Michael Schulman on “Do I Sound Gay?,” a documentary by David Thorpe that explor how vol nc are associated wh sexualy.
Contents:
- OF LISPS AND LGUISTICS: THE POWER OF THE GAY VOICE
- THE PREVALENCE OF LISPG GAY MEN
- IS THERE A “GAY VOICE”?
- EMEM AND THE “GAY LISP”
- THE GAY LISP?
- GAY LISP
- GAY PCH, LISP?
- GAY SPEECH AND LISPG
OF LISPS AND LGUISTICS: THE POWER OF THE GAY VOICE
The prent study examed the popular stereotype that gay men lisp by evaluatg to what extent listeners associated ntal or ontal articulatn/lispg wh gayns. Fifteen heterosexual mal and 15 heterosexual femal listened to 275 sampl of read speech and judged the sexual orientatn o … * gay lisp speech *
Lispg and male homosexualy.
THE PREVALENCE OF LISPG GAY MEN
In 'Do I Sound Gay?', David Thorpe exam the myster orig of the "gay voice" while tryg—and failg—to rid himself of his own gayish flectn * gay lisp speech *
The prent study examed the popular stereotype that gay men lisp by evaluatg to what extent listeners associated ntal or ontal articulatn/lispg wh gayns. A total of 175 of the sampl were of homosexual men, 74 (42.
Based on the ratgs of the listeners of the prent study, lispg speakers were signifintly more often judged to be homosexual. This was te for the group as a whole as well as for the subgroup of homosexual and heterosexual men separately.
Furthermore, there was no signifint genr difference wh rpect to associatg lispg wh gayns.
IS THERE A “GAY VOICE”?
* gay lisp speech *
Male and female judg associated lispg wh gayns to a siar gree. The rults of this study nfirmed prev prelimary fdgs that suggted that ontal or ntal articulatn/lispg is a feature that listeners associate wh gayns. The prevalence of lispg gay men.
Nasaly Homosexual Men: A Comparison wh Heterosexual Men and Women. Pch characteristics of homosexual mal.
[Homosexual parenthood and child velopment: prent data]. J Homosex.
EMEM AND THE “GAY LISP”
Several well known, and one misunrstood, featur of the stereotypil gay voice | Johnson * gay lisp speech *
Gay Voice: Stable Marker of Sexual Orientatn or Flexible Communitn Device? Grapplg wh the issue of homosexualy: perceptns, attus, and beliefs among high school stunts Kenya. Inferenc About Sexual Orientatn: The Rol of Stereotyp, Fac, and The Gaydar Myth.
When Universy of Toronto rearchers Ron Smyth and Henry Rogers nducted a study on the so-lled “gay voice” the early 2000s, they me to an unsurprisg ncln. But we are not, as many gay men tend to be, an dible mory. 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. 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?
THE GAY LISP?
Thorpe never liked the sound of his own slightly effemate voice, but was the sound of other gay men’s voic that propelled him to make the film. “I was on a tra ri to Fire Island [off Long Island] and I heard all the gay voic around me, and I was repelled, ” he says. “I uldn’t believe that after 20 years of beg out and fightg to create a gay muny, I was repulsed by my own people, and by myself.
GAY LISP
My voice was the way that my ternalized homophobia ma self known to me. 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. He practis a variety of voice epeng, speech therapy exercis—employed equently we learn, by closeted gay actors who want to butch up their voic for a straight dience.
GAY PCH, LISP?
Savage, whose sex advice lumn is syndited ternatnally, says he se this distaste for the stereotypil gay voice progrsive straight muni, too.
Savage often gets mail om straight people who are happy to accept their newly out, gay male iends, but who are equally annoyed by how “mpy” they sound. “I’ll get letters om straight men and women sayg, ‘I love my gay iend but why do he have to act this way?
GAY SPEECH AND LISPG
Why is he puttg on this big gay act? But ’s also easy to see why a closeted gay kid might want to -swch for other, more unrstated reasons, too. In popular culture, om Jam Bond to Aladd, male villas sound unnervgly gay.
The gay voice do not merely belong to Mch and Cam on Morn Fay. But is rare, even today, that a good, virtuo character has an explicly gay-soundg voice a kid’s movie. In the end, the greatt irony about the arguably misogynistic aversn to the gay voice—as a sign of meekns and spelsns—is how strong one has to be to actually e .