Why do i sound gay

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). 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.

This suggests that sounding “gay” may serve as a way for gay men to signal their identity to others.

It’s also worth noting that while some may perceive that gay men talk more like women, research does not fully support this idea. I internalized early lessons about masculinity from my stepdad and from the religious messages in my family that labeled being gay as deviant or “a cross to bear.”

As a result, for many years I hid who I was and tried to play the role others expected of me, even acting “straight” to fit in.

References

Barron-Lutzross, A. (2015). We concocted a study involving 20 UCLA undergraduate women from ages 18-24, half being straight and the other half being queer. 2).

Discussion and conclusions

The results of the study revealed a ubiquity of phonetic linguistic performance among women regardless of their self-identified sexualities.

The challenge comes when we use it as a marker for whether we are acceptable, worthy, or desirable.

Many of us, like Jackson, notice early on ways we modify how we speak or present ourselves to fit what we believe others expect. Here is a clip from The New York Times of Thorpe, along with a linguist featured in his documentary, describing the specifically male “gay voice.”

What, then, does a lesbian or queer woman’s voice sound like?

There are unique characteristics of gay male speech that are distinct from female speech.

As for lesbian voices and other queer identities, there is less research available, but studies have identified unique characteristics in lesbian speech, though they are less socially recognized than those of gay men.

Ultimately, how someone is perceived can also relate to their mannerisms and appearance, which all contribute to the complexity of speech in relation to sexual identity.

If you’re curious about whether someone’s sexual orientation can be discerned just by looking at their face, we have a podcast episode dedicated to that topic.

Advance online publication. If we remove any visual or behavioral clues, could you still tell?

Surprisingly, science has a lot to say about it. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7f6332bh

Butler, J. (2006). It wasn’t until much later that I realized masculinity isn’t about fitting into someone else’s box.

This pattern has been observed in various languages, including English, Dutch, and French, suggesting that the “gay voice” transcends language and culture.

Additionally, studies show that gay men hold certain vowel sounds longer and are more likely to extend their ‘s’ sounds compared to straight men. It means I don’t have to hide the way I sound, change how I speak, or perform a version of manhood just to be accepted—whether in conversation, on dating apps, or in everyday life.

References

Trevizani, G., Guimarães, M., Dornelas, R., Lopes, J., Moreti, F., & Azevedo, R.

(2025). They asked people to listen to recordings of 25 men, 17 of them gay. So, is there such a thing as a “gay voice”?

To answer philosophical questions about gender we looked to Judith Butler’s seminal Gender Trouble. 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.