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
Contents:
- WHAT MEANS TO ‘SOUND GAY’
- FILMMAKER AND SPEECH PATHOLOGIST WEIGH IN ON WHAT IT MEANS TO 'SOUND GAY'
- DO YOU SOUND GAY? WHAT OUR VOIC TELL – AND WHAT THEY DON’T
- "DO I SOUND GAY?"
- HOMOSEXUAL MEN WHO ‘SOUND GAY’ AL WH MORE DISCRIMATN, STUDY SAYS
- GAY MEN WHO 'SOUND GAY' ENUNTER MORE STIGMA AND DISCRIMATN OM HETEROSEXUAL PEERS
- WHAT DO IT MEAN TO SOUND GAY?
- DO I SOUND GAY?
WHAT MEANS TO ‘SOUND GAY’
What the way we talk says about gay pri and lgerg prejudice * souding gay *
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FILMMAKER AND SPEECH PATHOLOGIST WEIGH IN ON WHAT IT MEANS TO 'SOUND GAY'
In Do I Sound Gay?, director David Thorpe search for the orig of the so-lled "gay voice" and documents his own attempts (wh speech pathologist San Sank) to sound "ls gay." * souding gay *
You uld sur the Inter or make expensive pilgrimag to your neart big cy to vis a sexual retailer tered exclively to gay men — nearly every big cy has one — or you uld start wh this list of 39 sex toys you have to try, some of which are for begners and others for seasoned adventurists.
DO YOU SOUND GAY? WHAT OUR VOIC TELL – AND WHAT THEY DON’T
* souding gay *
Internatnal samplg was achieved by distributn of a survey vatn to lol, natnal and ternatnal Lbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgenr muny centr, anizatns terg to MSM, and advertisements on Facebook® (, Palo Alto, CA, USA) aimed at self-intified MSM. At first blh, schoolyard tnts might not seem a uful source of tisms about the human ndn, but the ephet “ tak one to know one” do have some basis realy, at least for gays and lbians, who are often attuned to the special somethgs that subtly and vertly distguish gay om straight.
Though popular stereotype holds that gay men lisp, lispg is que rare and is often evince of a diagnosable speech impediment.
"DO I SOUND GAY?"
Gay men, ternalized homophobia, and (re)fg the "gay voice" * souding gay *
But the lispg stereotype is not altogether removed om realy: In fact, some North Amerin gay mal do pronounce sibilants (s, z, sh, and the like) a distctive way – by addg more sibilatn, hissg, or strincy, a phenomenon phonologists ll assibilatn. Many New Yorkers of all persuasns, and some Amerin Jews, also assibilate ways siar to Quebec French or stereotypil gay speech.
HOMOSEXUAL MEN WHO ‘SOUND GAY’ AL WH MORE DISCRIMATN, STUDY SAYS
Rearchers say homosexual men who believe their voice "sounds gay" nscly make an effort to be "more vigilant" social suatns. * souding gay *
Moreover, gay men who speak wh what a North Amerin newsrear would nsir an “accent” – such as Brish, Atralian, or even Texan gays – rarely assibilate at all.
In one experiment, Rudolf Gd, an openly-gay lguistics stunt at Stanford Universy, asked four gay and four straight men to read two passag to a tape rerr.
GAY MEN WHO 'SOUND GAY' ENUNTER MORE STIGMA AND DISCRIMATN OM HETEROSEXUAL PEERS
Rudolf P. Gd, Soundg Gay: Pch Properti the Speech of Gay and Straight Men, Amerin Speech, Vol. 69, No. 1 (Sprg, 1994), pp. 30-57 * souding gay *
The first text was a dry excerpt om an acuntg volume, the send a dramatic passage om Harvey Fierste’s play about gay life, Torch Song Trilogy. E., on a seven-posn sle between oppose terms: straight and gay, effemate and mascule, rerved and emotnal, affected and ordary.
WHAT DO IT MEAN TO SOUND GAY?
As Gd noted, “listeners’ gus about speakers’ sexual orientatn were largely accurate: wh ‘straight’ at the left pole of the ntuum and ‘gay’ at the right pole, all the straight speakers rated on the ‘straight’ si, and all the gay speakers were to their right (i.
DO I SOUND GAY?
Oddly, though, a range of pch measurements taken om the actual sound wav of the four gay and four straight men’s voic, there was no signifint rrelatn wh the listeners’ judgements. The experiment, then, uld provi no quantifiable reason why the listeners’ perceptns about gay and straight speakers were rrect. Gd explas this anomaly by notg that his experiment nsired only a narrow range of measurements; gay and straight men’s speech might well differ acrdg to creria Gd did not measure.