Ask a Homo: The gay lisp, origs and meangs nsired. (VIDEO.)

Contents:

• OF LISPS AND LGUISTICS: THE POWER OF THE GAY VOICE
• GAY PCH, LISP?
• THE GAY LISP?
• WHAT MEANS TO ‘SOUND GAY’
• THE PREVALENCE OF LISPG GAY MEN

OF LISPS AND LGUISTICS: THE POWER OF THE GAY VOICE

Go to gaybros. Do you have 'the gay voice' or a lisp?

I've always been very self-nsc about but ever sce I me out, I eased up on and I jt let myself talk whout rg if I "sound gay" or not (which I do, actually). 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?

GAY PCH, 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.

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.

THE GAY LISP?

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. Savage, whose sex advice lumn is syndited ternatnally, says he se this distaste for the stereotypil gay voice progrsive straight muni, too.

WHAT MEANS TO ‘SOUND GAY’

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?

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.

THE PREVALENCE OF LISPG GAY MEN

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 . “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. Several well known, and one misunrstood, featur of the stereotypil gay voiceBy R.