Self-nsc about the way he speaks, David Thorpe has explored why some people his muny ‘sound gay’ and others don’t a new documentary.
Contents:
- THE GAY VOICE
- THIS IS WHY SOME MEN ‘SOUND GAY’ – EVEN IF THEY’RE NOT
- WHAT'S THE LK BETWEEN HOMOSEXUALY AND HAVG A 'GAY VOICE'
- WHY DO (SOME) GAY MEN HAVE HIGHER VOIC?
- SPEECH ATIC FEATUR: A COMPARISON OF GAY MEN, HETEROSEXUAL MEN, AND HETEROSEXUAL WOMEN
- WHAT MEANS TO ‘SOUND GAY’
- WHY IS THAT SOME GAY MEN EMPLOY AN EFFEMATE VOICE?
THE GAY VOICE
People wh stereotypilly high-pched or ‘mp’ voic n fd people assumg that they’re gay, acrdg to one Amerin film-maker - even if they aren’t. Likewise, men wh ep voic n fd themselv wrongly assumed to be beg straight. * why do gay guys have higher pitched voices *
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.
THIS IS WHY SOME MEN ‘SOUND GAY’ – EVEN IF THEY’RE NOT
* why do gay guys have higher pitched voices *
They want to know how men acquire this manner of speakg, and why – pecially when society so often stigmatiz those wh gay-soundg voic. 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. ”It was the start of a four-year journey of self-disvery durg which Thorpe tried to figure out his so-lled “gay voice”: when did he start talkg that way, what ed , how exactly did sound, and, fally, what was so wrong wh anyway?
The rults n be seen his new documentary, Do I Sound Gay?, which featur terviews wh lguists, amics, fay and iends, as well as a number of high-profile personali, cludg David Sedaris and Dan Savage. Another expert that he terviews for the film is a Canadian lguist who studi vol microvariatns between gay and straight men and speculat that many gay men more readily pick up speech s om women. Intertgly, a straight iend of Thorpe’s has what is nsired to be an archetypal “gay voice” and turns that out he was raised entirely by women at an ashram.
When he was younger, Thorpe not, the only “gay voic” on televisn were those belongg to figur such as Liberace and Charl Nelson Reilly, the host of The Match Game. He also wonrs if Disney villas such as Aladd’s Jafar and The Ln Kg’s Sr, wh their soft, threateng voic, have ma young people associate soundg gay wh beg evil.
WHAT'S THE LK BETWEEN HOMOSEXUALY AND HAVG A 'GAY VOICE'
Why do gay men have high pched voic? * why do gay guys have higher pitched voices *
It pleas him to hear so many more “gay voic” reprented today, pecially young vloggers such as Lohanthony and Tyler Oakley. “Growg up, I was always told that what was wrong wh me was that I was gay, so ’s not hard to unrstand that a moment of vulnerabily I might also feel secure about my sexualy.
WHY DO (SOME) GAY MEN HAVE HIGHER VOIC?
What the way we talk says about gay pri and lgerg prejudice * why do gay guys have higher pitched voices *
As Dan Savage, the activist who found the It Gets Better mpaign, says the film: “What’s wrong wh soundg like you are who you are – a gay man? 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.
AbstractPotential differenc between homosexual and heterosexual men have been studied on a diverse set of social and blogil tras. Regardg atic featur of speech, rearchers have hypothized a femizatn of such characteristics homosexual men, but prev vtigatns have so far produced mixed rults. 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.
SPEECH ATIC FEATUR: A COMPARISON OF GAY MEN, HETEROSEXUAL MEN, AND HETEROSEXUAL WOMEN
Rults showed that homosexual men displayed signifintly higher pch modulatn patterns and ls breathy voic pared to heterosexual men, wh valu shifted toward those of heterosexual women. IntroductnThe genr atypily hypothis suggts that genr atypil tras homosexuals uld be ed as cu to dite sexual orientatn.
WHAT MEANS TO ‘SOUND GAY’
Differenc between heterosexual and homosexual dividuals have th been studied on a diverse set of tras such as face (e. 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.
) For example, popular stereotyp regardg the speech of homosexual men generally attribute speech patterns characteristic 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).
For stance, homosexual men produce higher peak equency and longer duratn valu for /s/ (Lville, 1998) and the speech characteristics are associated wh “gayer-soundg” voic by listeners (Mack & Munson, 2012).
WHY IS THAT SOME GAY MEN EMPLOY AN EFFEMATE VOICE?
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.
Such rults suggt that vol breaths and roughns may play a role the qualifitn of mascule vers feme soundg voic, th qutng homosexuals’ vol breaths and roughns wh this ntuum. In le wh the speech femizatn hypothis, homosexual men uld ed potentially exhib higher valu of HNR and lower valu of jter, but, so far, no studi have tackled this issue.
Rearch have tried to asss if the femized tras homosexual men n be attributable to proximate mechanisms such as the differenc sex hormone levels. 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.