"Do I Sound Gay?" | Psychology Today

Contents:

• THE GAY VOICE
• WHAT'S THE LK BETWEEN HOMOSEXUALY AND HAVG A 'GAY VOICE'
• WHY DO (SOME) GAY MEN HAVE HIGHER VOIC?
• THIS IS WHY SOME MEN ‘SOUND GAY’ – EVEN IF THEY’RE NOT
• WHY IS THAT SOME GAY MEN EMPLOY AN EFFEMATE VOICE?
• WHAT MEANS TO ‘SOUND GAY’
• SPEECH ATIC FEATUR: A COMPARISON OF GAY MEN, HETEROSEXUAL MEN, AND HETEROSEXUAL WOMEN
• GAY VOICE: STABLE MARKER OF SEXUAL ORIENTATN OR FLEXIBLE COMMUNITN DEVICE?
• "DO I SOUND GAY?"
• IS THERE A “GAY VOICE”?

THE 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. Bee I was thkg - if the high voice is directly lked to them beg gay, surely 's pretty good proof that sexualy is not somethg that is 'chosen' (as some would have believe) and is actually somethg that we are born wh, somethg that is blogilly programmed to om the start.

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.

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

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. 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. ” 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. ” 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.

To fill the gaps, we explored potential differenc atic featur of speech between homosexual and heterosexual native French men and vtigated whether the former showed a trend toward femizatn by parg theirs to that of heterosexual native French women.

WHY DO (SOME) GAY MEN HAVE HIGHER VOIC?

In addn to the fact that homosexuals exhib tras that differ om those of heterosexuals, has been shown that some of them, such as specific nral procs (LeVay, 1991; Savic, Berglund, & Ldstrom, 2005) or specific childhood behavrs (Alanko et al., 2010; Bailey & Zucker, 1995), displayed valu shifted toward those of the oppose sex, i.

Although there is no clear evince that the mean fundamental equency differs between homosexual and heterosexual men (Gd, 1994; Lerman & Damsté, 1969; Munson et al., 2006b; Rendall et al., 2008; Rogers, Jabs, & Smyth, 2001; Smyth, Jabs, & Rogers, 2003; but see Baeck, Corthals, & Borsel, 2011), rults toward differenc pch modulatn patterns are more ntroversial: Some studi have found that homosexual men displayed greater variatns tonatn, wh valu shifted toward those of women (Baeck et al., 2011; Gd, 1994), while others did not fd any difference (Levon, 2006; Rogers et al., 2001).

Lastly, homosexual men seem to produce a more expand vowel space than heterosexual men for some specific vowels (Rendall et al., 2008), hyper-articulatn beg monly found female speech (Pierrehumbert et al., 2004) the atic speech featur, other characteristics uld vary wh sexual orientatn, such as vol breaths and roughns that are, rpectively, ptured by the harmonics-to-noise rat (HNR) and the jter. Although evince of a difference ttosterone levels between homosexual and heterosexual men is nsistent (Meyer-Bahlburg, 1977, 1984), ttosterone may still mediate the relatnship between sexual orientatn and the aforementned vol speech featur, which has received ltle attentn so far. Consequently, muni of homosexual men uld potentially differ their specific vol speech featur across different this ntext, the goal of the prent study was to provi further tails on the potential differenc between homosexual and heterosexual men’s speech an unrreprented populatn the lerature (i.

THIS IS WHY SOME MEN ‘SOUND GAY’ – EVEN IF THEY’RE NOT

To vtigate the effects of sexual orientatn and tt the hypothis of femizatn on the vol featur, we ed an explanatory variable lled “SexOr” that nsirs both sex and sexual orientatn wh three modali: heterosexual men, homosexual men, and heterosexual women.

Thrholds of signifince were rrected for the number of mols and post hoc parisons g the Bonferroni orr to asss the overall difference on speech atic featur between heterosexual and homosexual men and to exame whether homosexual men’s vol featur are shifted toward those of women, we nducted a lear discrimant analysis (LDA).

RultsDcriptive statistics of all atic parameters and T-levels are shown Table 1Dcriptive statistics of mean F0, F0-SD, jter, HNR, speakg time, and T-levels for heterosexual men and women and homosexual menHeterosexual men(n = 48)M ± SDHomosexual men(n = 58)M ± SDHeterosexual women(n = 54)M ± SDF0 (Hz)118. Consistent wh prev fdgs English-speakg populatns, no signifint differenc were observed mean F0 between French-speakg heterosexual and homosexual men (Gd, 1994; Lerman & Damsté, 1969; Munson et al., 2006b; Rendall et al., 2008; Rogers et al., 2001; Smyth et al., 2003).

WHY IS THAT SOME GAY MEN EMPLOY AN EFFEMATE VOICE?

The relatnship between pch variatns and sexual orientatn was prevly found one Dutch (Baeck et al., 2011) and one Amerin-English populatn (Gd, 1994), suggtg that femized pch variatns might be characteristic of male homosexual speech across languag (but see Levon, 2006).

WHAT MEANS TO ‘SOUND GAY’

Further vtigatns are neverthels need to nfirm if such a difference pch variatns between homosexual and heterosexual men is enough to be ed as a cue for asssg sexual our knowledge, this is the first study to report an associatn between men’s vol breaths and sexual orientatn. 80 dB), further rearch should tt whether is perceptible by listeners to asss male sexual orientatn and whether homosexual men’s voic, which are richer harmonics pared to those of heterosexuals, are perceived as more attractive among homosexual our study, T-levels did not fluence any of the atic parameters vtigated.

For stance, exposure to prenatal ttosterone has been suggted to be rponsible for the differenc between homosexual and heterosexual men on a large range of characteristics such as physlogil and behavral tras cludg speech characteristics (Balthazart, 2017; Ehrhardt & Meyer-Bahlburg, 1981). However, there is currently no nsens regardg whether the 2D:4D rat differs between heterosexual and homosexual men as studi have yield mixed rults (Breedlove, 2017; Grimbos, Dawood, Burriss, Zucker, & Puts, 2010; Rahman & Wilson, 2003; Robson, 2000; Skorska & Bogaert, 2017; Williams et al., 2000). Bee some homosexual men display a greater gree of genr nonnformg behavr (GNC) than others durg childhood (Bailey & Zucker, 1995), one uld th hypothize that the former would be more likely to have a more feme speech adulthood than the latter.

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

Further work should vtigate the relative importance of the mechanisms unrlyg homosexual men’s nclu, although our study did not aim to tt specific hypoth agast a formal theoretil amework to unrstand the differenc between homosexual and heterosexual men’s speech, provis some new scriptive fdgs.

Wh this bate, Vasilovsky (2018) cricized gaydar rearch for nceptualizg sexual orientatn cu mostly as “static” and “nate” rather than as “dynamic” munitn addrs this cricism, we foc here on a cue that may have some relatively stable featur, but that is also known to be open to modulatn, namely voice. When judged on the basis of voice alone, gay speakers are generally perceived as (relatively) ls heterosexual than straight speakers, but they still tend to be systematilly misclassified as heterosexual, suggtg that heterosexualy is the flt rponse (Smyth et al., 2003; Sulpiz et al., 2015, 2020; see Lick & Johnson, 2016, for this straight tegorizatn bias) lerature has also examed the actual atic cu that distguish gay and straight speech styl. Overall, the lerature nfirms that some voice characteristics are stereotypilly associated wh homosexualy and/or femy/masculy (see Kachel, Simpson, & Steffens, 2017; Kachel et al., 2018b) and that listeners are not only fluenced by actual atic differenc but also rely on stereotypil cu when formg an imprsn of the speaker (Munson, Crocker, Pierrehumbert, Owen-Anrson, & Zucker, 2015) few exceptns, rearch on dory gaydar has nceptualized gay and straight voice as a relatively stable characteristic of the speaker and, hence, has foced on habual ways of speakg.

Rearch on sexual orientatn modulatn (Ambady & Hallahan, 2002; Sylva, Rieger, Lsenmeier, & Bailey, 2010) has shown that gay dividuals are able to exaggerate and partially nceal their sexualy, pecially if they are not a gnively mandg suatn (Sylva et al., 2010). Th, prr rearch has foced on variatn between rather than wh speakers, although there are a few notable has been suggted that gay speakers may specifilly mimize or emphasize the stereotypil atic cu scribed above to nceal or signal their sexual orientatn (Kachel et al., 2018a; Zwicky, 1997; see also Zimman, 2013).

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

Crist (1997) observed a systematic lengtheng of (some) onset nsonants when four gay and two straight speakers were asked to read a text a “queeny” (flamboyantly effemate), rather than an “ordary, ” voice, suggtg that both straight and gay men were able to modify their voic.

The only exceptn to this is reprented by a study showg that gay men dislikg the ia of soundg gay avoid engagg gay stereotypil speech and, th, were ually perceived as heterosexual (Mann, 2012) is some evince that gay dividuals may, to some gree, be able to nceal their sexual orientatn, but only when talkg about general topics (Sylva et al., 2010). Th, remas to be seen whether gay speakers modulate their voic pendg on ntext and terlocutor and whether such voice modulatn is succsful exprsg or ncealg sexual and Overview of RearchIn le wh the ia that voice signals social tegory membership (Posva & Callier, 2015), our voice sexual orientatn modulatn hypothis poss that speakers flexibly adopt stereotypilly gay/lbian vs.

"DO I SOUND GAY?"

As a nsequence, speech styl signalg a gay tegory membership should maly be adopted wh people who are aware of the speaker’s sexual orientatn and who had reacted posively to their g out (Lville, 1998; Munson & Babel, 2007), but gay speakers may mimic straight speech styl wh unaware or unacceptg teractn vtigate whether gay speakers spontaneoly modulate their voic to reveal or disguise their sexual orientatn, we nducted a simulated nversatn study which gay men imaged talkg to terlocutors wh whom they had e out easily, wh difficulty, or had not me out at all. In le wh our voice modulatn hypothis, we hypothized that the voic of gay speakers will sound more gay when talkg to others wh whom they had easily e out than when talkg to people wh whom they had not e out or wh whom they have had a difficult disclosure experienc. Gay speakers were asked to image to talk to (1) a receiver wh whom they had not e out and wh whom they would not feel fortable to e out (no g out), (2) a receiver wh whom they had e out and who had reacted a posive way (easy g out), and (3) a receiver wh whom they had e out but who had reacted a negative way (difficult g out).

After listeng to each rerdg, participants were asked to rate the speaker’s voice by pletg a measure of voice genr typily (om 1 = pletely feme to 7 = pletely mascule) and of voice gayns (om 1 = pletely heterosexual to 7 = pletely homosexual), after havg listened to the three rerdgs, participants gused the speaker’s sexual orientatn (om 1 = pletely heterosexual to 7 = pletely homosexual, wh the sle midpot labeled “bisexual”). In le wh prev studi on dory gaydar (Sulpiz et al., 2015, 2020; Valentova & Havlíček, 2013) and on the straight tegorizatn bias (Lick & Johnson, 2016), sexual orientatn means were overall low and below the midpot of the sle for both gay and straight speakers (all ts < − 5. The gay speakers’ voic sound more gay and more genr atypil to the ears of our listeners when speakers simulated an teractn wh an terlocutor who had reacted posively to their g out than when the teractn volved someone who was unaware of their sexualy.

IS THERE A “GAY VOICE”?

To le out this possibily, we nducted a send study that allowed to vtigate voice modulatn as a functn of g out, while holdg dience characteristics orr to exame whether voice modulatn gay men is a specific nsequence of g out, gay speakers Study 2 were teractg wh the same dience, namely the general public.

G., sentenc read out loud), this method gave the possibily to exame listeners’ perceptn based on spontaneo expected that the voic of gay speakers would sound ls genr typil and more gay after than before g out, but no differenc over time were predicted for the straight speakers (Hypothis 1). Th, this study allowed to further exame the ia that voice is not a stable marker of sexual orientatn, but a flexible inty management vice, ed by gay speakers to strategilly (although not necsarily liberately) disclose or disguise their sexual orientatn. After listeng to each d rerdg, participants pleted the voice genr typily and voice gayns measur and gused the speaker’s sexual orientatn on the same 7-pot sl of Study, participants gused how many different speakers they had listened to (om 1 to 10) and dited whether they had regnized any of them as someone they knew.

As shown Table 1, straight speakers’ voic were perceived as creasgly genr typil over time, whereas an oppose trend was observed for gay speakers, whose voic sound ls genr typil after than before g 1 Mean (SD) of voice genr atypily, voice gayns, and perceived sexual orientatn as a functn of speaker sexual orientatn and time (Study 2)Full size tableOverall, the voic of both gay and straight speakers across ndns were perceived as rather genr typil (ts > 13. 1 (top) and Table 1, and le wh Hypothis 1, the voic of gay speakers were perceived as more gay after than before g out, whereas the oppose pattern was found for straight 1Means of perceived voice gayns (top) and speaker sexual orientatn (bottom) as a functn of time (Study 2). Note Higher valu mean greater gayns of voice (middle) and greater gayns of speaker (bottom), all asssed on sl om 1 to 7Full size imageIntertgly, the three-way teractn between speaker sexual orientatn, time, and listener sexual orientatn was signifint, F(2, 602) = 4.