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
Contents:
- ‘WHO SOUNDS GAY?’
- WHAT DO IT MEAN TO SOUND GAY?
- DO YOU SOUND GAY? WHAT OUR VOIC TELL – AND WHAT THEY DON’T
‘WHO SOUNDS GAY?’
This short documentary explor the reasons that some men sound stereotypilly gay, whether they are or not. * sounds gay im in origin *
Tle: Who Sounds “Gay“? Summary: This short documentary explor one theory of why some people sound stereotypilly “gay. I’ve always wonred why some men sound gay and others don’t.
To me Kris sounds gay and Matt sounds straight. The cleart most lady-like gay one. And ’s not so much that a kid who is gog to be gay later life is gog to say I want to sound like a woman, so much as a kid is intifyg here is a particular speaker, and here is a particular of that person’s speech that ptur what I fd so engagg about them and I’m gog to emulate that.
WHAT DO IT MEAN TO SOUND GAY?
People want gay men to be like women and maybe they picked up on the fact that many of the characteristics of gay- soundg voic are feme characteristics but they’ve got all wrong. Bee a lot of those gay-soundg voic are om straight guys. I knew I was gay when I was like 11.
Do I have a gay voice? The big problem i have is when people assume I’m not [gay] and then I’m anx are they gog to say somethg stupid? In the end, if someone thks I’m gay, then they’re wrong...
DO YOU SOUND GAY? WHAT OUR VOIC TELL – AND WHAT THEY DON’T
Me was a voice everyone was faiar wh, and they knew what signified: That I was gay. Virtually every parody—malic or otherwise—of gay men clus a nasal, lispg, high-pched vol timbre. Do I Sound Gay?, a documentary by filmmaker David Thorpe openg this week at IFC, prob the history, science, and cultural signifince of the gay male voice.
The film is stctured around his personal qut to get rid of his “gay voice”—recently sgle and middle-aged, David Thorpe began to fd his voice a source of anxiety, worryg turned off potential lovers—which grounds what uld otherwise have been a disparate web of amic theori and talkg heads. That spurred him to look more systematilly at the gay voice self; eventually he realized he’d found somethg signifint to say about the subject, a talogue of people reflectg about the history, prevalence, signifince, and science of the voice ’s clear om his enthiasm and breadth of knowledge that Thorpe, a wrer wh an quisive personaly and a voice I found entirely pleasant, has enough material for a whole seri on the subject.