Gay men, ternalized homophobia, and (re)fg the "gay voice"
Contents:
- WHAT MEANS TO ‘SOUND GAY’
- A DOCUMENTARIAN WONRS: 'DO I SOUND GAY?'
- DO YOU SOUND GAY? WHAT OUR VOIC TELL – AND WHAT THEY DON’T
- "DO I SOUND GAY?"
- FILMMAKER AND SPEECH PATHOLOGIST WEIGH IN ON WHAT IT MEANS TO 'SOUND GAY'
WHAT MEANS TO ‘SOUND GAY’
What the way we talk says about gay pri and lgerg prejudice * i sound gay *
Most of are faiar wh the stereotype of a “gay voice. Do gay men actually sound different than straight men?
A DOCUMENTARIAN WONRS: 'DO I SOUND GAY?'
In a new documentary, a gay man tri to change the sound of his voice and wonrs why, exactly, he thks he should. * i sound gay *
The are the qutns a new documentary, “Do I Sound Gay? ” It’s a fascatg and nuanced film, which the filmmaker, David Thorpe, his feelgs about his voice to look at attus toward homosexualy. 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.
DO YOU SOUND GAY? WHAT OUR VOIC TELL – AND WHAT THEY DON’T
We might thk we know what a gay person sounds like. But there are veats to the cliche — and ‘voice-shamg’ tells a lot more about our culture than do about the person speakg * i sound gay *
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.
"DO I SOUND GAY?"
* i sound gay *
” People picked up on featur of the gay stereotype – voic that were higher and more melod were more often labeled "gay. 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.
FILMMAKER AND SPEECH PATHOLOGIST WEIGH IN ON WHAT IT MEANS TO 'SOUND GAY'
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. 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.
But that don't mean that they are gay.
"Some men wh 'gay voic' are straight, and some men wh 'straight voic' are gay, " says Smyth. "There are butch and fem gay men, there are butch and fem straight men, there are butch and fem straight women.