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

Contents:

• THE GAY VOICE
• WHY DO GAY MEN SOUND LIKE ~THAT~?
• IS THERE A “GAY VOICE”?
• WHAT MEANS TO ‘SOUND GAY’
• WHY THE GAY ACCENT?
• DO YOU SOUND GAY? WHAT OUR VOIC TELL – AND WHAT THEY DON’T
• "DO I SOUND GAY?"
• CALIFORNIA ENGLISH AND THE “GAY ACCENT”
• GAY PCH, LISP?

THE GAY VOICE

Accents are generally a regnal thg, but seems like there is a stereotypil, standard effemate-soundg gay accent, no matter where the US you go. After intifyg phoic characteristics that seem to make a man’s voice sound gay, their bt hunch is that some gay men may subnscly adopt certa female speech patterns.

They want to know how men acquire this manner of speakg, and why – pecially when society so often stigmatiz those wh gay-soundg voic. The way that male gays talk don't even really bother me unls 's overtly flamboyant, I fd myself sensive to loud talkg no matter who is.

As far as I am aware beg a gay guy means that you feel like a man and you like men, and beg trans means that you are the wrong body and you feel like youre the oppose genr. An exploratn of the gay accent and how beme popularized ( @jvn / Instagram)As most people are acctomed to believe, gay men have a very “gay” sound when they speak. Acrdg to Radice, lguists often viate away om the popular assumptn that gay men sound more effemate bee not everyone falls to the “box.

WHY DO GAY MEN SOUND LIKE ~THAT~?

Radice emphasized that when analyzg gay speak, ’s more important to foc on an dividual se rather than a populatn as a whole. For example, a gay man whose first language is Spanish and who grew up New York is gog to speak drastilly different than a gay man whose first language is English and who grew up Texas.

He explaed that the filmmakers disvered that uptalk (when you end a sentence on a higher pch), a vol y (when you kda end your sentenc wh a very low pch croak-like sooooounnnndd), and even a lisp are the most stereotypilly proment featur of gay speak. As mentned before, while this rmatn is eful, n also be harmful and rerce unwanted stereotypAnother aspect of gay speak are the actual words or phras ed by members of the LGBTQ+ muny.

While the words n be stereotypilly seen as “gay speak” they often tend to origate om another dialect: Ain Amerin Vernacular English (AAVE) do exist? One of the explanatns for why some men speak wh gay speak is bee, Radice said, some gay boys gravate toward women and girls more. Radice also said he believ var words and phras specific to the gay muny n be traced to the gay ballroom culture of 1980’s New York, pecially Black gay men and Black drag queens.

IS THERE A “GAY VOICE”?

Another tertg thg I learned my nversatn wh Radice was that a lot of gay speak veloped as a way for queer people to avert discrimatn. From a historil aspect, if a gay man wanted to refer to their partner but wasn’t out or feared for his safety, he’d refer to them as she/her public. In fact, Radice told me to look to the Polari dialect This dialect veloped om the entertament dtry the early 1900s (when homosexualy was still illegal the U.

WHAT MEANS TO ‘SOUND GAY’

Gay speak todayWhile gay speak may have partially veloped om a place of discrimatn, this form of speakg now, some way, has bee mastream and even rri a sense of “prtige. ” In the past few years, public opn has shifted greatly favor of gay culture to the pot where gay people are almost seen as this ol llective group of people everyone wants to or should be iends wh.

Shows, such as RuPl’s Drag Race, and social media have not only served to expose the public to gay culture, but have also ma gay speak and certa gay terms more mastream. Gay speak is so popular that, acrdg to Radice, var straight men on TikTok will tentnally e some form of gay speak bee they know ’ll ultimately get more clicks than if they ed their real voice. What I didn’t know back then was that gay speak isn't a sgle way of speakg but rather a bo of featur and an tertg topic that volv var layers of analysis.

While technilly speakg there is no way to “speak gay, ” there are var monali between SOME gay men that leads to the characterizatn of such a phenomenon. So even though ’s an tertg topic, pecially when lookg at s evolutn to the mastream, gay speak should be looked at as jt that — an tertg topic**(update: didn’t work)Luigi Bensme is an onle wrer at Rowdy Magaze.

WHY THE GAY ACCENT?

But Ive also met lots of gay guys who talk "normally" (not that beg gay is abnormal, but I'm not sure how else to scribe ) Do this phenomena occur other languag? 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.

DO YOU SOUND GAY? WHAT OUR VOIC TELL – AND WHAT THEY DON’T

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).

"DO I SOUND GAY?"

“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.

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. ” It’s a fascatg and nuanced film, which the filmmaker, David Thorpe,  his feelgs about his voice to look at attus toward homosexualy.

CALIFORNIA ENGLISH AND THE “GAY ACCENT”

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.

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.

GAY PCH, LISP?

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.

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. 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.

“As a hly mted gay man, I learned how mpg up uld be liberatg, ” Thorpe says the there may be more subtle ways that sexualy and our sense of self fluence our voic.