Why do i sound gay
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They may soften their voice or adjust how they say something without conscious thought.
Small self-corrections accumulate over time and send unconscious messages to ourselves, reinforcing the negative beliefs we may carry about what it means to be gay and our ideas of masculinity. This question was to make sure that they would speak their mind without worrying who they were talking to since the purpose of the experiment was to compare casual talk.
However, as seen in figure 1, queer women used slightly more vocal fry (3.5 usage per minute) than straight women (2.82 usage per minute). You can find it linked in the description.
If you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments or reach out on our social media. It's fluid and personal, not rigid or one-size-fits-all.
Much of our work as gay men is learning which messages to carry forward and which to question.
This could be funny and dramatized or serious, whatever they wanted, in hopes to get them to speak casually, how they would outside the space of an interview.
We compared how many times each group used vocal fry, the creakiness found in speech, typically in vowels (for example in this video clip from 0:00-0:31), and upspeak, the rising in voice at the end of sentences (as demonstrated in this video from 0:00-1:03), and rated overall pitch, the highness or lowness of voice, from 1-5 (you can learn about high and low pitch in this video).
“Do I Sound Gay?” United States: Sundance Selects.
Valocchi, S. (2005). We learn a narrow set of ideals about what it means to be a boy, such as being tough, stoic, athletic, or emotionally contained. I learned that to be “a man” meant to be tough, outdoorsy, and stoic. They want to know how men acquire this manner of speaking, and why – especially when society so often stigmatizes those with gay-sounding voices.
Rogers and Smyth are also exploring the stereotypes that gay men sound effeminate and are recognized by the way they speak.
References
Barron-Lutzross, A. (2015). Researchers study parameters such as pitch variation—how much a person’s pitch changes while they talk—and the duration of vowels and consonants, which refers to how long people hold their vowel sounds or how long they hold their ‘s’ sounds.
Why do gay people sound like that?
Here’s a sanitized version of the transcript:
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Since I can remember, I’ve been told that I have a distinct voice, and the internet often comments on it. “Gender Trouble.” Routledge.
Howard, G. and Thorpe, D. (Producers) and Thorpe, D.
(Director). 1). We concocted a study involving 20 UCLA undergraduate women from ages 18-24, half being straight and the other half being queer. “Pitch range and women’s sexual orientation.” Word, 52(1), 69-77, DOI: 10.1080/00437956.2001.11432508
In a recent article, actor and singer Cheyenne Jackson spoke about his struggle with what he called his “gay voice.”
For years, he said, he had felt ashamed of how he sounded, trying to minimize certain inflections or speech patterns to appear less stereotypically gay.
He reflected on the ways he internalized messages about masculinity and what it meant to be an acceptable man in the eyes of others, and how liberating it felt to stop letting the way he spoke dictate how he was judged as a man.
Stories like Jackson's aren't uncommon among many gay men.
We did a little experiment to see if there is a difference in the ways that queer and straight women cultivate their own identities through language. Vocal fry and upspeak are stereotypical of women’s speech as a whole.
Before doing the actual experiment, we thought queer and straight women would have similar usage of upspeak because they belong to the same gendered social category, so parts of their identity formations and expressions would be similar (Valocchi 2005).
Are these categories distinct enough to draw phonetic conclusions? Not liking how we sound is criticizing a very core aspect of ourselves. So how do queer and straight women express their identities and gender differently? Thank you for watching, and make sure to subscribe!
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This version removes any potentially offensive language and maintains a respectful tone throughout.
Why do some gay men “sound” gay?
Advance online publication. For me, it means being able to speak, laugh, and express myself without constantly measuring up to someone else’s idea of what a man should be.
Some studies even have random people listen to recordings and judge whether they think the speaker is gay or straight.
Results indicate that gay men tend to have higher pitch variation, meaning their vocal range from low to high is more extreme compared to straight men.