Do You Sound Gay?
Not only is David Thorpe gay, but he also sounds gay.
This fact so consumed the 45-year-old Brooklyn resident that he spent his past three years talking to more than a hundred people in four countries about sounding gay. He talked to linguists, voice coaches, strangers and historians. He even interviewed lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender icons such as Margaret Cho, Tim Gunn and David Sedaris.
And he documented all of it on film. But in order to finish his first documentary, “Do I sound gay?”, Thorpe needs to reach his Kickstarter goal of $115,000.
“I was able to kind of I think address my own internalized homophobia, but I want a finished movie so I could share that journey,” said Thorpe, who came out 26 years ago. “We want to take the stigma out of the idea that something that sounds gay is bad. That phrase ‘that sounds gay’ or ‘he sounds gay’ is an old slur that we’ve all heard on the schoolyard, and we want to re-appropriate that as a slogan of pride.”
Benjamin Munson, a speech-language-hearing sciences professor at the University of Minnesota, said science doesn’t support the existence of “a gay voice,” but he said people stereotypically think gay men speak with a lisp and have higher-pitched voices.
Thorpe’s 30-day Kickstarter campaign ends on May 30. If he meets his fundraising goal, the money will go to post-production, including editing; music supervision, licensing and original scoring; and color correction.
Thorpe interviewed big names for his documentary. Tim Gunn, a renown fashion consultant on “Project Runway,” said he’s used to hearing his TV voice now, but when he first heard it, he had a “rude awakening.”
David Sedaris gave a zinger before letting his guard down.
“I don’t think I sound like a woman. I think I sound like a very small man,” Sedaris said. “Sometimes somebody will say, ‘I didn’t know you were gay.’ Why does that make me feel good? I thought I was beyond that. What’s the problem if somebody assumes that I’m gay when I open my mouth?”
The idea of the gay voice goes back to the early 18th century, Thorpe said. He found tabloid newspapers that mocked gay men for sounding effeminate. Classified ads for women seeking men said they didn’t want one who sounded like a woman, Thorpe said.
Munson said in the last decade about a dozen gay men have asked him to help them get rid of their gay voice. None of those requests came in the last four years, he said. Munson told each of them the same thing.
“There is a difference between sounding gay and a disorder. Speech pathologists specialize in working with disorders. Sounding gay is not a disorder.”
In fact, Munson said the “gay lisp” doesn’t exist. A true frontal lisp happens when people say “sink” when they want to say “think,” and a lateral lisp is what Sid the sloth in “Ice Age” has. The perceived lisp is actually an overcorrection of “s” sounds, and this makes speech objectively more clear, he said.
“The stereotypes about gay men speech follows the stereotypes of why gay men are gay in the first place,” Munson said. “So if somebody believes gay men are gay because they are more like a woman, then it follows that they think gay men might sound like a woman. Someone else who thinks they are gay because they are stuck in a childhood state of sexual development might develop a stereotype that gay men should sound like children.”
Joseph Rene, a gay man who lives in Pasadena, said he has been bullied and called slurs because people noticed his speech patterns. A photographer who took his head shot in the early ‘90s told him he would have to change his voice if he wanted to work in the entertainment industry. The laugh is on her, he said.
“My voice has kept me gainfully employed as a professional emcee and (trade show) host,” Rene said. “I’ve used my voice to speak up for people who don’t have a voice and need one. I’ve used it to my advantage, but I’ve never thought of it as gay because how can you identify a gay voice from a straight voice?”
Thorpe said he hopes everyone will be able to relate to his documentary, which will premier in the fall if his Kickstarter campaign is successful.
“Everybody has something about themselves that doesn’t conform to the mainstream ideal and hopefully non-gay as well as gay individuals can identify.”
Comments