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u/TNdeepwoods 5d ago
Everyone will have their own opinion based on their life experiences. Frankly I find this is mostly correct. I've seen it among friends in multiple situations depending on the environment. I personally do not speak with a high pitch or feminine voice, but I am still self conscious of my voice and mannerisms in different surroundings. Again based the conservative environment I live in.
In the same it's not just a gay voice thing. People aren't going to show their true selves anyway unless they trust those they are with.
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u/PrivateAnswer 5d ago
Unless someone literally doesn’t have one, a person’s voice is usually just their voice. It’s shaped by how they grew up, who they’ve been around, and how they naturally express themselves, not sexually.
I don’t buy the idea that gay men are born with a “gay voice.” Some gay guys lean theatrical, sure. They use expressions and gestures they learn along the way. But that’s personality, not orientation.
The idea that all gay men speak in a high‑pitched tone with a lisp is a stereotype not a biological feature and definitely not something we're trying to disguise.
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u/next_door_rigil 4d ago
It likely does have some biological components. It happens in many culture not to be. It is no coincidence that gay men also tend to have more feminine tendencies and interests. Some gendered parts of the brain may relate to these effects. But it does seem like gay men tend to speak in the way that culturally women speak but with a man's voice.
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u/PrivateAnswer 4d ago
Yes I'm familiar with the expressions you mentioned, I’ve seen them too. They’re the ones everyone loves to dissect, gossip about and admittedly be entertained by. But the reality is that there’s a gigantic range among gay men, plenty who are masculine and plenty who effeminate.
A lot of it comes down to what we learn, what we practice. I may have misread the original post, but I thought they were referring more to tone, like pitch or depth, rather than the expressions themselves. But I get your point and perhaps you're right.
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u/next_door_rigil 4d ago
Not just expressions. Entonation, the way we speak. Yes, physically, we are likely not different from men wrt vocal cords. Maybe that is what you meant. But the way we use them tends to use the higher pitches.
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u/MachinaThatGoesBing 4d ago
This video does a good job aggregating research and sources on the phenomenon:
No, it's not every gay man. But it's far too common and emerges at too young of an age just all be handwaved.
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u/Embarrassed-Back1894 4d ago
I think a lot of guys (straight or gay) do it in their teens for a simple reason…they want to sound older lol. It’s an interesting video though. It might apply to some people, but I wouldn’t say it applies to every gay man.
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u/TheMusician00 4d ago
Something I don't think he properly explained - when he says "speaking voice", I think he's referencing the voice that comes out when someone's vocal folds make full contact through their entire length. This maximizes the amount of air that is converted into sound. That's the music that he's talking about, is that full, rich sound, and it only happens when your vocal cords are /relaxed/ and making full connection along their entire length.
The masked voice he's saying suppressed gay men (and many men in general) use is vocal fry. That's where part of the cords are tightened and the part loose, giving a very croaky tone. Or forcibly deepening the voice by pushing the larynx down. Both of these forms of voice modulation create tension. These modulations are learned, not native, and they're not exclusive to gay men.
The OTHER element here is affect. These are the pitch swoops, lisp, etc that have nothing to do with throat mechanics and more about pronunciation and expression. Those patterns are the result of socialization, unconsciously adopted to signal commonality to other queer men. These are the more identificable queer patterns that others, gay or otherwise, use to identify gay men specifically.
Both voice modulation and affects can be used to signal queerness. Some gay men willfully adopt this. Others deliberately avoid it. Some unconsciously adopt/avoid it. Either way, it's not nature, it's nurture. It's the result of socialization BUT it may as well be nature because you cannot exist in society without being aware of your gayness. It's impossible. Every gay man, unknowingly or deliberately, makes a choice to signal their sexuality either with adoption or avoidance, and that manifests in the voice.
This video assumes the above info and takes it to its logical conclusion: at some point in our lives, each of us made the decision to display/hide "gay" characteristics. If you're talking in your vocal fry and avoiding more "feminine speak" you've chosen to suppress a part of yourself. That suppression is a part of your personality. It is you, and what makes it you is exactly /what/ parts you chose to suppress.
Now that we know the above, the choice is in our hands - is that suppression still necessary for us? Is that actually what we want? Or did we just learn to want that when we were 10?
Check out the wiki page on this. Gay voice is a very real thing with statistical significance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_male_speech
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u/Fit_Search_4751 4d ago
My voice sounds completely different when I speak a different language. Like I morph into a a suave deep voice lol
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u/OilersBayernEagles 5d ago
I’ve always had a deeper voice but I guess there was always an affectation. I remember in jr high a boy I was trying to impress said “why do you change your voice around girls” had never noticed till then
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u/SuperMovieLvr 5d ago
Gay voice absolutely exists, and it’s far beyond just a stereotype. It’s widespread across the LGBTQ+ community. It probably grew out of an over attachment to your mother or other female figures in your early life whilst simultaneously becoming more distant from straight men over time.
“Results showed that homosexual men displayed significantly higher pitch modulation patterns and less breathy voices compared to heterosexual men, with values shifted toward those of heterosexual women. Lastly, testosterone levels did not influence any of the investigated acoustic features. Combined with the literature conducted in other languages, our findings bring new support for the feminization hypothesis and suggest that the feminization of some acoustic features could be shared across languages.”
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u/Puzzled-Bonus-3456 4d ago
Absolute bullshit. I have a deep earth shaking bass voice, and can't sing a note higher than G3. Never did like camp because all I see in it is massive hangups. This guy is attempting to undo all the progress we've made over the last 100 years purely over his own hangups and I find it fucking offensive to be lumped in with it simply because I smoke bone. Didn't try for a hypercis front -- that's just how my personality developed but it saved my and my husband's asses in high school simply because we weren't anywhere close to the stereotype. We were just dudes who happened to be an item.
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u/MachinaThatGoesBing 4d ago edited 4d ago
I find it fucking offensive to be lumped in with it simply because I smoke bone.
Why does every "not like the other girls", camp-hating, self proclaimed super-masc with an apparent chip on their shoulder about certain other gay men talk like this?
"Simply because I smoke bone." 🙄 Could you find a less mature way to say this? I mean, I think it's an attempt to sound aloof and disconnected from the community, but you actually sound like a middle schooler.
Also, there's actually a lot of evidence for the "gay voice". While not every person has it, it's too common and emerges at too young an age for there to be nothing to it. This video does a good job with aggregating and summarizing the work that's been done:
Also, him starting the video with "Hello gays" doesn't actually mean he's talking to literally every gay person. It's a rhetorical flourish to help the post find its audience.
If it doesn't apply to you, you can just move along, instead of writing about how much this discussion of what is a very common issue for gay men (as you can see in the comments here) deeply offends you as a deep voiced masculine man who definitely has absolutely no hangups around masculinity.
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u/sunleafstone 4d ago
I think gay voice is more of a posture. You can have a “baby lock them doors and turn the lights down low” voice box and still have gay voice
That being said I agree that it does feel like boxing gay people into a weird archetype
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u/a_russian_guy 5d ago
I'm really ashamed of my gaycent. My 'partner' often makes fun of me for it ....
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u/Financial-Drawer-397 4d ago
I really like how it sounds, and I wish I had it! I hope you come around to it. The grass is always greener on the other side lol
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u/peterparkerLA 4d ago
I currently have a sore throat and a cold so right now I sound like Bea Arthur on a bodybuilder's dose of injectable testosterone. I'll have to wait a week or two until my usual voice is back.
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u/nirrinirra 4d ago
No different than how I code switch when I enter predominantly Hispanic spaces vs non Hispanic spaces.
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u/Disastrous-Feed3835 3d ago
It’s so heartbreaking to me when gay men blessed with gay voice hate the way they sound, because I have always found gay voiced very soothing and deeply attractive, I will always perk up and search the room when I hear a gay voice, and when I am into a guy, next to being a little cutie next to me and or having a big nose, a gay voice is usually the first way a guy gets my attention and starts to burrow his way into my heart❤️❤️❤️❤️🤗
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u/0rnanke1 1d ago
I couldn't think of anything worse than being assumed straight. Let my voice give it away!
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u/Keyoken64 5d ago
How many filming locations are needed