My Gay Voice and Yours | Psychology Today

Contents:

• WHAT'S THE LK BETWEEN HOMOSEXUALY AND HAVG A 'GAY VOICE'
• THIS IS WHY SOME MEN ‘SOUND GAY’ – EVEN IF THEY’RE NOT
• WANT TO GET RID OF YOUR 'GAY ACCENT'? THERE'S AN APP FOR THAT
• GAY OR STRAIGHT? HIS SPEECH MAY GIVE A HT
• MY GAY VOICE AND YOURS
• IS THERE A “GAY VOICE”?
• THE GAY VOICE
• WHAT MEANS TO ‘SOUND GAY’
• MY GAY VOICE

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

Bisexual men are perceived to sound more mascule than men who are straight, acrdg to a study of Atralian subjects.Amics at the Universy of Sydney pared the voic of gay, straight and bisexual men a study volvg 160 people.In the rearch led by clil psychologist Jam Morandi, people were reced to analyse the voic of 60 men, 20 of whom were gay, 20 straight and 20 bisexual. They were then asked to rate the men on their sexual orientatn g a sle om zero (exclively heterosexual) to 10 (exclively homosexual).Listeners were also asked to rate each man’s perceived level of femy or masculy the voic on a siar sle.The men volved the study were asked to rerd themselv on a smartphone recg the first two l of the Atralian natnal anthem.Voice sampl were then modified to remove any background noise while volume levels were ma the same to ensure nsistency.Rults om the study showed listeners uld distguish between gay and straight men’s voic wh an accuracy of 62 per cent, apparently nsistent wh prev rearch.However, the study participants uld not terme any differenc between bisexual and straight men’s voic wh any gree of accuracy. The thors said their rearch showed bisexual men’s voic were perceived as beg more exclively attracted to women pared wh both gay and straight men’s voic.Bisexual men’s voic were rated as more mascule than both gay and straight men’s voic.Rearchers claimed the abily to intify a man’s bisexual inty om his voice alone uld have cril social implitns such as helpg to rce feelgs of alienatn.‘Voice may unter visibily many bisexuals feel’An abstract of the study, tled Can listeners tect if a man is bisexual om his voice alone, reads: “The prent study examed whether bisexual men n be intified om their voic ak to how gay men n be intified on their voice alone.“If this is the se, voice may be an important target of discrimatn on the one hand but may also unter the visibily many bisexuals feel (if their bisexual inti n be apprehend by their voice alone, whout explic disclosure required).“The fdgs may also she light on whether bisexual male voic, like gay male voic, differ om straight voic terms of their genr non-nformy – a qutn that to date has not been examed.”But amics noted the rearch was limed on the grounds all men who participated the study are Atralian, which may not be reflected among wir cultur.And the thors nced the study did not ntrol for the rerdg environment or microphone-to-mouth distance, which uld have affected the qualy of the voice sampl.The thors said the fdgs suggted that while the voic of bisexual men the sample were perceived as more mascule and attracted to femal, listeners did not associate this imprsn wh bisexualy.As a rult, while bisexual men may appear to be at lower risk of facg voice-based intifitn and discrimatn than gay men, they may often be mistaken as beg straight.The study was published the Journal of Sex Rearch.

Somehow, the origal “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” premiered on Bravo two s ago this month, prentg five gay men – each specializg a specific liftyle area – as they scend upon a (ually) heterosexual male subject need of some support, whether was wh clothg choic, groomg, anizatn or perhaps an unrlyg issue around self nfince.

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

It was a novel take on the makeover ncept, not only terms of beg one of the first monstroly succsful programs the then-nascent realm of realy TV, but also one of the first tl to feature not one – but five – gay people as the leads.

Krsley agreed, sayg, “We meet people all the time who are probably their thirti now, who say, ‘I me om a very nservative fay, we were very relig, “Gay” was not somethg that was ever spoken about our home, and your show allowed to at least have that nversatn, if not make easier for me to e out. He add that of urse, isn’t only gay people who approach them wh spiratnal msag, and that at the time the origal show aired, the st saw how their visibily as gay people wh a larger straight world was beg received firsthand. And for those who cricized the origal seri for rercg stereotyp by havg a gay fashnista or bety expert swoop to tidy thgs up, Colls creds his rint foodie Allen for a memorable moment at the show’s first NBC upont Los Angel back 2003, when he faced a slew of reporters and had the perfect retort.

WANT TO GET RID OF YOUR 'GAY ACCENT'? THERE'S AN APP FOR THAT

“Ted fally grabbed , really grabbed a hold of the answer, which was like, ‘Yeah, we are, as a matter of fact, owng the clich around the fact that gays have a different perspective, have a unique visn and perspective of a lot of different thgs. Five gay men — Carson Krsley, Ted Allen, Kyan Douglas, Thom Filicia, and Jai Rodriquez — surprised a schlubby (almost always) straight man wh a full-life makeover, om his hair, cloth and hygiene rout to his home, his meals, and his mand of the broar culture.

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.

GAY OR STRAIGHT? HIS SPEECH MAY GIVE A HT

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.

“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.

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? In the wake of the whole Newsweek gay actors thg, Details sought out the wisdom of longtime voice ach Bob Corff, who helps actors get rid of Gay what, exactly, is the difference between a straight male voice and a gay male voice? Now pretty much everyone says I have a "gay voice" which I agree, I do thk I sound "gay" bee stereotypilly the pch of my voice sounds like the other gay people (<average).

MY GAY VOICE AND YOURS

However I do feel like some straight men purposely make their voice eper jt to NOT sound "gay" even though naturally their pch wouldn't be as low. Obvly some straight people and gay people have ep voic, voic e high and lows, but how many of the ep voiced men actually would sound like that whout purposely "puttg some bass their voice"? ”Conversatns between three men their late twenti about their gay iend are eerily siar to nversatns between boys their early teens about girls.

In the r one afternoon, entirely unprovoked, my iend Eric, who do tech support, offered this about a bar we equent: “There were a bunch of gay upl at the Taproom. Whout thkg too much of , we gge the affluence of whatever place we’re suckg down beers by the number of gay men we n pick out the crowd.

Their reasong, however skewed may be, is that ’s not gay if a girl is dog , and unr no circumstanc would they nsir actually nng a few plays for your team. At least not out might thk the fellas are already straddlg that third rail of sexualy (I certaly do), but there are still fort issu when to gay guys flirtg wh . The first time I mowed the lawn after our iend told he was gay, I ma sure I wore a shirt—and I might have locked the bathroom door once or twice when I took a shower.

IS THERE A “GAY VOICE”?

You say, “When a man and a man love each other very much … ” And eventually, after he tght all that he uld, he flew away to Key Wt, our big gay Mary mulled how to advertise for a new roommate. When people hear a man talk and gus he’s gay, they’re really listeng to how he says his vowels, suggts new past studi, rearchers have rerd homosexual and heterosexual men speakg long passag om texts of plays, and tt subjects were pretty accurate pickg out the gay voic among Eric Tracy, a psychologist at Oh State Universy, wanted to see jt how ltle rmatn people need before they ma up their md about if a speaker was gay.

He rerd a group of 36 gay and straight men speakg sgle syllable words, like “mass” and “soap, ” and played back to a tt group of men and tt subjects − volunteer llege stunts — ranked each speaker on a sle om 1 to 7, to reprent their gus about the speaker’s sexual orientatn: gay (7 pots) or not (1 pot). Tracy found that his tt subjects tend to perceive gay speech differently based on short words, he cid to look closer, to zero  on which part of the word was the trigger for the cisn.

THE GAY VOICE

“When the vowel h, people were pretty sure, ” said Nicholas Sentar, a -thor on the Tracy's scriptn, vowels spoken by gay men sound longer, and one sound that threw the listeners for a loop was the letter "s. " When the subjects they heard the "s" sound, whose lispg is part of the stereotyped portrayal of gay speech, they seemed more likely to rank the person as gay.

WHAT MEANS TO ‘SOUND GAY’

So, while they picked out the gay speakers rrectly, they also tend to rrectly pick the straight Rendall, a psychologist at the Universy of Lethbridge Alberta, Canada, warns that the study mak the assumptn that there is such a thg as “gay speech, ” and that the tt subjects were rpondg to trac of the flamboyant dialogue that has bee the generalizatn and stereotype for how gay men is one of the issu that Tracy plans to addrs possible future studi.

MY GAY VOICE

Even if do reprent a small subsectn of gay people, Tracy says his study might fd applitn plac like tomated voice regnn software, which uld e a few tweaks when to regnizg flavors and accents of male and Sentar prented their study on Monday at the nference of the Atil Society of Ameri Seattle.

No one r if you ARE gay but you n’t ACT gay…” Sce then I have ponred what even means to “act gay”-- or to “act straight, ” for that matter. ) But 99% of the time the magic would fa once I was st, revealg me to be a guy who uld ocsnally hi behd a ep voice, but who generally prented as “gay.