Is There a “Gay Voice”? | The New Yorker

Contents:

• EMEM AND THE “GAY LISP”
• GAY LISP
• IS THERE A “GAY VOICE”?
• THE PREVALENCE OF LISPG GAY MEN
• GAYDAR—SENDG MIXED SIGNALS
• GAY SPEECH AND LISPG
• STUDY SE ROOTS OF 'GAY LISP' BOYHOOD
• SCIENTISTS EXPLANED WHERE THE ‘GAY LISP’ STEREOTYPE ME OM
• THE GAY LISP?

EMEM AND THE “GAY LISP”

I am a gay man and this is drivg me crazy bee other aspects of the stereotypil "gay voice" are intifiable (even though they are still homophobic, I at least know what people are referrg to when they talk about them). Wele back to “Ask a Homo, ” Outward’s no-judgement answer service for all your qutns on LGBTQ polics, culture, etiquette, language, and other queer nundms.

This week, Bryan Lowr n-sth-irs the li-sth-p and other elements of the “stereotypil gay manner of speakg”—and honey, ’s jt fabulo! It’s this associatn, wh what I lled heightened or stereotypil “femy”, that has given rise to the wispread scriptn of hi-f sibilants or onted s/z as a “gay lisp”.

GAY LISP

Clearly ’s te that hi-f sibilants are ed by some gay men, throughout the English speakg world and, to some extent, beyond . A Brish example of a well-known gay man wh hi-f sibilants is Harry Derbidge om the TV realy soap The Only Way Is Essex.

The gay character Kurt Hummel on TV’s Glee has hi-f sibilants, but to my ear they’re ls nsistently so the terview speech of Chris Colfer, the (gay) actor who plays him. He not only “-swch” between pla and hi-f sibilants, but the hi-f variety an aggrsive “macho” genre which has been acced of sexism and homophobia. So although the “gay” associatn may have predomated people’s mds, hi-f sibilants seem to have been around unnoted hip hop for s.

IS THERE A “GAY VOICE”?

The prent study examed the popular stereotype that gay men lisp by evaluatg to what extent listeners associated ntal or ontal articulatn/lispg wh gayns.

Based on the ratgs of the listeners of the prent study, lispg speakers were signifintly more often judged to be homosexual. The rults of this study nfirmed prev prelimary fdgs that suggted that ontal or ntal articulatn/lispg is a feature that listeners associate wh gayns.

THE PREVALENCE OF LISPG GAY MEN

[quote]What gays sometim have is a hissssssy "s" soundPossibly om our tryg to emulate what our schools' speech therapists tried to get to 4th gra when we were pulled out of class to go read the word "stove" over and over until we got "right" Anonymoreply 10May 15, 2022 5:24 AM.

GAYDAR—SENDG MIXED SIGNALS

Not long after Thorpe broke up wh his boyiend, he began thkg about the way he speaks, and the way other gay men speak, and why both sudnly bothered him so much.

He terviews gay public figur, cludg David Sedaris, Tim Gunn, Don Lemon, and Gee Takei, who have had to listen to themselv for a livg. Gay adolcents, Thorpe pots out, often learn that the “tell” of their sexualy is their voic, even more so than physily—a limp wrist is easier to straighten out than an flectn. Even wh the gay datg muny (and gay porn), hyper-masculy is habually prized, so self-disgt gets easily turned back outward.

Thorpe talks to a straight iend who sounds “gay” (he grew up on an ashram, surround by women), and a gay iend who sounds “straight” (he has jock brothers). “For many gay men, that’s the last vtige, that’s the last chunk of ternalized homophobia, is this hatred of how they sound, ” Dan Savage tells Thorpe. One of the ways gay people tend to pensate, the film suggts, is to adopt the supercil speech patterns of the leisure class, i.

GAY SPEECH AND LISPG

The CNN anchor Don Lemon tells Thorpe that he worked harr to ntralize his Southern black accent than his “gay” accent. As gays and lbians ga cultural pal, helped along by equaly victori like the one jt hand down by the Supreme Court, “gay voice” will surely evolve, too. Two clicians who were unaware of the specific purpose of the study and the populatns volved judged randomized d-rerdgs of 175 gay mal, 100 heterosexual mal and 100 heterosexual femal for the prence of lispg durg readg of a standardized text.

STUDY SE ROOTS OF 'GAY LISP' BOYHOOD

Breakdown of the rults of the gay participants two different age groups showed a higher prevalence of lispg the younger age group than the olr age group. No relatn was found between lispg and age of g-out or lispg and the probabily of beg gay as asssed by a qutnnaire about sexual orientatn.

Learng out: The rears of this article will able (1) to discs articulatory behavur as a possible marker that may distguish gay om heterosexual men (2) to discs the prevalence of lispg gay by (0)1aspirant van het Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onrzoek full textCopyright © 2008 Elsevier Inc. However, as a gay man, I thk of gaydar not so much as a tool for intifyg one’s orientatn, but as a meang and discrimatory weapon ed to ntrast sexual and social differenc.

For my class project Language US Society, I wanted to qutn the nature of gaydar and trace s origs beyond jt the perceptn of the speaker. The key to unrstandg gaydar is the telemunitn ncept of “radar, ” which is fed as “a radtermatn system based on the parison of reference signals wh rad signals reflected or retransmted, om the posn to be termed” (ITU Rad Regulatns, 2013). Gaydar borrows the functns of receivg and parg signals and reifi the skill of intifyg sexual orientatn to an operatnal tool.

SCIENTISTS EXPLANED WHERE THE ‘GAY LISP’ STEREOTYPE ME OM

Hence, the technil fn of gaydar is a “system based on the parison of reference signals wh language reflected or retransmted, om the posn to be termed, ” where the posn to be termed ultimately translat to inty. A historil example of this is what lguists ll the onted “s” sound that is typilly characterized as a lisp, also known as the “gay lisp” (Mack and Munson 2012).

Instead of intifyg the onted “s” as a lguistic variable, listeners equently thk of as an x of non-normative behavr such as a speech fect or homosexualy.

THE GAY LISP?

This associatn between language and behavr puts speakers g this variable a double bd: they are perceived eher to have a speech fect or to be gay—wh both perceptns rryg negative nnotatns. Moreover, gaydar self is not a reliable system bee the stereotypil featur of gay speech n be cross-xil wh other social tegori.

Heteronormativy is the iology that driv many heterosexual men to be particularly aware of gay dory cu as they strive to protect their exprsns of masculy through their lguistic performanc. This iology is what prompted me to hi my “gay accent” as a child—I was tryg to f this ialized heteronormative mold, I was tryg to appear heterosexual, I was tryg to sound normal. In particular, s existence emphasiz that gay speakers the Uned Stat share certa lguistic variabl as a part of their lguistic repertoir.

Ultimately, the lguistic repertoir that are symptomatic of a functng gaydar form the lguistic hab shared by members of the English-speakg gay speech muny.