Filmmaker And Speech Pathologist Weigh In On What It Means To 'Sound Gay' : NPR

Contents:

• THE GAY VOICE
• WHY IS IT THAT MANY GAY MAL SOUND DIFFERENT OM OTHER MAL?
• WHAT'S THE LK BETWEEN HOMOSEXUALY AND HAVG A 'GAY VOICE'
• THIS IS WHY SOME MEN ‘SOUND GAY’ – EVEN IF THEY’RE NOT
• WHY DO GAY MEN SOUND…GAY? 
• WHY DO GAY MEN SOUND LIKE ~THAT~?
• DO YOU SOUND GAY? WHAT OUR VOIC TELL – AND WHAT THEY DON’T
• WHAT MEANS TO ‘SOUND GAY’
• WHY DO SOME GAY PEOPLE SEEM TO TALK DIFFERENTLY?
• FILMMAKER AND SPEECH PATHOLOGIST WEIGH IN ON WHAT IT MEANS TO 'SOUND GAY'
• SPEECH ATIC FEATUR: A COMPARISON OF GAY MEN, HETEROSEXUAL MEN, AND HETEROSEXUAL WOMEN

THE GAY VOICE

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. The purpose of IP for gays or anyone is to exalt their inty, blow up all the great thgs about themselv and play down or ually to flat out lie about all of the bad thgs about the group.

As gay men are only 3% of all men, and 75% of sissy boys grow up gay, you n see that sissy boy backgrounds are credibly more likely among gay men than among straight men. However a gay man I know said he has followed the married flamers over a perd of time rangg om 5–20 years, and he said that all of the married flamers had e out as gay and left their wiv and kids durg that time ame.

However, the graphs will look dramatilly different when we plot them out, and effemate men will be dramatilly more mon among gay men, and hypermascule men will be profoundly more mon among straight men. 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.

WHY IS IT THAT MANY GAY MAL SOUND DIFFERENT OM OTHER MAL?

”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'

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.

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

Can we be hont and say that the majory (even if ’s not an overwhelmg majory) of gay men are effemate and a huge portn of gay men talk wh a lisp or wh a certa type of gay accent. Whenever televisn shows or other forms of live actn media needs to let the dienc know a character is gay, what mol is prented; a mpy, effemate, sassy, fashnably trendy gay man who talks wh lispy dictns or gay twangs. Before I ntue and hopefully before emotnal knee jerk reactns beg to fire off verbal shots of ternalized homophobia, effemophobia and patriarchal mascule standards, unrstand I’m no way sayg the typ of gay men need to adjt and change to make me or anyone else feel fortable.

WHY DO GAY MEN SOUND…GAY? 

Whether ’s bee of their environment, social circl or nsumptn of the gay cultural archetyp prented, many gay men bee doctrated to gay mastream life, which clus language, slang and gay lisps. If you look at and listen to many gay men om around the world (regardls of race, ethnicy, relign or culture), a tremendo amount of them talk wh a lisp or “gay speak. 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.

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. 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.

WHY DO GAY MEN SOUND LIKE ~THAT~?

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.

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

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? 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.

WHAT MEANS TO ‘SOUND GAY’

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.

WHY DO SOME GAY PEOPLE SEEM TO TALK DIFFERENTLY?

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.

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.

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. 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.

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

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

"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. 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.