Isn’t that what you folks refer to as parliament?
He is actually. Born in England, schooled in England, lived there most of his life and speaks with an English accent. But I see your point, in the public consciousness he’s probably thought of as Irish.
Kudos to anyone who can catch a recognizable accent from listening to Shane MacGowan! Other than “drunk.”
The word is languor.
I blame Sting for this with “Englishman in New York”, his ode to notorious queen Quentin Crisp.
Well blow me down.
I think this stereotype is decades old, far older than the Sting recording.
Who is, FWIW, played by a gay actor. 
I’ve known a number of non-homophobic people to make the comment (or a similar one) tongue-in-cheek.
Well, I once had an attractive, well-dressed, sensitive professor who spoke Spanish with (what I perceived as) a lisp, and it wasn’t until he busted out the English several weeks into the course that I realized he was British, and the ‘‘lisp’’ was really what Spanish sounds like with an English accent.
I do remember saying explicitly, ‘‘I thought he was gay, but then I realized he was British.’’ (And married, that lucky bitch. Gay or British, he was a dreamy man.)
I wasn’t aware there was a stereotype though. I always thought the stereotype was ‘‘Gay or Asian,’’ and I think Details Magazine got in trouble for printing an advertisement using that stereotype.
On preview: Word to the wise: don’t google ‘‘gay or asian’’ with your safety filter off! :eek:
Only some Spanish . . . and having nothing to do with an English accent.
I’ve heard the stereotype as a child (which held true then) of British people having bad teeth . I remember The British Invasion of the Bands and how you could nearly gauge the level of their sucess by when they finally showed up with a nice new set of toofers.
But I’ve never heard of British males being confused as gay males as a common occurrence before.
Took me a minute to decide who you were talking about.
I would imagine that most Americans’ exposure to British people is via the media (movies in particular) where (a) they’re frequently typecast and (b) is in an industry (showbiz) with a higher percentage of gay people than, say, steelworkers, builders, or mechanics.
Stereotyping nationalities is one of the few accepted stereotypes allowed these days. Hopefully it will one day go the way of the others. And it’s not like we’re not equally guilty of it, with our stereotypes of the French or Americans.
I do love the funk!
I’ve had countless instructors who were native speakers of Spanish from Puerto Rico to Spain and countless who were American-born non-native speakers, and nobody to my ear had ever sounded like that before. Once he spoke English, his Spanish accent made perfect sense, because he speaks English exactly like he speaks Spanish. I have to assume it’s because of his British accent.
Whatever woman was married to him. Sigh…
I’ve heard of it all my life, and I subscribed to it. Fastidious, fussy, sharp-dressed, a bit prissy, a high-class accent. It’s similar to the American inner-city homosexual stereotype. Hugh Grant, Jude Law, David Niven, Peter O’Toole… plenty of examples out there.
Would be a sad day for such a thing. If you can’t make fun of foreigners, who’s left?
There’s also this stereotypically higher pitched accent that some people could mistake for the type of gay person who likes to (often artificially) pitch up his voice to sound more feminine. Think Pip from South Park, Stewie from Family Guy, or the difference between the voice of Dr. Gregory House versus Hugh Laurie.