Gay Voice

What causes it?

• What you're talking about is a learned mimicked ACCENT. It's picked up and imitated like the 80s valley girl talk. And it has absolutely nothing to do with same sex attraction. But you knew that. Carry on with your agenda.

• R1, please stop screeching and smacking your lips when you talk.

• I think r2 is what's known as an [childish epithet posted by a bigoted tool].

• I don't know. Sometimes when Michael C. Hall is into his acting, he loses control of his.

• femininity

• You mean [childish epithet posted by a bigoted tool]s? I have no idea what would cause that. But you know there are certain people you talk to that you know automatically are gay just from their lisp.

• [quote]Sometimes when Michael C. Hall is into his acting, he loses control of his. Was that in just in Six Feet Under or in other stuff as well?

• It most certainly is not "femininity" r5. Females do not talk like that. It's a learned lingo with it's own jargon, expressions and mannerisms.

• cuntishness usually is the cause

• Male version of vocal fry.

• I think sucking cock gives one a lateral lisp, and the constant rubbing of a cock-head against the vocal-cords leads to a sing-songy voice.

• Clever, R11, except many teenage gays already have gay voice long before they start becoming proficient cocksuckers

• R12, unlike you, I never let facts get in the way of a good theory.

• Islamic tradition. Something to do with the heat.

  Elizabeth%2C%20the%20Queen%20Mother

• Come to my clinic and I can Fixth it!

  Ladybird%20Bachmann

• Big cock up the butt, OP.

• Waiters at iHops

• I think Michael C. Hall is a great actor but even in Dexter, I've heard him use his gay voice. He's been so into the scene that he forgets to hide it.

• I know some of you pretend you have no idea what we are talking about and no, it's not femininity.

• It's fun to talk like that. Haven't you ever tried it?

• swallowing

• Agree about Hall, R18. His gay voice was ever-present in Six Feet Under.

• Peter Sarsgaard and John Malkovich both have gay voice.

• Sarsgaard is probably the best, most glaring example of gayvoice. Even after several years of marriage and procreation with Maggie G., I'm still not all that sure about him.

• It isn't mimicry or an accent R1, it is the timbre of the voice. There is a flatness to it that is neither masculine or feminine.

• Some gay men as they age, attempt to sound more youthful by modulating their voice and breathiness of their speech, sounding odd for their age.

• It's true about Malkovich but I never thought the little asshole was gay. I wonder why he sounds gay? I'm thinking all of his friends in Chicago were probably gay men.

• To me, gay voice is about a gentle tone, extending certain sounds, and using a higher pitch at the end of phrases and sentences when not asking a question. I don't think it is a conscious affectation for everyone.

• I have had gay voice even before I met other gay people. I don't, of course, know the cause or whether others use it as an affection. I can only speak for my experience. All my family knew I would "turn out" gay. The same was the case with a cousin, and he too had gay voice early on. I tried, when younger and with futility, to rid myself of it. I am not otherwise flamboyant or [childish epithet posted by a bigoted tool], but I can't change that.

• I'm sure it goes along with having a female brain.

• affection = affectation

  R29

• But there are straight men with gay voice. And I'm not talking about Marcus Bachmann.

• I think gay voice sounds a lot like female bodybuilder on steroids voice.

• mmmmmmmmmmmm Michael C Hall.

• I have gay voice and I'm a lesbian. Explain THAT, girly-men.

• Does Simon Halls have gay voice?

• How do most gay actors learn to lose their "gay voice"? Speech classes? Coaching? Most actors we now know were gay (eg, Rock Hudson) did not display it in their performances. I'm all in favor of being openly gay in the workplace, but I also think really pronounced "gay voice" holds some men back. Particularly in corporate environments.

• I have no idea what you're talking about.

  Jodi%20Foster

• Malkovich isn't gay, but can play the dandy. Perhaps he is "posing as a somdomite."

• [quote]Sarsgaard is probably the best, most glaring example of gayvoice. Even after several years of marriage and procreation with Maggie G., I'm still not all that sure about him. I agree. I've seen interviews with him and said "That guy's straight??" Meanwhile, someone like Matt Bomer, who we KNOW is gay, doesn't really have gayvoice at all. TV actor/ass legend Robert Conrad, believe it or not, has it too. Check out the way he says "long lasssting" at the 0:20 mark in this clip...

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cG6CQee-Z40

• I have it. I wish I didn't. I tried, like others, to rid myself of it, but it didn't work. It is was it is, some of us are white and some of us are brown.

• Tim Tebow has the voice.

• I, too, have always wondered why some gay men have it. I don't, and I've had people actually be shocked to find out that I'm gay.

• Good call, R40. Conrad sounds super gay (but he's working hard to cover it up) in that ad.

• Conrad has gayvoice in this Larry King interview too

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09MbjF2aDWI

• Elongated vowels. Clip the vowels and the gayness leaves.

• Gay voice is the way you identify yourself to any potential tops in the room. It is a: lets get the sexual compatibility issue out of the way right now, because I'm not interested in you otherwise, thing.

• Give Anderson a couple of tequila shots and voila!

• Yesterday's Judge Judy featured a woman suing her former assistant for $2K she loaned him for child support arrearages. I thought the entire courtroom (and MIss Judy) was going to burst out in laughter when the defendant opened up his mouth and the girliest girly-girl voice came out. How did this guy's penis ever get close to a vagina? (They had to have cut out the audience's laughter.)

• people being cunts

• It's some type of teenage Valley girl accent. It's on display in 1 Girl 5 Gays. All of the guys talk that way. I'm embarrassed FOR them.

• Social conditioning to bitchiness.

• Who cares what the cause, just be grateful you have it.

• Gay Voice = vocal earrings and caftans

• It is definitely some kind of accent. Do gays in, say, Papua New Guinea go all girlfriend on each other?

• Figure Skating?

• With some gay men, you'd never be able to tell they are gay by their voice or their mannerisms. Others give it away with both. Then some give it away with one or the other. I've met men who don't have gay voice at all, but to see them is to know they are gay. I fall into this category. My ex was the opposite. To see him you wouldn't think he was gay. Then he opened his mouth.

• I think that gay guys with feminized brains have it. These are the authentic, born this way gays. The situational gay guys who aren't authentically gay (M2M rape/pedo victims, M2M sex in jail) tend not to have the voice. There's a pee-reviewed article on this somewhere. I'll try to locate it.

• gay vocal bump

• I always thought it came about by young boys/future gay men being influenced by flamboyant, expressive women.

• I think you're on the right track r60; early in childhood if there is an identification with a female figure, it could be elder sister or his mother it can include voice imitation and how she uses expressions. I don't want to sound Freudian, but it could also go with a father who is inadequate or worse. I don't think the question is "what causes homosexuality" but what causes human sexuality and the impulses that create someone predominantly heterosexual or homosexual. I think too that even if a father tries mightily to have his son identify with him, if the orientation is for his mother and he has been born homosexual, all the butch stuff he tries to make him do will not make any difference. I would like to hear from any gay guy who, growing up, got support from his father for doing stuff like cooking, cleaning, interior decorating, fashion, etc. if that was what he liked doing as a kid. I would say chances are he didn't.

  anonymous

• R61, are you a straight woman?

• No, I'm a "gay" middle-aged white male--it's kind of interesting you would ask me that though. Would you care to elaborate as to why you thought I was a straight woman? I based alot of my post on my own life experience but on the other hand I didn't want to over-generalize and stereotype.

  anonymous

• I think r1 is correct. Vocal pitch may be innate, but what most seem to be talking about here is more like an accent. It's definitely immitated. And feminine? Hardly. Women don't talk in that exaggerated way.

• Some of my friends have gay voice and are not gay. Maybe it's just a normal affect and those who weren't out gays used to suppress having it.

• [quote] There's a pee-reviewed article I always suspected that journal editors loved golden showers.

• For a good number of gay men, gay voice is an adopted affectation and learned from mimicing other gay men.

• Michael Bloomberg has it for days.

• Tim Gunn qualifies. Nasal with elongated vowels mentioned by r46.

• [quote]For a good number of gay men, gay voice is an adopted affectation and learned from mimicing other gay men. Homophobic bullshit.

• Brady Anderson is the QUEEN of gayvoice.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHBgbvBc0Ng

• [I have gay voice and I'm a lesbian. Explain THAT, girly-men.] What does a gay voice sound like in a lesbian?!? If you're referring to the 'little girl' voice that some women adopt (like one of my cousins), that's not a gay voice, that's a juvenile female affectation.

• This is a thread only youthful gays could devise. Eldergays all know one day when you are in your mid-40s you suddenly catch yourself using phrases your parents used in middle age. You may not have even liked your parents or thought them good models. But your subconscious imprinted that this is how people of a certain age talk, and since your parents were unavoidably your main model, you picked it up without knowing or even against your own will. That's why some people pick up gay voice from a young age, but some don't pick it up until they actually come out; and few of them ever intended to pick it up. They heard it from people they knew to be gay so when they first thought to themselves, I'm a gay, the mannerism and expressions surfaced as part of that ancient gay imperative, finding a man. That's how you know that all these Republican closet case Congressmen aren't really latent homosexuals, but the real thing. They've already accepted to themselves what they are, and it shows in their voice against their will. But some people really had no clue and when they came out it suddenly descended on them.

• FAKE...a desperate cry for attention

• [quote]I always thought it came about by young boys/future gay men being influenced by flamboyant, expressive women. I'd agree with this too. When I was little I used to love imitating exuberant women from various movies. I still do, actually.

• 3Girls3

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T04CGKHYAAo

• This thread is full of self-loathing.

• This will not end well.

• Do we think Chris Colfer's voice is authentic? I hope not....

• you can be the nelliest queen, but the deal breaker for me is your voice. Gay voice, for-get IT! I'm not talking to you ever again.

• I'd be interested in this peer-reviewed article that R58 mentions

• I was ridiculed as a "sissy-boy" by my own family by the time I was about 5 years old, and I just changed that about myself, and emulated the speech patterns and mannerisms of my father and older brothers. I spent many years trying to change my same-sex attractions, but was unable to do so. When I started going into the Montrose area of Houston to pick up men to have sex with, about 1980, I began to acquire some of that "nelly" behavior, but made up my mind to avoid that because I don't see it as attractive or desireable. Other people can be whatever they are, but I don't intend to be a "nelly-man". I like to fuck them if they are pretty, but I won't go out with them in public. I live very discreetly or what y'all call "in the closet".

• many of my masculine gay male friends say Gay voice is a dick wilter!!

• r82, you are not alone!!! Being gay does not mean emulating members of the opposite sex. Masc for Masc IS THE IDEAL in the gay male world, just like femme for femme in the gay woman world.

  femme%20les

• I don't want to be prejudiced, and I will have sex with anybody who is nice about it. AND SAFE! Will certainly let them look at me naked and suck my dick if they act like a harmless nice person and politely ask me. But I don't really lust after the [childish epithet posted by a bigoted tool] men very much.

• Well, shoot fire! I thought the word I wrote was perfectly legitimate, and I have never before been told that it is a childish epithet, nor any kind of slur.

  R85

• Most of you picked it up unconsciously, including many of you when you were still pretending to be straight.

• R1, if it's "learned," from whom did I learn it if I'd never seen, let alone listened to, any gay males? R46, +1 on "elongated vowels."

• R58, "feminized brain." ICAM.

• I've always wondered about this myself. And I wonder why some gay men are just more [childish epithet posted by a bigoted tool] than others. I really think a lot of it has to do with early influences. Once a youngun realizes there's something, uh, different about himself, he starts to emulate others from his presumed tribe; he picks up the mannerisms and traits of those he thinks he is like.

• R90 Someone hypothesized here once that it has to with coming out later in life and still keeping those bitchy" mean girls" conventions from childhood. It's sad really. Can you imagine what the male gay community could accomplish if the queeniness and bitchiness dissipated? On second thought not much if you think about it!;)

• Gay voice can't be helped. Believe me, that is not learned.

• There is an affectation, yes. But some people just sound gay in the tone of their voice.

• I volunteer with little kids once a week at a YMCA child care facility. There is a 5-year-old whom I see occasionally who is obviously gay--he plays with dolls, likes to draw, does not like to play with other boys, his best friends are girls (highly unusual at that age) and he has a very high-pitched girlish sounding voice. He is nothing like other boys his age (I've been doing this over 10 years now). His mother seems like a perfectly nice, normal woman, not at all flamboyant or ultra-feminine--have never met his father. I think in his case it must be biological. I doubt that he is imitating anyone. He's a beautiful, sweet-natured child, by the way.

• R79 Chris Colfer's voice is authentic, as it's something he has said many times he wishes he could change. His voice is more high pitched than having any kind of accent, though. He has a noticeable scar on his neck from surgery when he was young, so I've wondered if that contributed in some way.

• I can't listen to Nate Berkus who's guilty the higher pitch at the end of every phrase and sentence.

• Some of it has to do with teeth. Spaces allows air to come through which create sibiliant s's.

• Well, in my opinion there are two main types of gay voice: -There is the very classic stereotype lisp, with an added crassness, like Charles Nelson Reilly and Paul Lynde - who were probably trying to sound like Bea Arthur or Susan Hayward...or maybe Lauren Bacall. -There is the gay California style accent, where every sentence sounds like a question? Like, Omigod? This we learned from the 80s movies, since they were all filmed in California, like totally!

• I had to go to speech classes in elementary school for my S's. I would say sssssssnake, but it's all gone now. I can't get rid of my country twang. I once worked with a guy who was very attractive and I was shocked when I found out he was married to a woman. He had such a high pitch voice that I just assumed he was gay. It was a turn off, it just didn't fit with his muscular body. Of course, he did spend quite a bit of time with another male coworker. Someone mentioned Peter Sarsgaard's voice and it is the best example. He played a bisexual in the movie Kinsey so I thought he might have been doing it for that role but he has it in everything. It's more of a quivering voice than a high pitch. Some people who have it are straight so you can only imagine how that must be for them, it probably costs them dates. I'm turned off by the gay voice in men with a bodybuilder's physique, it just doesn't fit. In someone like Chris Colfer it's not such a big deal. It's the over the top ones, that take it to the level of "guurrrrrrrrrl, you know those shoes don't go with that dress" that are taking it to it's zenith. People like that are fun to be around but people are usually laughing at them just as much as what they are saying. It's the same reason drag shows are fun, it's the over the top factor. I admire people who are fearless enough to be that out there all the time, not that some of them have any choice. I think a big part of it for some is letting people know they are gay without having to do a special coming out episode with every new person. It's a flashing neon sign. I've always wondered if it is easier to meet other gay men by going that route, especially in a small town setting that doesn't have certain areas you go to in order to troll for cock. Most people with gay voice probably have it naturally. Some people can sing, some people can SANG, some people have gay voice, some people have DIVA voice. As Eric Clapton sang, "it's in the way that you use it". What causes it? Hormones, probably. Does a transgender man's voice change he goes on hormones to transition to a female?

• I totally agree w/ the "ssssssssss" and the eeelooongaaaated vooooowels". But, as a man with gay voice, let me ask my fellow queers: Does the "lip pucker" have anything to do with gay voice? I KNOW that I do the lip thing, and to me THAT is a big give away on the 'dar. I don't think I'm as flaming as Adam Lambert, but here's a link with a first rate example of what I mean.

  http://cdn01.cdn.justjared.com/wp-content/uploads/headlines/2010/04/adam-lambert-puckers-up.jpg

• R96, that's not Gay Voice. It's upspeak. Look it up. Natie may also have Gay Voice, but that's "upspeak" you're describing.

• My voice is pretty deep, but I'm also prone to lisping.

• I have two teen boy relatives on the West Coast who drop g's at the end of a word. They say "Good Morneen." Is this part of Valley Girl sing-song speech?

• I remember a neighborhood boy who was what we used to call a sissy (I'm an eldergay); he had [childish epithet posted by a bigoted tool] mannerisms and what you call "Gay voice." I was about 13 and he was 9 or so. Later I saw him in a gay bar and he went home with me that night.

• Frank Dilella from NY1's On Stage program. He also draws out the last word of his sentence on a slightly lower pitch.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3Dlec8shMl0U0

• LOL the epitome of gay voice

  http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DvxrP8u5daCs