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

Contents:

• IS THERE A “GAY VOICE”?
• GAY VOICE: STABLE MARKER OF SEXUAL ORIENTATN OR FLEXIBLE COMMUNITN DEVICE?
• WHAT'S THE LK BETWEEN HOMOSEXUALY AND HAVG A 'GAY VOICE'
• GAY VOICE: IS NATURAL OR AN AFFECTATN?
• DAVID THORPE AND DAN SAVAGE HAVE A LOT TO SAY ABOUT THE “GAY VOICE”
• WHY IS "GAY VOICE" SO PREVALENT AND YET "LBIAN VOICE" IS MORE OR LS NONEXISTENT?
• WHAT MEANS TO ‘SOUND GAY’

IS THERE A “GAY VOICE”?

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. In Study 1 (n = 20 speakers, n = 383 Italian listeners and n = 373 Brish listeners), g a simulated nversatn paradigm, we found that gay speakers modulated their voic pendg on the terlocutor, soundg more gay when speakg to a person wh whom they have had an easy (vs. Combg experimental and archival methods, this rearch suggts that gay speakers modulate their voic flexibly pendg on their relatn wh the terlocutor and as a nsequence of their public g out.

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.

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

”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.

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. Lbians sometim have a eper timbre to their voice, which also might be a put on, but don't reach the levels the really femme-y gay guys reach wh their weird ltle girl voic and teenage Anonymoreply 1July 28, 2019 11:23 PM.

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

Gayvoice is both natural and an affectatn and I'm pretty surprised that we are batg 've all known the "sissy boy" who everyone knew was gay om birth, the one who sound "gay" back we all know the guy who sound jt like everyone else, me out, and startg swishg and mpg and dog his bt RuPl until beme how he neher stance is attractive, although wh the former example 's somehow fivable as he had no Anonymoreply 7July 29, 2019 12:07 AM. Agreed R9, and 's got to be very tough for those who are born wh and also, well, there's no other way to put , look the 's like beg black or Asian--they're never not gay, 's always a subtext every teractn they have, no matter how Anonymoreply 10July 29, 2019 12:17 AM.

Bee if you're a gay guy, or even a straight man or woman who has ever had iends, I am fdg really hard to believe that you have never known anyone who spoke like every other guy.. )So why is 2019 if you were to ask someone to name gay characters on TV, they would sp back nothg but over the top femm-- Jack om W&G, the two gay guys om Morn Fay, the Queer Eye guys, the RuPl Anonymoreply 26July 29, 2019 1:30 AM.

GAY VOICE: IS NATURAL OR AN AFFECTATN?

R23 also claims not to know anyone who has ever nscly affected gay voice, so I would take their opns wh a entire shaker of salt R29by Anonymoreply 29July 29, 2019 1:50 AM.

And given that most parents are hetero and want hetero kids like themselv - this uld spell a crease the births of gay people (eher via -utero hormone manipulatn or simply by abortn) Ts are the subject of a very different theory currently. If the above theory had applied to them, then unlike gays might have actually BENEFITTED them to have such diagnostics and early -utero hormone treatment to prevent any suicidal dysphoria. Where would a boy growg up a pletely heterosexual world, whout exposure to any openly gay men the media or real life – which is how most of grew up until very recently – learn a gay voice?

I do thk, whatever their origs, the gay voice or gay accent and mannerisms are rerced when gay men get together, which is the same thg that happens when people wh the same regnal accent get together. I remember one guy who talked perfectly normally a one on one suatn, but if we went to a big gay pool party, his voice went up an octave and purs started flyg out. I don’t know the answer to OP’s qutn, but I will say this: there were far fewer people wh gay voice the ‘50s and ‘60s when was effectively totally unacceptable to be of that what you Anonymoreply 62July 29, 2019 4:17 PM.

DAVID THORPE AND DAN SAVAGE HAVE A LOT TO SAY ABOUT THE “GAY VOICE”

The only straight man I knew wh gay voice spent a lot of time around flamboyant gay men (he was an artist, and went to art school) Anonymoreply 73July 30, 2019 1:25 AM. We were seated a crowd rtrant at the Interntental Hotel Toronto and, after we all got over our excement that Jennifer Connelly and Pl Bettany were stg behd (at least we thought was them), we talked about what means to “sound gay, ” the e of the gay voice kids movi, and one particularly ntent Louis C.

I broke up wh a boyiend, I had no nfince and I was on this trip to Fire Island that I should have been exced about, but stead of beg exced, all I uld thk about was how much I hated the voic of the chatterg gay men around me. That felt like a real low pot for me, bee I fought so hard to e out and embrace beg gay, and I've really fought hard for the gay muny as an LGBTQ and AIDS activist, and advocy journalist. It's bee a lot of straight people want to live a world where they don't have to see gay people, and hearg a gay person means seeg that person as a gay person.

What you're sayg is you want to live a world where you don't have to hear or see the gay thg, and what spoke to me about the film and why I said y when David asked me to be terviewed—my only ntributn is nng my mouth ont of a mera, this is David's film—is I like the gay voice. One of the thgs that a lot of gay people aren't fortable acknowledgg, not for all of , but for many of —and you terviewed that very sort of hetero-normative, straight guy wh the butch voice—is that, for a lot of , we're kd of a mix of mascule and feme quali and tras, and I fd that mix and that tensn, really hot.

WHY IS "GAY VOICE" SO PREVALENT AND YET "LBIAN VOICE" IS MORE OR LS NONEXISTENT?

Straight is an act and an affectatn when you're gay and, when you were stg that voice ach's lobby and you saw all the photos of the stars she's worked wh, you said, “I feel like I'm learng how to act. For me, the gay voice is a real issue, but 's also a symbol of how anythg that mak you nspicuo n make you a target and how you have to fight for that, and fight to own . It's really mascule to sound [gay], to be yourself, to be ballsy, to be gay, to be out…to own your gay voice and shove to other people's fac, other gay people's fac.

It was shockg to me to see all the rtoon villas who I grew up watchg—Jaffar om Aladd, Sr om The Ln Kg—beg ed to tell me that a gay voice equals bad and, therefore, gay equals bad.

WHAT MEANS TO ‘SOUND GAY’

The Ln Kg is gog to be on Broadway We don't need to eradite the gay stereotypil voice om film or TV, bee some gay people sound like that, some gay kids sound like that. So the gay villa needs to be Disney feel guilty about The Ln Kg and Aladd, but let them make a movie where that voice is the mouth of somebody who is a hero and not tryg to kill the is the gay voice portrayed on our film and TV now? So I thk some ways, we're havg a ltle b of a renaissance of soundg I thk what's rmg that is that so many gay people who are out now are well tegrated to the culture and on their own terms.

Y, there's the ocsnal lbian who sounds like a man, but most sound like women and there's nothg all that distctive their voic that cu even the most cluels straight person that they're voice, OTOH, is very prevalent and many gay men claim they nnot lose see children too--there are six year old boys who you know are gog to wd up gay jt by hearg them speak. I n be attracted to a gay male who's dly effemate but my more ial type is a guy who looks and sounds straight but NOT Macho or drippg wh masculy but jt a slim, slightly mpled, good lookg Anonymoreply 5October 25, 2021 6:40 PM. You would be the distct mory then, R7Or more fely attuned to cluels straight people pick up on gay that gay voice is supposed to be men imatg adults their liv they look up to (women) why wouldn't lbians do the same wh men?

Very few straight men have "gay voice"• siarly, the percentage of lbians who speak like that is far smaller than the percentage of gay men wh gay voiceby Anonymoreply 13October 26, 2021 12:00 AM.