The Gay Voice - Universy of Toronto Magaze

Contents:

• WHAT MEANS TO ‘SOUND GAY’
• HERE'S WHAT FLORIDA'S 'DON'T SAY GAY' BILL WOULD DO AND WHAT WOULDN'T DO
• FLORIDA'S ERNOR SIGNS NTROVERSIAL LAW OPPONENTS DUBBED 'DON'T SAY GAY'
• HOW MANY WAYS N PEOPLE SAY "GAY" WHOUT SAYG "GAY"?
• ‘I AM GAY – BUT I WASN’T BORN THIS WAY’
• HOW TO SAY GAY DIFFERENT LANGUAG
• CALL ME BY MY PRONOUNS: WHY GAY MEN CALL EACH OTHER "GIRL"
• WHY ARE PEOPLE GAY? GAY BY CHOICE OR IS BEG GAY GEIC?
• SCIENTISTS MAY HAVE FALLY UNLOCKED PUZZLE OF WHY PEOPLE ARE GAY
• THE GAY VOICE
• 34 OF THE BT RPONS WHEN SOMEONE ASSUM AND CALLS YOU GAY

WHAT MEANS TO ‘SOUND GAY’

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.

HERE'S WHAT FLORIDA'S 'DON'T SAY GAY' BILL WOULD DO AND WHAT WOULDN'T DO

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.

FLORIDA'S ERNOR SIGNS NTROVERSIAL LAW OPPONENTS DUBBED 'DON'T SAY GAY'

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. 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.

HOW MANY WAYS N PEOPLE SAY "GAY" WHOUT SAYG "GAY"?

“As speakers of a language, we have lots of eedom how we pronounce sounds … People explo that variatn to create different social meangs, " he those who are proud n still feel stigma“Do I Sound Gay? ” 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. But Florida’s Parental Rights Edutn act — which crics have dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill — has sudnly sparked a natnal war of recent weeks, lears of global rporatns, edorial boards of major newspapers and Hollywood actors have all weighed on the proposed legislatn, wh some llg “eply disturbg” and others “nonntroversial.

‘I AM GAY – BUT I WASN’T BORN THIS WAY’

The bill, which passed Florida’s Senate last week and the state’s Hoe of Reprentativ Febary, do, however, nta the terms “sexual orientatn” and “genr inty, ” each legal experts say that whether the bill prohibs the word “gay” self is a “distractn.

HOW TO SAY GAY DIFFERENT LANGUAG

”Beyond brandg, a re argument over the bill centers around whether would prohib the “stctn” or “discsn” of sexual bill’s sponsors have emphatilly stated that the bill would not prohib stunts om talkg about their LGBTQ fai or bar classroom discsns about LGBTQ history, cludg events like the 2016 adly attack on the Pulse nightclub, a gay club Orlando. The followg is a list of LGBT-related slurs that are, or have been, ed as suatns or allegatns about lbian, gay, bisexual, or transgenr and non-bary people, or to refer to them a rogatory (that is, cril), pejorative (disapprovg or ntemptuo), or otherwise sultg manner. You so obvly nnot be gay, was her implitn, bee this is good was 2006, a full five years before Lady Gaga would set the Born This Way argument atop s unassailable cultural perch, but even then the popular unrstandg of orientatn was that was somethg you were born wh, somethg you uldn’t change.

But what feels most accurate to say is that I’m gay – but I wasn’t born this people may fd their sir changg directn - and n't jt be explaed as experimentatn (Cred: Ignac Lehmann)In 1977, jt over 10% of Amerins thought gayns was somethg you were born wh, acrdg to Gallup. Throughout the same perd, the number of Amerins who believe homosexualy is “due to someone’s upbrgg/environment” fell om jt unr 60% to ias reached cril mass pop culture, first wh Lady Gaga’s 2011 Born This Way and one year later wh Macklemore’s Same Love, the chos of which has a gay person sgg “I n’t change even if I tried, even if I wanted to.

” Around the same time, the Human Rights Campaign clared unequivolly that “Beg gay is not a choice, ” and to claim that is “giv unwarranted crence to roundly disproven practic such as nversn or reparative therapy.

CALL ME BY MY PRONOUNS: WHY GAY MEN CALL EACH OTHER "GIRL"

”People who challenge the Born This Way narrative are often st as homophobic, and their thkg is nsired backwardAs Jane Ward not Not Gay: Sex Between Straight Whe Men, what’s tertg about many of the claims is how transparent their speakers are wh their polil motivatns. “Such statements, ” she wr, “fe blogil acunts wh an obligatory and nearly ercive force, suggtg that anyone who scrib homosexual sire as a choice or social nstctn is playg to the hands of the enemy. ” People who challenge the Born This Way narrative are often st as homophobic, and their thkg is nsired backward – even if they are themselv, for example, Cynthia Nixon of Sex and The Cy fame.

”Gay rights do not have to hge on a geic explanatn for sexualy (Cred: Ignac Lehmann)For Aravosis, and many gay activists like him, the public will only accept and affirm gay people if they thk they were born gay. In fact, the homophobic and non-homophobic rponnts he studied shared siar levels of belief a Born This Way Samantha Allen not at The Daily Beast, the growg public support for gays and lbians has grown out of proportn wh the rise the number of people who believe homosexualy is fixed at birth; would be unlikely that this small change opn uld expla the spike support for gay marriage, for stance.

WHY ARE PEOPLE GAY? GAY BY CHOICE OR IS BEG GAY GEIC?

“It don’t seem to matter as much whether or not people believe that gay people are born that way as do that they simply know someone who is currently gay, ” Allen spe of the studi, those who ph agast Born This Way narrativ have been heavily cricised by gay activists. Siarly, Ward has received her own hatemail for phg agast the lg LGB narrativ, wh some gays tellg her she’s “worse than Ann Coulter, ” the ntroversial US thor of books like If Democrats Had Any Bras, They’d Be Republins. There is a unanimo opn that gay “nversn therapy” should be rejectedLet’s first be clear that whatever the origs of our sexual orientatn, there is a unanimo opn that gay “nversn therapy” should be rejected.

The efforts are potentially harmful, acrdg to the APA, “bee they prent the view that the sexual orientatn of lbian, gay and bisexual youth is a mental illns of disorr, and they often ame the abily to change one’s sexual orientatn as a personal and moral failure. The APA, for example, while notg that most people experience ltle to no choice over their orientatns, says this of homosexualy’s origs:“Although much rearch has examed the possible geic, hormonal, velopmental, social and cultural fluenc on sexual orientatn, no fdgs have emerged that perm scientists to nclu that sexual orientatn is termed by any particular factor or factors. ”Siarly, the Amerin Psychiatric Associatn wr a 2013 statement that while the of heterosexualy and homosexualy are currently unknown, they are likely “multifactorial cludg blogil and behavral roots which may vary between different dividuals and may even vary over time.

” Acrdg to LeVay’s rearch, a specific part of the bra, the third terstial nucls of the anterr hypothalam (INAH-3), is smaller homosexual men than is heterosexual as they might, scientists have stggled to inty any particular gen that nsistently predict the directns of our love and sire (Cred: Ignac Lehmann)Read moreYou n spot the problem wh this study a e away: were the gay bras LeVay studied born that way, or did they bee that way? Bis the dividual criqu leveled agast each new study announcg some gay gene disvery, there are major methodologil cricisms to make about the entire enterprise general, as Grzanka pots out: “If we look at the raveno pursu, particularly among Amerin scientists, to fd a gay gene, what we see is that the ncln has already been arrived at.

SCIENTISTS MAY HAVE FALLY UNLOCKED PUZZLE OF WHY PEOPLE ARE GAY

” Our sir may exprs themselv many different ways that do not all nform to existg notns of ‘gay’, ‘straight’ or ‘bisexual’ is one of the bt takeaways of Ward’s Not Gay, a peratg analysis of sex between straight whe men. ”Gay or not, our sir are oriented and re-oriented throughout our liv (Cred: Ignac Lehmann)In fact, the straight-intified men Ward studied for her book sometim found themselv suatns that sparked the sire for homosexual sex: aterni, ployments, public rtrooms, etc.

I’m claimg that at some pot durg llege, my sexual and romantic sir beme reoriented toward menThkg back to my llege romanc wh women and men, I n beg to unrstand how my own experienc might have helped me to ‘cultivate’ my sire for homosexualy.

THE GAY VOICE

I want to be very clear: I’m not claimg I simply began to ‘grow to’ my homosexualy, or that as I beme more fortable wh beg gay, I allowed myself the eedom to exprs what had always been latent wh me. “Limg our unrstandg of any plex human experience is always gog to be worse than allowg to be plited, ” he gay rights activists pared sexualy to relign - a ccial part of our life that we should be ee to practise however we like (Cred: Ignac Lehamann)So what are we to do wh the Born This Way rhetoric? ”Acrdg to surveys, ls than half of Generatn Z intify as "100% heterosexual", suggtg more and more people have embraced their sexual fluidy (Cred: Ignac Lehmann)Perhaps is time to look to the begng of the gay rights movement.

I’m thankful for a new generatn that is pable of imagg sexualy a way that transcends the gay/straight bary, that uldn’t re ls about what happened to their bodi and mds to make them who they are today. We also ve you to listen to d pronunciatn more than 40 languag, so you uld learn how to pronounce gay and how to read gay European LanguagSayg gay Asian LanguagSayg gay Middle-Eastern LanguagSayg gay Ain LanguagSayg gay Atronian LanguagSayg gay Other Foreign LanguagabcfghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzSayg Gay European LanguagLanguageWays to say gayAlbanianhomoseksualBasquegayBelasianгейBosniangayBulgarianгейCatalangaiCorsingayCroatiangayCzechGayDanishhomoseksuelDutchhomoEstoniangeiFnishhomoFrenchhomosexuelFrisiangayGaliciangaiGermanFröhlichGreekομοφυλόφιλοςHungarianmelegIcelandicHommiIrishaerachItaliangayLatviangejsLhuaniangėjLuxembourgishhomosexuellMacedonianгејMalteomosswaliNorwegianhomofilPolishWołyPortugueGayRomaniangayRsianгей. [hey]WelshhoywYiddishפריילעךSayg Gay Asian LanguagLanguageWays to say gayArmenianգեյAzerbaijanigeyBengaliসমকামীChe Simplified同性恋Che Tradnal同性戀GeianგეიGujaratiગેHdiसमलैंगिकHmonggayJapaneゲイKannadaಸಲಿಂಗಕಾಮಿKazakhГейKhmerខ្ទើយKorean게이.

[mhli aljs]HebrewהומוKurdish (Kurmanji)gayPersianهمجنس گراSayg Gay Ain LanguagLanguageWays to say gayAikaansgayAmharicግብረ ሰዶማዊChichewagayHsaɗan luwaɗiIgbonwoke nwere mmasị nwokeKyarwandaabaryamana bahuje ibsaSothomosodomaShonangochaniSomalikhaniisSwahilishogaXhosagayYobaonibajeZulugaySayg Gay Atronian LanguagLanguageWays to say gayCebuanobayotFilipobaklaHawaiiankāne kāne kāneIndonianGayJavanegayMalagasypelakaMalaygayMaorakatāpuiSamoangaySundanehomoSayg Gay Other Foreign LanguagLanguageWays to say gayEsperantogejaHaian CreolemasisiLatgayDictnary Entri near gaygntletgzegavelgaygazegazellegearCe this Entry"Gay Different Languag.

34 OF THE BT RPONS WHEN SOMEONE ASSUM AND CALLS YOU GAY

Creatg a shared culture — cludg language — around femy n be a way of reclaimg the bas for opprsn many gay men have experienced, as well as disptg the harmful genr few if any lguistic practic are all one thg, all the time. It may be time to reevaluate cis gay men’s e of words like "she" and "girl" to make sure they align wh ongog efforts to rpect nonbary genr inti, and avoid makg assumptns about people’s pronouns.

It’s not a recent formatn at all, ” explas William Leap, an emer profsor of anthropology at Amerin Universy and pneerg expert on queer men llg each other "she" or "girl" was historilly a way of protectg themselv as well as buildg muny the ntext of homophobic and vlent mastream culture. ”Consirg misogyny wh gay men’s language practic rais the qutn of how g words like “girl” or “honey” is nnected to their e of other, more ntroversial words that have historilly been ed to mean women, such as “bch” and “cunt. ”“Gay men are a large group of people wh a lot of different kds of relatnships to genr, and I thk there are absolutely gay men who operate relatn to feme language that really is a reflectn of their male privilege, whether ’s through g ways that nigrate or stereotype women, or whether ’s jt feelg license to e the language how they see f, ” says Zimman, the lguist om UC Santa Barbara.

Paris Is Burng, the 1990 documentary on Harlem’s drag ball scene, as well as Drag Race, have brought the e of words like "she" and "girl" between Black and Latx drag queens to a wir gay (and straight) dience; today this is somethg employed by gay men of all rac.