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

Contents:

• THE GAY VOICE
• WHY DO *SOME* GAY GUYS SPEAK DIFFERENTLY?
• WHAT'S THE LK BETWEEN HOMOSEXUALY AND HAVG A 'GAY VOICE'
• SPEECH ATIC FEATUR: A COMPARISON OF GAY MEN, HETEROSEXUAL MEN, AND HETEROSEXUAL WOMEN
• GAY OR STRAIGHT? HIS SPEECH MAY GIVE A HT
• WHY DO SOME GAY PEOPLE SEEM TO TALK DIFFERENTLY?
• THE FOTTEN SECRET LANGUAGE OF GAY MEN
• DO YOU SOUND GAY? WHAT OUR VOIC TELL – AND WHAT THEY DON’T
• WHAT MEANS TO ‘SOUND GAY’
• GAY STEREOTYP: ARE THEY TE?
• 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.

”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.

WHY DO *SOME* GAY GUYS SPEAK DIFFERENTLY?

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. “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. 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.

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

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. Keywords: Speech, Voice, Atics, Sexual orientatn, Ttosterone levels, Genr atypilyIntroductnThe genr atypily hypothis suggts that genr atypil tras homosexuals uld be ed as cu to dite sexual orientatn.

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).

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

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).

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.

GAY OR STRAIGHT? HIS SPEECH MAY GIVE A HT

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. 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.

WHY DO SOME GAY PEOPLE SEEM TO TALK DIFFERENTLY?

We vtigated the effect of sexual orientatn on four sexually dimorphic atic parameters (F0, F0-SD, jter, and HNR) and examed whether homosexual men’s vol characteristics showed a femizatn by parg theirs wh that of heterosexual women. 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.

Then, to asss if homosexual men displayed vol featur wh valu shifted toward those of heterosexual women, post hoc analys (Tey HSD tts) were performed to pare which tegory (i. 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).

THE FOTTEN SECRET LANGUAGE OF GAY MEN

LDA attempts to mol whether a set of variabl (here F0, F0-SD, Jter, and HNR) is effective predictg tegory membership (here heterosexual men, homosexual men, and heterosexual women). 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.

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

Vertil solid l reprent the mean of each group (NHeterosexual men = 48; NHomosexual men = 58, Nwomen = 54)DiscsnThis study offers an tertg take on the teractn between sexual orientatn and atic featur of speech a French speaker sample. Sendly, our fdgs showed that French homosexual men displayed a more modulated and ls breathy voice than French heterosexual men, th supportg and extendg prev studi nducted mostly wh English speakers. 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).

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). 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.

Although our study do not aim to provi an explanatn for why vol differenc were found between homosexual and heterosexual men, several blogil and social mechanisms n be voked.

WHAT MEANS TO ‘SOUND GAY’

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). Several studi have th tted whether the 2D:4D rat (relative length of the send and fourth digs), a proxy of ttosterone prenatal exposure differs between homosexual and heterosexual men (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).

Regardg social mechanisms, a social imatn of women’s speech peculiari by homosexual men uld also expla the differenc observed between homosexual and heterosexual men’s speech characteristics (at least for F0-SD and HNR).

The e of more feme atic characteristics by homosexual men uld reflect a selective adoptn mol of oppose-sex speech patterns or a selective e of atic featur for signalg -group inty (Pierrehumbert et al., 2004), an abily lled “gaydar” (i.

GAY STEREOTYP: ARE THEY TE?

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. 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. Further studi are need to tt whether tonatn and vol breaths are perceptually salient to distguish homosexual and heterosexual men, and whether overall differenc are due to blogil and/or soclguistic reasons.

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. “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.

IS THERE A “GAY VOICE”?

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. 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. Frankly, I thk the reason certa people general, not jt homosexuals, speak like that is some sort of attempt to sound eher feme, dramatic, or they're jt actg slightly stupid, pretent, and "snooty".