High-pitched, long, incredibly articulate vowels: the so-called “gay voice” is a real phenomenon, researchers say.
Two scientific YouTubers have analyzed the studies behind the theory that gay men have a unique accent that transcends things like culture and education.
Mitch Moffit, a biologist, and Greg Brown, a science teacher, both gay, explored what exactly constitutes a “gay voice” and what might cause it.
In a clip uploaded to his channel, AsapSCIENCEEarlier this year, the pair discussed research dating back to the early 1990s.
They found that analysis comparing the tone of heterosexual and gay men’s voices found key differences in their speech.
Researchers claim that the high-pitched, extended and incredibly articulate vowels, the so-called “gay voice” is a real phenomenon. stock image
Moffit explained, “The results show that gay men speak with a higher pitch variation, meaning their low-to-high range is much more extreme than that of straight men.”
Brown added: “Gay men were also found to have longer vowel durations for ‘a’, ‘i’ and ‘u’; they generally held these vowels longer when speaking compared to heterosexual men.
An interesting aspect of these tone analyzes was that the results were not language specific and were replicated in English, French, and Dutch.
“The gay voice expands beyond language and it’s not just the words or the culture we participate in,” Moffit said.
Brown also highlighted a specific way the ‘s’ sound seemed to be pronounced among gay men.
“Gay men are also more likely to hold the s sound longer than heterosexual men,” he said.
He highlighted how this is contrary to the so-called “gay lisp,” a perceived quality of gay men’s speech in which they misarticulate the “s” sound as a “th.”
Mitch Moffit, a biologist, and Greg Brown, a science teacher, both gay, explored what exactly constitutes a “gay voice” and what might cause it.
However, studies have shown that gay men do not have a higher rate of lisp than their heterosexual counterparts.
But a key difference observed between sexualities was that straight men were more likely to mumble and slur their words compared to gay men who were more articulate.
These initial findings sparked theories that the “gay voice” was related to hormones, specifically the male sex hormone testosterone.
Testosterone performs a variety of functions in the body and, specifically for the voice, deepens it during male puberty.
So the theory was that gay men, for some reason, didn’t get as much testosterone as straight men, resulting in a different-sounding voice.
However, studies to explore the theory found no evidence for this, as gay men produce as much testosterone as heterosexual men.
With an internal cause at a dead end, scientists began looking at external environmental factors and found something quite interesting.
An interesting aspect of these tone analyzes was that the results were not language specific and were replicated in English, French, and Dutch.
It turns out that both gay and straight men change the way they speak depending on who is listening to them.
Mr Brown explained: “One study found that heterosexual men spoke in more stereotypically masculine ways to strangers than to people they felt comfortable with.”
He continued: ‘Straight men lowered their voices when speaking in leadership roles when giving orders or commands.
“They would also lower their voices in the presence of an attractive woman.”
Moffit said gay men would also change their voices, but in different contexts.
“A Thai study found that homosexuals changed their voices depending on whether they were talking to friends, co-workers or family,” he said.
‘They tend to use their voice more in falsetto, or upper vocal range, when talking to friends.
“An Italian study also found that gay men would sound more gay when talking to someone they had already talked to or if they were talking to someone they assumed was gay.”
He added that some studies had also found that gay men who expressed disgust at “sounding gay” deliberately changed the way they spoke.
More recent research has found that both gay and straight men change the way they speak depending on who is listening to them and what they wanted to project to these groups.
When volunteers were given samples of these men’s voices to listen to, these gay men were more likely to be identified as heterosexual, showing that the “gay voice” could in principle be modified.
Moffit said one of his favorite studies on the topic was one on gay YouTubers that found that once they came out, listeners would find they sounded increasingly gay over time.
These findings, taken together, gave rise to the hypothesis that the gay voice, rather than an innate way of speaking, is a form of social signaling.
As Mr Brown explains: “This has led to the theory that appearing gay is an adaptation by gay men to allow those around them to know that they are actually gay.”
As such, it is context dependent and can be muted or changed entirely if a person does not want to send that signal.
While the couple said there had been some research on the voices of lesbians, those studies were far fewer than those of gay men, and while experts had found some differences, they were not as different as those of gay men. .
Brown concluded the clip by saying that it was critical to remember that the differences seen in heterosexual and homosexual voices were general trends and would naturally vary by individual.
“Of course, many straight men can look gay and gay men can look straight,” he said.
“But studies show that there is a difference in speech that will change depending on who is listening to you.”
The pair also recently discussed the “gay face” phenomenon and whether people and AI could tell if a person is gay or lesbian based on the physical characteristics of their face.