Who Sounds Gay?

[AGBF]

There was a really nice little video in yesterday's on-line version of, "The New York Times". In it a heterosexual man who sounded gay and a homosexual man who sounded straight were interviewed. These men had taken part in an independent movie. I am posting a link to the video and also to a teaser for the independent movie, which looks fascinating to me. It is about how and why we acquire speech but especially as it is applied to gay people.

"Who Sounds Gay?" from The NYT...http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/23/opinion/who-sounds-gay.html
"Do I Sound Gay?" The Movie...http://www.doisoundgay.com/

Deb/AGBF

 

[Maria D]

Thanks for posting these links Deb, the film sounds very interesting! I'll try to see it when it comes out - who knows if a theatre here will pick it up though.

In the last couple of years I've noticed a lot of my male (high school) students sounding more, shall we say, "metrosexual." I don't think they are gay as I teach in a school where it's quite common for gay kids to come out and these guys haven't, but of course who knows. I figure it's exposure, through media, of so many different ways of speaking. One thing most kids around here *don't* seem to have is a Maine accent. (Or maybe I'm immune to it!)

 

[kenny]

Thanks for posting this, Deb.

I'm deeply fascinated by this mysterious topic, a very personal and important one for me.
I'll post more later when I have time to get into it.

 

[AGBF]

Thanks for posting this, Deb.

I'm deeply fascinated by this mysterious topic, a very personal and important one for me.
I'll post more later when I have time to get into it.

I would feel honored if you shared your personal feelings and/or experiences with us in this thread, kenny.

Deb

 

[gregchang35]

this sounds interesting.....i havent had the time to watch videos... but i am interested in seeing what they have done with it.

 

[distracts]

I have a friend who sounds and acts "gay" but is straight. Buuuuut he was raised by a passel of lesbians - his mom and her former partner, plus their current partners. So I figure it's just the mannerisms of the men he was around growing up. At any rate, I haven't really thought of it as odd since fairly early after meeting him. I also know plenty of gay men who you'd never know were gay except for, how, you know, they date dudes, which is a pretty big giveaway. I think a lot of the voices and mannerisms we think of as "gay" are social signaling of belonging to a specific subgroup and that as the stigma is reduced and more people come out and the gay subculture enters the mainstream, that kind of signaling may be less important. But I'm hardly an expert.

 

[gregchang35]

This is a very fascinating topic. it has many layers to it and i think the doco explains it well. The doco explains that we gravitate/ pick up tones up from ppl that we are surrounded by in our formative years....

To share with you all... i dunno... cos i feel like i need to...

I was born in Malaysia and i do have an accent. HOWever, this accent only occurs when i speak to my family here in AUS and in MYS. However, when we moved to AUS, i have a totally different accent. It has now morphed into an Australian/ English/ American kinda accent all rolled into one. It morphs even more when alcohol is consumed!!!

I have always been conscious of how i sound from a kid till maybe 10yrs ago. i guess when we emigrated to AUS. Whilst i dont say i hate my voice, when i had to speak into a tape recorder (yes- that is showing my age) for school, i shied away from it. I can now understand that it is because i didn't want to sound different. i wanted to blend in.. I have heard my voice on tape and to me, at the time, it was not your typical bass/ tenor male sound.. it was more counter tenor (think Kurt Hummel from Glee).

In my teens all the guys voices got deeper and mine only got a little deeper. It wasn't until i focussed on getting that base in the voice, did my voice sound deeper. i had always a fascination for pronouncing things correctly... maybe as a byproduct of trying to blend into the AUS crowd.
It was also around the time i was getting aware of my sexuality and i wasnt liking the fact that my voice pitch/tone was a little higher than the other males. At that time, the higher pitch male voice was also the stereotypical image of a gay boy. I was very self conscious of portraying a straight boy as i didnt want to be different. Around my friends, it didnt matter. however, when it was in a bigger group, i tried to shy away from speaking.

When i did come out, i was more at ease. Some ppl did comment that my accent/ tone changed. Maybe more gay, but i like to think that it is more confident. NOw, i accept that my voice is my voice. Yay!

With this topic about sounding gay only highlights that we/ society has a way of labelling ppl. I believe that putting labels/ compartmentalising/ stereotyping ppl/ things help me understand things. To me, this gives a basis of understanding things and from that i can formalise an opinion and to re- educate myself. It is nice to have black and white picture so that we can understand the grey areas. SO, with the voice of sounding gay.. it is how society has shaped our opinions on things. Societal oppression makes ppl become more afraid of what that sound is. But life experience and a nuturing environment is what we need for accepting what we sound/ look like.

Of course, we can break stereotypes!!! LOL

 

[AGBF]

I just want to say that I had not really expected this thread to lead to something as wonderful as someone sharing his own experience here as you just did, Greg. I feel as if we could add to, "The New York Times" article now.

On a more personal note: within the past year I learned that my great-nephew, who has been like a son to me since he immigrated to this country, is gay. He is, now, in a committed relationship with another man. I do not believe that he told anyone at all until he found his partner and moved in with him. Then pictures of them, looking very happy, started to appear on Facebook (which I do not have and have no access to). I heard about the photos and he brought his partner to Thanksgiving last year.

Other than that he didn't date many women, my great-nephew did not "seem" gay. He was always fastidious about his appearance and kept his weight in check. He didn't like (doesn't like) our huge Newfoundland who slobbers on people. But he is a veteran of the Israeli army and saw action. He worked his way through college as a mover, speaking Spanish with the other movers since once of his languages is Italian, and driving a truck. I mean, he did "guy" things.

But now I see him really happy and really in love with someone with whom he is totally compatible. It is so sad that in the past people were denied having these relationships in the open. But I have digressed from voice!

Thank you again for sharing, Greg!

Deb

 

[partgypsy]

When I am not at work I want to see the video, I think it's an interesting topic. David Sedaris has an essay not about sounding gay, but having a lisp and working around it by avoiding saying certain words and substituting other words and being self-conscious about how he spoke.

 

[gregchang35]

Hi Deb

Thank you. If i could share/inform/ show another opinion on any subject, i try. Though, i can get myself into a pickle sometimes.... .

I am also glad that i could do this in this forum, safely.

as for your great nephew- congrats!!!!... he is breaking 'stereotypes'.
So.... perhaps another question to be asked (thread jacking)... in history how many ppl were gay that did not come out? they could have been the ones that behaved like your great nephew but went along behaving like what societal norms expects to "fit in", for fear of ostracization. It still occurs to this day. many of my friends were in a heterosexual r/ship and have children to only separate later and are in a long term committed same sex r/ship. same sex marriage is not recognised here in AUS, yet.. anyway.. digressing...

You know what else.. i think, well, i know when I reached mid 30's something happened... my brain switched gears. so the pressures of me trying to fit it reduced dramatically. I am more comfortable in my skin now than ever before.. dont get me wrong, there are still parts of me that i am still grappling with.. but it is now 'easier' to learn about them rather than being ignorant about them.. it still takes time..... the good thing is I am still open to learning, though some ppl may say selected learning!!!!!

 

[chrono]

I agree that it is all about mental and physical conditioning. In my culture, the women are taught to walk, sit, talk and behave in a certain way because that was the expectation (to be lady-like). I bucked the convention and come off as gay because of my mannerism and the way I prefer to dress. Interestingly, I come off as perfectly normal in the US due to the equality and freedom women are afforded here.

 

[ame]

I *LOVE* this. My sister is an SLP and I shared this with her, as well. My husband was intrigued and joked "are you trying to tell me I sound gay?" His voice to me is not SUPER low but certainly is not high or even remotely effeminate. He is really into what would be considered "gay man music", as my friends say, a lot of things like New Order, and the like. Very new wave stuff. He was a total new wave guy in HS and college and had that sweet flock of seagulls hair. Every time I watch Friends and see Chandler's hair in flashbacks I nearly die laughing and say "Hey babe, come see yourself on TV." He does not find it as funny. My friends will always comment to him that he's so gay without actually being gay that they're disappointed in his straightness! haha Maybe it's because I was into art that I have a huge gaggle of gay friends, male and female, and when I shared this with them they were all "oh my god this is awesome slash hilarious" so now I might have to clean my disgusting house and have a viewing party. haha! I do know one of my gay male friends has always commented on how "gay" he sounds, and how he wonders when it was obvious. Personally I don't think I ever thought about that, I never noticed a change in his voice, and I've known him since grade school. When he gets REALLY excited he gets ridiculously animated and high pitched and I guess "effeminate". When he's angry, the voice deepens. It's fascinating. I feel like he'd be a fantastic case study if my sister wanted to research this like in the movie.

 

[kenny]

I grew up in the 1950/60s in a Christian family in a conservative midwest town.
Gay was bad.
Being seen as as gay/fairy/sissy/feminine was a social death sentence.
Yet, that's what I was.
I didn't know the meaning of what I was.
I just knew the way I was different was thoroughly bad and wrong, and I will live a life fully rejected.
Even in High School besides not going to the prom I honestly did not even know about it.
I just kept to myself.

Mom and dad had 1 girl and 3 boys; I was the youngest.
My sister and I were buddies, and hated both brothers and my dad for not accepting me.
It wasn't just rejection.
I was teased and bullied; when I was 10 my dad became an alcoholic it turned to torture.
Later my mom told me my dad blamed himself for me being gay, and couldn't handle it.

I hated that I was this way.
I hated myself.
All I knew is what my family, church and culture told me since my earliest memories.

Do I sound gay?
I hope not, and like the guy in the film trailer I hate that I think that ... BUT read the beginning of this thread!!!

On a scale from 1 to 10 (1 being John Wayne and 10 being Richard Simmons) I'd say my voice a 5.5.
But I'm very curious how others would rate:
1. Just my voice they heard recordings of.
2. All of me, voice, movements facial expressions, etc.

I'll make another post or two to talk about other layers of this topic.

 

[kenny]

Greg, good point about accents.

We all have one but we don't notice what we're used to till we travel to a place with a very different accent.
I think gay-sounding could be thought of as an accent.
If so I may sound way more gay than I am conscious of.

I'd love it if there were a website, www.howgayismyvoice.com
You'd talk into your computer's microphone ... then software, designed by highly-respected experts paid to do years of top-level research, would rate the voice.

Even then, as shown in that doc trailer, the most gay-sounding man may be completely straight and vice versa.

Two thing's are for sure.
As the negative influence and power of religion declines being recognized as gay will be less shameful, so gay and straight men will worry less and less about sounding gay.

 

[AGBF]

I really loved reading about your experiences growing up, kenny, although they were painful to hear and if they were made into a movie I am not sure it is one I could bear to go see! Knowing that you are grown up and are no longer trapped in that pain helps me to be able to hear your background as a "story". Nonetheless, it is certainly not one I want to see other children have to repeat. I really hope that our country is changing as much as it appears to be on the surface.

I wish I could hear your voice now! Pricescope should set up something so that we can! I am extremely curious about it. I had never in my life considered this topic, but now it is fascinating to me.

ame, has anyone ever thought your husband was gay? I guess you would not really know!

And, greg, same sex marriage is not , yet, recognized in the US, either. Just in parts of the US. We (most of us, I mean) are hoping that our Supreme Court will make it the law of the land soon!

Hugs,
Deb

 

[partgypsy]

My husband has a long time friend who is now in his 60's and grew up in a small southern town where, being gay would be reviled by both your family and rejected/hated by the community. So, society, and even himself, pretended it didn't exist. At some point he went off to a prestigious college in the northeast, became involved in writing, but I think pretty much his whole life up until recently, has lived with having intense "crushes" and platonic relationships with men he admired, but not acting upon them or revealing that he was gay. We learned a lot of this from reading his writing, where he is more revealing of his feelings than talking to him face to face, where he doesn't talk about those things at all (rather we talk about books or botany, etc), because really for most of his life hiding it was a matter of survival.

Confession; Way back when, I suspected or wondered whether my nephew might be gay, because he fit the stereotype (slim, well spoken, had lots of friends who were girls, his favorite power ranger was the pink power ranger). Even though I love and accept him no matter what, I remember being sad if he was gay, because I thought a happy life would be denied to him; relationships, employment or discrimination, family life. I guess I didn't realize that things have changed so much since I was growing up in the 70's and 80's, that at some point being "gay" wasn't such a "terrible" thing, and wouldn't automatically mean you would say, get beat up.

 

[AGBF]

And, greg, same sex marriage is not , yet, recognized in the US, either. Just in parts of the US. We (most of us, I mean) are hoping that our Supreme Court will make it the law of the land soon!

Things have changed rather quickly, greg. I am pleased to say that now same sex marriage is the law of the land in the United States.

Deb/AGBF

 

[gregchang35]

Woo hoo!!!

Now if only our PM would allow for this to occur!

 

[ame]

ame, has anyone ever thought your husband was gay? I guess you would not really know!

There are two guys at a restaurant we go to in a very gay friendly part of town who are CONVINCED he is. They are regulars there and every time we go there when they are there they fawn over him "you are the biggest red bear ever. Isn't he just the most gorgeous thing you've ever seen? That beard?!" But all of my gay friends (a few of whom have been with us on occasion) totally do not see it, don't get the fawning weirdness and are like "not one alarm goes off for us. None. Despite your musical taste." Maybe that's because they know him well, or they genuinely knew from the get go he's not. But we all think it's mighty entertaining.

 

[partgypsy]

I tried to see it but my computer wouldn't let me look at it.

Regarding your husband, maybe wishful thinking? Guys have flirted with my husband (he fits the "bear" stereotype), especially if wearing overalls, but to me he seems like the most straight guy ever.