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What the way we talk says about gay pri and lgerg prejudice

Contents:

IS THERE A “GAY VOICE”?

Michael Schulman on “Do I Sound Gay?,” a documentary by David Thorpe that explor how vol nc are associated wh sexualy. * gay man speaking *

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. 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.

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.

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

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. * gay man speaking *

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. “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. In his current rearch, Leap is lookg at Harleme, the language of the Harlem Renaissance, where he c a rich and dynamic queer prence and a manner of speakg that, while beg not exclively queer, has fluenced both gay and mastream language to this day.

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

From Regency England to 1920s Harlem to Miss Piggy, gay vernacular has given voice to homosexual inty and sire a hostile world. In some parts, still do. * gay man speaking *

Around the same time, Bra, Polari, what scholars ll an anti-language, was at s peak among gay men, but the jargon would be pletely unregnizable to most English speakers today. In the early 1990s, Baker stumbled upon Polari while lookg for a this topic and soon found himself a gay-n hotel Brighton where the nkeepers relled some phraseology. She-g appears almost universally and across centuri gay language, om Pe to the Philipp to South Ai (where gay slang is lled Gayle), to Israel (lled oxtch, rived om an Arabic word meang "my sister"), to Soviet-era Rsia.

But Put's Rsia, where the environment remas extremely hostile for LGBT people, the webse, acrdg to a paper by rearcher Stephan Nance, lists a urse on how to speak prent-day Rsian gay, a slang lled goluboy -- om a word related to the bluish lor of a dove -- prumably to help gay Rsians intify one another. ") Denis Provencher, partment head of French and Italian at the Universy of Arizona, has yet to intify a siar argot as Polari or rearch to gay-specific slang French, where disurse, typil French fashn, operat as more waltz than stri.

WHAT DO IT MEAN TO BE A GAY MAN?

We might thk we know what a gay person sounds like. But there are veats to the cliche — and ‘voice-shamg’ tells a lot more about our culture than do about the person speakg * gay man speaking *

" While vobulary might be the most fun part of lavenr lguistics for the layperson, scholars are ncerned wh aspects such as tone, flectn, and gturg, as well as the polil and cultural implitns of language -- how the prs wre about LGBT issu, for example, or how queer people munite wh each other privately and at work, or how gay language is learned. And y, the stretchg out of “sibilant” nsonants such as s and z (image Kenh Williams sayg “She sells sea shells on the sea shore” and you’re sort of there) what about gay women?

GAY OR STRAIGHT? HIS SPEECH MAY GIVE A HT

* gay man speaking *

There are a few theori knockg around as to why this might be: Arnold Zwicky, his mply tled 1994 paper Two Lavenr Issu for Lguists, suggts that: “For many lbians, what is most important is intifitn wh the muny of women – while for many gay men, what is most important is distancg themselv om straight men. Third: this style of speakg isn’t simply an importatn of “feme” quali to male speech, although that appears to be what a lot of people, we’re still left wh the qutn of why a gay male voice might emerge. When dis, a subversive dance movement that spoke to black people and women and gays, broke through, was vilified by mastream rock lovers for beg ksch and plastic.

As every gay man knows who has been sulted or asslted for his actual or perceived sexual orientatn, there are steep penalti for vlatg the Boy Co as there are for anyone who is “different” om the prumed (typilly whe, heterosexual, middle-class) standard.

THE GAY VOICE

In Do I Sound Gay?, director David Thorpe search for the orig of the so-lled "gay voice" and documents his own attempts (wh speech pathologist San Sank) to sound "ls gay." * gay man speaking *

How do a gay kid survive the trma he suffers for beg different a culture that still nmns his difference as somethg bad or “ls-than” and wants to mold him to the same shape tri to mold every boy? Robert Pollack says the most important thg a fay n do to support their gay son is to keep lovg him, “to nvey to him, as soon as he shar his feelgs, that he is still loved through and through, that his sexual orientatn will not any way dimish how much he is admired and rpected. Fortunately there is a long history of gay men who bucked the accepted fns of masculy and created liv that exprsed their unrstandg of themselv and how they choose to exprs their inty as men who don’t necsarily f tradnal molds.

The late Harry Hay often lled "the father of the morn gay movement, " found the Mattache Society Los Angel the fall of 1950 for gay men to gather and ponr the qutns Hay had long been askg: Who are gay people? Hay didn’t tend the Mattach to be a polil anizatn per se, but a group that would e together to enhance their self-unrstandg and explore the ntributns gay people had ma to the human race through the ag.

WHAT MEANS TO ‘SOUND GAY’

If you are an ally of the LGBT+ muny, you may be ncerned about behavg a way that supports that attu. If you stggle to accept gay people, you may not be sure how to talk to them whout brgg up your own beliefs.... * gay man speaking *

In a 1987 say tled “A Separate People Whose Time Has Come, ” Hay scribed homosexuals as “spir people, ” who, throughout the ag, had served society their rol as “msengers and tercers, shamans of both genrs, prits and prits, imagemakers and prophets, mim and rhapsos, poets and playwrights, healers and nurturers, teachers and preachers, tkers and tkerers, searchers and rearchers.

Hay believed that gay people had somethg special to teach nongay people about human life, and for that reason should be nurtured, rather than reviled, by society. He said gay men look at the world differently, are uniquely nonaggrsive, nonpetive, oriented toward sharg and cled to velop what Hay lled “subject-subject” love relatnships of equals. 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.

POLARI: THE LANGUAGE GAY MEN ED TO SURVIVE

Kev Maxen has bee the first male ach a US men’s profsnal sports league to e out as gay. * gay man speaking *

" 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. 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.

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. 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.

WHY DO GAY MEN SOUND LIKE ~THAT~?

The strategist behd the 1963 march will posthumoly receive the Printial Medal of Freedom this year. As a gay man, his posn the movement was qutned. But now he is nsired "an amazg role mol" for activists of lor who are also gay, lbian, bisexual or transgenr. * gay man speaking *

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.

FILMMAKER AND SPEECH PATHOLOGIST WEIGH IN ON WHAT IT MEANS TO 'SOUND GAY'

The Bible vers aren't about nmng homosexuals, gays, lbians, or transgenr people. Rather, read God's lovg warng and grace for those who have strayed om His will for sex * gay man speaking *

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.

Benjam Munson, who studi language and speech at the Universy of Mnota, found one study that gay men did e a slightly different pronunciatn than straight men. 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.

“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.

THE FOTTEN SECRET LANGUAGE OF GAY MEN

Unrstand health ncerns for gay men and other men who have sex wh men, and learn how to promote good health. * gay man speaking *

” 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. He pots to Hollywood's proment “gaylebri, ” like Jse Tyler Fergon and Neil Patrick Harris, and young gay YouTube stars like Tyler Oakley, Kgsley and Lohanthony. "We are pneers our time changg societal perceptn of what means to be gay, ” Gee Takei, who played Sulu "Star Trek, " says the homophobia still affects Hollywood.

HOW TO GET A MAN (FOR GAY MEN)

Many actors work to make their voic sound mascule: In the film, Bob Corff, a Hollywood voice ach who Thorpe viss, says 20 to 50 people a year e to him to sound "ls gay.

GLAAD prefers that we don’t e the term homosexual bee ’s “aggrsively ed by anti-gay extremists to suggt that gay people are somehow diseased or psychologilly/emotnally disorred. ”That may seem like a strg of nonsense words om Dr Sss’s The Cat the Hat or Anthony Burgs’s A Clockwork Orange but ’s a real-life greetg gay men the UK would say to each other the 1950s and 60s.

HOW TO TALK WH A GAY OR LBIAN PERSON

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.

GAY VOICE: STABLE MARKER OF SEXUAL ORIENTATN OR FLEXIBLE COMMUNITN DEVICE?

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. 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.

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. 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.

KEV MAXEN BE FIRST MALE ACH A US MEN’S PROFSNAL SPORTS LEAGUE TO PUBLICLY E OUT AS GAY

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.

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. " In his new film, Do I Sound Gay?, Thorpe search for the orig of that stereotype and documents his own attempts to sound "ls gay" by workg wh speech pathologist San Sank. At the same time, I totally get that when I me out, I wanted to be regnized as gay; I wanted the world to know I was gay and I wanted to f to this existg muny, so I thk my voice really did change after I me out.

WHAT 'EFFEMATE' SPEECH PATTERNS GAY MEN?

On Thorpe's gay iends also stgglg to accept their voic Thorpe: One of the revelatns of makg this film was that this is somethg that had always bothered me and every time, basilly, I talk to a gay man I would fd out that he also had eher spent a lot of time thkg about his voice or ed to be self-nsc about his voice or still felt self-nsc about his voice.

THE INSURGENCY NEWS BLASTSUBSCRIBESIGN {"@NTEXT":","@TYPE":"NEWSARTICLE","URL":","MAENTYOFPAGE":","HEADLE":"GAY MAN WH A \U2018HBAND\U2019 SCHLED TO SPEAK WH ANDY STANLEY AT HIS CHURCH\U2019S FAY CONFERENCE","SCRIPTN":"STAFF WRER NEXT FALL, NORTH POT COMMUNY CHURCH IS HOSTG THE UNNVENTNAL CONFERENCE, WHERE ANDY STANLEY WILL BE A KEYNOTE SPEAKER. THE NFERENCE IS BEG PUT ON BY EMBRACG THE JOURNEY, A RADIL GAY-AFFIRMG MISTRY THAT PARTNERS WH NORTH POT AND OFFERS TO UNSEL PARENTS OF STGGLG LGBTQ+ CHILDREN, ALL THE WHILE TELLG THEM THAT THEIR CHILD NNOT CHANGE AND THEY NEED TO STOP TRYG TO.","IMAGE":[{"@TYPE":"IMAGEOBJECT","URL":"}],"DATEPUBLISHED":"2023-02-06T13:42:14+00:00","DATEMODIFIED":"2023-02-06T13:42:14+00:00","ISACCSIBLEFORFREE":TE,"THOR":[{"@TYPE":"PERSON","NAME":"GREG SMH","URL":","SCRIPTN":"HELLO?","INTIFIER":"ER:25312888","IMAGE":{"@TYPE":"IMAGEOBJECT","NTENTURL":","THUMBNAILURL":"}}],"PUBLISHER":{"@TYPE":"ORGANIZATN","NAME":"THE INSURGENCY NEWS BLAST","URL":","SCRIPTN":"DON'T LET BIG TECH'S CENSORSHIP W. OUR EMAIL NEWSLETTER WILL SEND POLILLY RRECT BUT TTHFUL NEWS DIRECTLY TO YOUR EMAIL BOX MONDAY THROUGH SATURDAY. ","TERACTNSTATISTIC":{"@TYPE":"INTERACTNCOUNTER","NAME":"SUBSCRIBERS","TERACTNTYPE":","ERINTERACTNCOUNT":10000},"INTIFIER":"PUB:265382","LOGO":{"@TYPE":"IMAGEOBJECT","URL":","NTENTURL":","THUMBNAILURL":"},"IMAGE":{"@TYPE":"IMAGEOBJECT","URL":","NTENTURL":","THUMBNAILURL":"}}}SHARE THIS POSTGAY MAN WH A ‘HBAND’ SCHLED TO SPEAK WH ANDY STANLEY AT HIS CHURCH’S FAY COPY LKFACEBOOKEMAILNOTOTHERGAY MAN WH A ‘HBAND’ SCHLED TO SPEAK WH ANDY STANLEY AT HIS CHURCH’S FAY CONFERENCE

Vada (“look at”), dolly eek (a pretty face), and chicken (a young guy) are all words om the lexin of Polari, a secret language ed by gay men Bra at a time when homosexualy was illegal. In England, homosexualy was officially nsired a crime until 1967, when the Sexual Offenc Act legalized private “homosexual acts” between nsentg adults over 21. Durg the terim years, when beg openly non-straight brought the risks of social isolatn and crimal prosecutn, Polari provid gay men wh a subtle way to fd one another for pannship and sex.

The Hidn History of Gay Life at Sea, Pl Baker and Jo Stanley wre that Polari played a role “allowg gay men to nstct a humoroly performative inty for themselv.

*BEAR-MAGAZINE.COM* GAY MAN SPEAKING

Gay or straight? His speech may give a ht .

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