Why is there a gay voice stereotype

Gay male speech has been the focus of numerous modern stereotypes, as well as sociolinguistic studies, particularly within North American English. Scientific research has uncovered phonetically significant features produced by many gay men and demonstrated that listeners accurately guess speakers' sexual orientation at rates greater than chance.

After identifying phonetic characteristics that seem to make a man’s voice sound gay, their best hunch is that some gay men may subconsciously adopt certain female speech patterns. If gay/lesbian voice produces both stereotyping and discrimination, as our studies suggest, then one may wonder why this occurs. Are gay/lesbian speakers stereotyped and discriminated because of their sexual orientation or because they do not conform to masculinity/femininity expectations?.

Gay voice study

Of course, not all gay men have the same voice, or any “gay” voice: it is a stereotype, after all. Thorpe talks to a straight friend who sounds “gay” (he grew up on an ashram, surrounded by. Is there such a thing as "gay voice"? And if so, what constitutes it? A student at Oxford investigated this − and went viral.

Why Do Gay Men Sound Like ~That~?

I think that both genetics and learned behaviour contribute toward the development of gay-sounding speech patterns. To start with, the stereotypical "gay voice" isn't necessarily gay. Now 35, I am still very curious as to how and why a child who didn't even grasp what a gay person was, or had any exposure to gay men, would speak with stereotypical and identifiable gay speech characteristics.

And the relative importance of acquired, innate, why is there a gay voice stereotype and subconscious factors will vary from person to person, and even among different situations. I've always wondered if it's a sonic "device" used consciously or unconsciously as a relatively subtle clue to potential mates, alerting them to the fact that the person is gay. Have there been any serious studies into gay voices? In the end you talk about how camping it up and being a flamboyant queen can be liberating.

And that often has more to do with the voices that a person identified with as they grew up, rather than sexuality. Thank you for correcting that assumption for me. We there judgements and determinations about a speaker based on those markers. People exploit that variation to create different social meanings," he says.

Another evidence of this is that some women gay very low-pitched voices may sound like gay men. The gay voice is not a learned behavior. Another interesting thing I learned in my conversation with Radice was that a lot of gay speak developed as a way for voice stereotype people to avert discrimination. That would be interesting to find out.

This is just one example, there are plenty more. Get the latest with our News podcasts on your favourite podcast apps. Physiological aspects like pitch are bound to have a genetic basis, and it would be surprising if testosterone levels didn't influence both voice and sexual orientation. On the other hand, I've noticed that while in the company of women or gay men, my speech more stereotypically "gay.

But that doesn't mean that they are gay. I wonder if it's genetic. Things are getting better, Thorpe says. To a varying degree, people do respond to pressure. And when characters with "gay" mannerisms or voices appeared in popular culture, they were sometimes coded with negative or insidious meanings. Published 29 July am Updated 8 January pm.

I was terrified of my mother finding out, so I talked in a "normal" voice around my family. This would explain why some but not all gay men have gay speak and why even some straight men speak like this. In 62 per cent of the cases the listeners identified the sexual orientation of the speakers correctly.