Words and sentences, for many males, end on a lower, authoritative pitch. It’s tiny differences in pronunciations: clearer and longer vowels, longer ‘s’ and ‘l’ sounds, and the over-articulation of plosive consonants ‘p’, ‘t’, and ‘k’. There are answers of what exactly a gay-sounding voice is. Running parallel to that mission is more an exploration of the “gay voice” in general.
He embarks on a mission to lose his gay voice in very much the same way a person might lose an accent, a dialect, or a speech impediment. Why would I? Who could respect, much less fall in love with, an old braying ninny like me?” “Why did we all insist on sounding like a pack of braying ninnies?” he asks. (Here’s your tiara and sash!) Your sexuality isn’t a badge you’re forced to wear on your vocal cords. You could “pass for straight,” as if that's some crowning achievement of homosexual normativity. If you’re a gay man and your sexuality is not immediately discernible when you speak, you’ve somehow attained some sort of homosexual superiority. The phenomenon of “gay voice” is complicated enough, made further muddied by the fact that there seems to be-as I have felt constantly-a shame in sounding gay. Mostly, it just sounded like an auditory rainbow flag was billowing out of my mouth. I’ve tried just totally embracing it, leaning into my natural way of speaking with pride and enthusiasm and hoping that the naturalness and, hopefully, the entertainment value of me at my most me would counterbalance any stark tones of gayishness. Nope-just sounded like a really gay guy talking in a creepy deep voice. In the past I’ve tried speaking in deeper tones to mask it. (And if I have it’s time to seriously reevaluate my life.) But there is something just gay about it. I’m not sure that I have ever used a word like “fierce” or called anybody “gurrrl” with sincerity. I’m not flagrantly flamboyant or distractingly lisp-y in the way that a sitcom caricature is, and I don’t speak in a particularly high octave. It would be hard for me to tell you exactly what it is that makes my sexuality evident the minute I begin speaking. It might be all in my head, a place in which I have the kind of speaking voice that would make Will and Grace’s Jack McFarland cock a judgy eyebrow and whisper out of the side of his mouth, “Well isn’t he a bit much…” But god, admirably adhering to his insistence that we should all be humble, has given us Twitter-and its population of missionaries ready and willing to inform me of just how gay I sound.
Others in the documentary are Ellen DeGeneres, Neil Patrick Harris and professional football player Wade Davis.They may be right. It was timed to LGBT Pride Month and the 44th anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall Riots, widely considered the official start of the gay rights movement.īut it also comes as the Supreme Court is due to weigh in on gay marriage Wednesday. The film by award-winning photographer and director Timothy Greenfield-Sanders explores first-hand stories from prominent members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. Sykes says she has "no regrets" about the decision in the documentary The Out List, premiering on HBO Thursday night. Wanda Sykes was not planning to come out publicly as a lesbian during an impromptu 2008 speech in Las Vegas.