Muad’Dib’s post was a good laugh to start the morning, thanks!
As for the gay lilt, I don’t know. I don’t think it’s adopted to be “camp” because I have known far too many gay men who speak that way naturally and desperately try to butch it up. Sad to say, being a flaming queen is as unpopular among gay men as it is among straight men.
Some gay men have a fem voice, and some don’t; why that is, I could not say.
My partner and I do a lot of traveling, and between us speak a few languages. “The voice” is instantly recognizable in English, Spanish, Portugese, French and German. I think I can pick it up in Japanese as well.
The old post-Freudians might say that the proto-gay child is picking it up from his mother, with whom he is overidentified - that it is further intensified by the female peers whom he seeks out. After all, little girls do speak differently than little boys.
I have no dog in this race, and, I’m afraid, no answers. But I do think the enquiry is always legitimate.
Again, I also think the media plays a role.
Just this morning, I saw on TV this Mario guy on the View, I think, and he was queening it up (have no idea if he says he’s gay or not), and all the ladies were laughing and giggling and it was all jutht tho delightful - :rolleyes: . It’s occurred to me many times that the media rewards highly effeminate gay men and punishes gay men who present personas which viewers may find confusing, i.e., the “straight-acting, straight-appearing” gay man. I guess the media doesn’t want gay men “acting up,” getting uppity.
I have a theory that many men in the media must be closeted gay or bisexual men who have a vested interest in distancing themselves from identifiably gay men since historically, gay men have been punished so severely. Thus, the images of gay men which people generally receive from the media are extreme, and if you don’t regularly go to gay bars/clubs or if you don’t know any openly gay men, your notions of how gay men talk or walk or act are going to be skewed.
Interesting observation SeamusToo. I never thought about that. Now, if this explains it, then why would straight guys talk effeminately?
This is imho a very valid point. I have heard proposed before that the super-queen style is to a certain extent a survival trick, that by being sissyish (womanly if you want) the person marks themselves clearly as “other”, but safe and unthreatening (here specifically the effeminate part), the fool/jester, whatever. Don’t know how valid it is as an argument, but it is an interesting one.
imho there is a larger percentage of gay men who speak gay than straight men who speak gay. Maybe some gay men like the way it sounds and try to talk like that.
I have friends who speak this way and I’ve never noticed them not do it. For them, I think it is something just natural. I think of it along the lines of women and the baby talk voice. Some women really speak like that, but a lot of people think it’s an act upon first meeting them.
Then there are the people who use that voice/accent on occasion, which in my experience, is more for show. For example, the women who baby talk to appear cute or more appealing. Or for a utilitarian purpose. I doubt you’d realize my brother is gay from his speech, but I’ve heard him go off on a queen bitching at us for taking too long to say goodbye in a crowded parking lot on Christmas. The person backed right off, and showed respect in a way I doubt he would have, had my brother not done this. I also think the same goes for a lot of straight guys, with the machismo thing.
I’m not claiming to be an expert, but I myself doubt there is really any one reason for this style of speech.
I once dated a guy who’d grown up in a tiny town in southern CA. He had the stereotypical lilt and drawn-out vowels we associate with “sounding gay.” He said this was a major frustration in his life; everyone in his town sounded like him, so he grew up with that as his native style of speech. But he was completely straight, as were the other members of his family (as far as he knew) and a lot of the rest of the town.
This could be completely apocryphal, but he told me that what most of us Merkuns think of as “sounding gay” is actually sounding small-town Southern Californinan. He said that after WW2, a lot of discharged military ended up in CA, and some of them picked up the South CA small town accent/intonation (SCASTAI). When San Fransisco became a center for out gays, having and keeping the SCASTAI somehow became a way for people to mark, by their speech patterns, what community they belonged to. From there, speaking in that style became a part of asserting your identity as a gay man.
My personal experience has been that, amongst my group of friends, that… not really accent, but flavor of voice certainly predominates amongst the gay men. I myself come from a family with males who have very deep, resonant voices and mine is easily the highest pitched (although not completely outside the normal range for average men) and I do tend to flame it up in my day to day acting. I always have as well. We have videos of our trips to Disney World when I was aged all of 6 or 7 and I was most definitely a budding little queen at that age. I’d also like to draw the distinction between effeminate and camp. Although they have many parallels and cross-overs, the two are rather separate phenomena. I, for example, can be very camp but am rather androgynous in mannerism. Lisps are no more or less common among my circle of gay friends than straight, so thats complete tripe.
As to why… why do some kids grow up super-jocks? Why do some turn into whiny brats? Probably a combination of many tiny factors which coalesced into that person’s character. Why would so many gay men turn into screaming queens? I tend to favor the “permission” line of thought laid out above. Gay men are given more permission to act in campy ways without fearing mockery they’re not already getting. I also would like to cite a study done indicating that gay men, whatever their commonalities, come from homes and backgrounds just as diverse as straight men, so therefore I would buy into a certain percentage deriving it from internal drives rather than external forces (distant father, clinging mother, whatever…)
This is a dangerous discussion to wade into…
My uncle is most certainly gay, and you would never know it unless you happen to witness him doing Scott Thompson’s “Buddy” monologues after a flat of beer.
I have a friend who I am reasonably certain is not gay who could certainly pass for it based on voice, speech patterns and mannerisms.
If I think about it - I know gay guys who don’t speak in any obviously “flaming” manner, and I know some who do.
I would venture that it’s like any mannerism or behaviour a person chooses; I have very different “voices” depending on time and place - perhaps others do the same.