"Do I Sound Gay?" | Psychology Today

Contents:

• WHAT'S THE LK BETWEEN HOMOSEXUALY AND HAVG A 'GAY VOICE'
• THE GAY VOICE
• MY GAY VOICE AND YOURS
• FILMMAKER AND SPEECH PATHOLOGIST WEIGH IN ON WHAT IT MEANS TO 'SOUND GAY'
• WHY IS "GAY VOICE" SO PREVALENT AND YET "LBIAN VOICE" IS MORE OR LS NONEXISTENT?
• IS THERE A “GAY VOICE”?
• "DO I SOUND GAY?"
• WHAT DO IT MEAN TO SOUND GAY?

WHAT'S THE LK BETWEEN HOMOSEXUALY AND HAVG 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.

THE GAY VOICE

”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.

MY GAY VOICE AND YOURS

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.

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

“Growg up, I was always told that what was wrong wh me was that I was gay, so ’s not hard to unrstand that a moment of vulnerabily I might also feel secure about my sexualy. Now pretty much everyone says I have a "gay voice" which I agree, I do thk I sound "gay" bee stereotypilly the pch of my voice sounds like the other gay people (<average).

Obvly some straight people and gay people have ep voic, voic e high and lows, but how many of the ep voiced men actually would sound like that whout purposely "puttg some bass their voice"? 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. 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.

WHY IS "GAY VOICE" SO PREVALENT AND YET "LBIAN VOICE" IS MORE OR LS NONEXISTENT?

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. Thorpe provis myriad hypothis for where this hatred riv om and asks to qutn why any one of (gay or straight) reflexively police genr nonnformy one another’s voic.

IS THERE A “GAY VOICE”?

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. 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.

"DO I SOUND GAY?"

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. Psychology rearchers at the Universy of Sydney had 70 self-intified heterosexual participants listen to rerdgs of 60 men’s voic: 20 of the rerdgs were of gay men, 20 were of bi men, and 20 were straight. But while the participants rrectly tegorized the sexual orientatns of the gay and straight speakers “at rat greater than chance” (that is, better than a random gus), participants were unable to tell which voic belonged to bi men at rat greater than chance.

WHAT DO IT MEAN TO SOUND GAY?

Rearchers wrote that stereotypilly “gay voic” English-speakg men tend to have a higher pch, wir pch range, longer vowels, expand vowel space, and a hissy “S” sound — all of which are perceived as more feme and more submissive. While bra chemistry may predispose some gay men to the gay vol tras, prev studi have suggted that some gay men liberately e the speech patterns to make their sexual orientatns clearly known and to viate om rigidly enforced mascule norms. The psychologists behd the study said they wanted to exame bi voic as a way to bat “bisexual erasure” — the tenncy to overlook anythg other than exclively straight and gay sexual orientatns — society and scientific rearch.

“Beg misnsted as straight or gay based on one’s voice, might ntribute to a sense of erasure and alienatn” that is already high among bi men who feel discrimated agast by both the straight and gay muni, the rearchers wrote. " In his new film, Do I Sound Gay?, Thorpe search for the orig of that stereotype and documents his own attempts to sound "ls gay" by workg wh speech pathologist San Sank.

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. 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.