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

Contents:

• FILMMAKER AND SPEECH PATHOLOGIST WEIGH IN ON WHAT IT MEANS TO 'SOUND GAY'
• IS THERE A “GAY VOICE”?
• WHAT MEANS TO ‘SOUND GAY’
• THE GAY VOICE
• OF LISPS AND LGUISTICS: THE POWER OF THE GAY VOICE
• GAY VOICE: STABLE MARKER OF SEXUAL ORIENTATN OR FLEXIBLE COMMUNITN DEVICE?
• MY GAY VOICE AND YOURS

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

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. 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. 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.

IS THERE A “GAY VOICE”?

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.

WHAT MEANS TO ‘SOUND GAY’

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. ” 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 GAY VOICE

” 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. Thanks to the shownners drivg thentic stori, filmmakers buckg s-old heteronormative paradigms, actors embolned to live more hontly and platforms bankrollg so much of , beg gay, queer, transgenr or any other other has never been more wily embraced the entertament s gural Pri issue, The Hollywood Reporter homed on the talent and makers helpg boost visibily and creatg opportuni for members of the extend LGBTQ muny.

After more than a of Watch What Happens Live Wh Andy Cohen, where he beme the first openly gay host Amerin late night, Bravo's exec turned talent tackl all kds of media (SiriXM show Rad Andy, multiple books), while upliftg and advotg for the LGBTQ muny. Puttg his stamp on The Ln Kg — he played Timon to great acclaim the billn-dollar-earng Disney reboot — the out-and-proud funnyman will next play Matt Ddge  Amerin Crime Story: Impeachment while his upg Judd Apatow-produced feature at Universal is set to be the first gay rom- om a major stud. Creator of the NBC s One Big Happy and her own YouTube talk show This Jt Out, Feldman recently ma her Netflix edy outright queer, as Dead to Me's sophomore season revealed a lead character to be bisexual.

OF LISPS AND LGUISTICS: THE POWER OF THE GAY VOICE

The queer Salvadoran edian translated the handful of breakout Saturday Night Live scen he wrote to multiple als at HBO — where he buted the edy special My Favore Shap  2019 and is readyg season two of Los Espookys, the half-Spanish, half-English, entirely absurd edy which he stars as the gay heir to a cholate fortune. When openly gay humour wrer David Sedaris lls down to the ont sk at a hotel, for example, he is often addrsed as “ma’am, ” by the ncierge; a mischaracterizatn that lights him, but also fills him wh ep shame.

Sedaris expounds on this feelg Do I Sound Gay?, an Amerin documentary starrg Brooklyn filmmaker David Thorpe that premiered this week at Doc NYC, and was featured at the Toronto Internatnal Film Ftival September.

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

Thorpe, who directed the film and promoted at TIFF wh sex lumnist Dan Savage (who also mak an appearance the film), wanted to explore this shame and answer a qutn that has been on his md his entire adult life: Why do so many gay men who are seemgly fortable wh their sexualy hate the way their voic sound?

In Do I Sound Gay?, Thorpe not only exam the myster, unrolved orig of the gay voice (characterized by a lisp and the elongatn of certa syllabl), but tri and fails, to rid himself of his own gayish flectn. “To leave the hoe as the credibly swishy, fierce gay hairdrser tak a lot more urage than to leave the hoe as Jason Colls, ” says Savage, referrg to the NBA player who ma history earlier this year when he me out of the closet. Wh this bate, Vasilovsky (2018) cricized gaydar rearch for nceptualizg sexual orientatn cu mostly as “static” and “nate” rather than as “dynamic” munitn addrs this cricism, we foc here on a cue that may have some relatively stable featur, but that is also known to be open to modulatn, namely voice.

MY GAY VOICE AND YOURS

We will exame whether voice is a fixed enty and whether gay and straight speakers modulate their voic strategilly or spontaneoly le wh their munitive tent and wh the social ntext, so as to eher emphasize or mimize their sexual orientatn.

When judged on the basis of voice alone, gay speakers are generally perceived as (relatively) ls heterosexual than straight speakers, but they still tend to be systematilly misclassified as heterosexual, suggtg that heterosexualy is the flt rponse (Smyth et al., 2003; Sulpiz et al., 2015, 2020; see Lick & Johnson, 2016, for this straight tegorizatn bias) lerature has also examed the actual atic cu that distguish gay and straight speech styl. Overall, the lerature nfirms that some voice characteristics are stereotypilly associated wh homosexualy and/or femy/masculy (see Kachel, Simpson, & Steffens, 2017; Kachel et al., 2018b) and that listeners are not only fluenced by actual atic differenc but also rely on stereotypil cu when formg an imprsn of the speaker (Munson, Crocker, Pierrehumbert, Owen-Anrson, & Zucker, 2015) few exceptns, rearch on dory gaydar has nceptualized gay and straight voice as a relatively stable characteristic of the speaker and, hence, has foced on habual ways of speakg. Rearch on sexual orientatn modulatn (Ambady & Hallahan, 2002; Sylva, Rieger, Lsenmeier, & Bailey, 2010) has shown that gay dividuals are able to exaggerate and partially nceal their sexualy, pecially if they are not a gnively mandg suatn (Sylva et al., 2010).

This creat a social vacuum which gay and straight speakers produce voice sampl that do not allow ntext- and dience-specific variatns speech styl as they occur real-life nversatnal settgs (Posva, 2007). Th, prr rearch has foced on variatn between rather than wh speakers, although there are a few notable has been suggted that gay speakers may specifilly mimize or emphasize the stereotypil atic cu scribed above to nceal or signal their sexual orientatn (Kachel et al., 2018a; Zwicky, 1997; see also Zimman, 2013). Crist (1997) observed a systematic lengtheng of (some) onset nsonants when four gay and two straight speakers were asked to read a text a “queeny” (flamboyantly effemate), rather than an “ordary, ” voice, suggtg that both straight and gay men were able to modify their voic.