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musclebrains
New member
It's silly to deny that some voices are recognizably "gay."
There are a zillion explanations for it. Probably the most common is dballer's -- that it served in the past as an identity marker for a minority that would be invisible to one another without signs. It's generally presumed that a subculture must identify its members, even at their peril, in order to protect the group's existence.
But why the "lisp" in particular? One explanation is that because gay men were feminized throughout this century they adopted a "sibilant" style of speech -- in just precisely the same unconscious way that women adopt softer speech. In femnist and queer discourses, this is a fucntion of "performativity," where gender style is created by unconscious cues from the culture that are reiterated in gesture and other forms of behavior (like speech).
As gay men become more assimilated, all the classic markers are disappearing.
It's worth mentioning that for many years, Brits and French people were dissed as sounding "sissy" to American ears and many people still think the Southern aristocracy, like the Charleston upperclass, sound gay, regardless of orientation. Which in turn suggests that any voice heavy on the "s" sound gets classified as gay -- for the underlying reason of misogyny.
There are a zillion explanations for it. Probably the most common is dballer's -- that it served in the past as an identity marker for a minority that would be invisible to one another without signs. It's generally presumed that a subculture must identify its members, even at their peril, in order to protect the group's existence.
But why the "lisp" in particular? One explanation is that because gay men were feminized throughout this century they adopted a "sibilant" style of speech -- in just precisely the same unconscious way that women adopt softer speech. In femnist and queer discourses, this is a fucntion of "performativity," where gender style is created by unconscious cues from the culture that are reiterated in gesture and other forms of behavior (like speech).
As gay men become more assimilated, all the classic markers are disappearing.
It's worth mentioning that for many years, Brits and French people were dissed as sounding "sissy" to American ears and many people still think the Southern aristocracy, like the Charleston upperclass, sound gay, regardless of orientation. Which in turn suggests that any voice heavy on the "s" sound gets classified as gay -- for the underlying reason of misogyny.
