Amerin film saw the rise of a sni, supercil, and vaguely gay villa, startg wh the manipulative Clifton Webb the tective noir film “Lra.

THIS GUY JT WANTS TO KNOW IF HE SOUNDS GAY

” That tradn of the effete, aristocratic villa has lived example, film historian Richard Barrs argu  the film that many of the Disney villas have simperg voic or mannerisms that are subtly – or not so subtly – stereotypilly gay, cludg Prce John "Rob Hood, " Sr "The Ln Kg, " and many more, In an terview, Thorpe poted out what he viewed as one particularly egreg example – the bad guy the 2012 Disney animated film “Wreck-It Ralph. Temporary pic pulled as a place holr******Y, that's rrect: You do not have a "gay voice" — bee a "gay voice" is not really a humans, voic do not intify as certa genrs or sexual orientatns.

DO YOU SOUND GAY? WHAT OUR VOIC TELL – AND WHAT THEY DON’T

Sometim, 's not a matter of acceptg yourself, but a matter of survival: When your voice outs you as an "other" an environment that's hostile toward gay, transgenr, or otherwise queer people, personal safety be a prry. “A lot of gay men are self-nsc about soundg gay bee we were persecuted for that when we were young, " LGBTQ activist and media personaly Dan Savage said the 2014 documentary "Do I Sound Gay? Here's a look at the trailer:From Your Se ArticlIndia's first openly gay prce vows to ntue his fight agast nversn therapy ›Heath Ledger h back at haters of 'Brokeback Mounta's gay love...

My biggt fear, which was mostly irratnal but sometim jtified, is that wasn’t until people heard my voice that they realized that I am gay, and that once they realized that, they would treat me differently or dislike me. The documentary lv to the history of cema, showg how many villas are picted as effemate men wh the stereotypil “gay voice, ” down to Disney characters like Jafar om Aladd and Sr om The Ln Kg.

A LGUISTIC INVTIGATN OF "THE GAY VOICE"

And y, the stretchg out of “sibilant” nsonants such as s and z (image Kenh Williams sayg “She sells sea shells on the sea shore” and you’re sort of there) what about gay women?

There are a few theori knockg around as to why this might be: Arnold Zwicky, his mply tled 1994 paper Two Lavenr Issu for Lguists, suggts that: “For many lbians, what is most important is intifitn wh the muny of women – while for many gay men, what is most important is distancg themselv om straight men.

Third: this style of speakg isn’t simply an importatn of “feme” quali to male speech, although that appears to be what a lot of people, we’re still left wh the qutn of why a gay male voice might emerge.

GAY VOICE: STABLE MARKER OF SEXUAL ORIENTATN OR FLEXIBLE COMMUNITN DEVICE?

(And if you don't know what I mean when I refer to a "gay voice, " watch the trailer for The Birdge and listen to the male voic, particularly Rob Williams, who -swch based on circumstance.

MY GAY VOICE AND YOURS

In Study 1 (n = 20 speakers, n = 383 Italian listeners and n = 373 Brish listeners), g a simulated nversatn paradigm, we found that gay speakers modulated their voic pendg on the terlocutor, soundg more gay when speakg to a person wh whom they have had an easy (vs. Combg experimental and archival methods, this rearch suggts that gay speakers modulate their voic flexibly pendg on their relatn wh the terlocutor and as a nsequence of their public g out. For stance, a classmate om nservatory--who ed to tease me about my effemate mannerisms, BTW--was eventually st as a gay activist a big award-wng movie, based on a big award-wng play, about gay liv.

FILMMAKER AND SPEECH PATHOLOGIST WEIGH IN ON WHAT IT MEANS TO 'SOUND GAY'

Though some gay actors are effectively creatg their own opportuni to play a variety of rol (gay, straight, mascule, feme, and everythg between), such as the makers of the entertag seri East Sirs. I put together a short documentary about how actors--pecially men, whether they are gay or straight--are nsired by stg directors to have failed the send they “sound gay” (meang their voice do not nform to heteronormative stereotyp of masculy).

” Thorpe asks everyone he knows--cludg queer celebri, like Savage, as well as iends, fay, and profsnal speech ach--where they thk “gay voice” om and how he n change his own. As long as there is an unchecked cultural phobia of “gay voic, ” --by which we really jt mean effemate male voic--we are all nmned to a PTSD-like state of hypervigilance, too aaid to blur the l of genr, our voic or any other area of our liv.

WHAT DO IT MEAN TO SOUND GAY?

Which brgs to the pot that our fear of soundg what we ll “gay” or “effemate” is not only about genr exprsn, but more signifintly about our cultural ias about weakns and power. By havg women, as well as men, leadg rol that exhib facets of power, weakns, toughns and vulnerabily, we n unrstand the human ndn beyond male or female, mascule or feme, gay or straight.

At the same time, I totally get that when I me out, I wanted to be regnized as gay; I wanted the world to know I was gay and I wanted to f to this existg muny, so I thk my voice really did change after I me out.

SPEECH ATIC FEATUR: A COMPARISON OF GAY MEN, HETEROSEXUAL MEN, AND HETEROSEXUAL WOMEN

On Thorpe's gay iends also stgglg to accept their voic Thorpe: One of the revelatns of makg this film was that this is somethg that had always bothered me and every time, basilly, I talk to a gay man I would fd out that he also had eher spent a lot of time thkg about his voice or ed to be self-nsc about his voice or still felt self-nsc about his voice. The film is stctured around his personal qut to get rid of his “gay voice”—recently sgle and middle-aged, David Thorpe began to fd his voice a source of anxiety, worryg turned off potential lovers—which grounds what uld otherwise have been a disparate web of amic theori and talkg heads.

That spurred him to look more systematilly at the gay voice self; eventually he realized he’d found somethg signifint to say about the subject, a talogue of people reflectg about the history, prevalence, signifince, and science of the voice ’s clear om his enthiasm and breadth of knowledge that Thorpe, a wrer wh an quisive personaly and a voice I found entirely pleasant, has enough material for a whole seri on the subject. ” In the film, Thorpe nsults a speech therapist, a voice ach, several lguists and anthropologists, a film historian, gay actors, and famo queer celebri cludg David Sedaris, Dan Savage, Tim Gunn, Don Lemon, Gee Takei, and Margaret Cho. In one sequence, he recreat a tra r full of boistero gay men bound for Fire Island: They wear lorful beach stum and talk non-stop about fashn, their mothers, chai tea, and what happened at the club last night.

“Well all the meaty gay rol go to straight actors, and I’m not buff so I n’t play the token hot gay guy, so really all that’s left is for me to play the bter queen, ” he says. Admtg that a roomful of gay voic n be annoyg giv space to pick apart anxieti—which parts are jt annoyance at other people’s nversatns, and which are tied to toxic the film velops, be apparent that much of what we intify as a gay voice is a characteristilly feme voice spoken by a man. The stereotypil affectatns we associate wh gay men (what lguists ll micro-variatns) are: clearer and longer vowels, long S’, clearer L’s and over-articulated P’s, T’s, and K’s.

MY GAY VOICE

To prove his pot, Thorpe shows a straight man who was raised on an ashram by a group of women, who talks a voice that would tonate most people’s gaydar; but he also troduc to a gay man raised the suburbs wh five macho brothers who has the sort of voice that porn actors strive for. Knows this herage, plac the ntext of film history, and ti to the vol spiratn for well known early gay voic on TV such as Liberace and Pl what drew gay men om across the untry and enomic strata to adopt the vol signifiers?