Yeah, the 70 and early 80s was pretty crazy. But deliberate lisps was not different than doing the Arnie hyper bulk look. It was all in response to the AIDs epidemic
Funny Events of the "Woke" world
- Thread starter CriticalGaming
- Start date
The thing is, people don't generally consciously, deliberately develop 'lisps' (by which you mean the sibilant S that characterizes gay voice). The only group to routinely do so are trans people.
A lot of gay men who have gay voice don't like the way they speak, or feel that it hurts them professionally and socially (which it often does). The gay community has such a thing about hypermasculinity now that it's not even an asset there.
Gay voice often manifests in adolescence, but you can find plenty of people who have or had it as children. There are a bunch of theories as to where it comes from, but it's largely unconscious, it just happens. The reasons are probably very complex and individual. It's possible that, for some people, it probably is a strategy they developed for immediately testing whether the people around them are going to be homophobic or not, but if so, it wasn't conscious.
Gay voice is used in fiction, a lot. The problem is that when you use gay voice in fiction, you often end up referencing and repeating the various pejorative or infantilizing stereotypes of queer men that straight people still seem to love for some reason. Today, it's often used to position queer (or queer coded) men as cutesy and non-threatening, rather than evil, but honestly that feels like a huge downgrade to me.
Last edited:
Just to add on, most of the gay men I know don't have any lisp at all. Like, 1 in 50
I second this, which only adds fuel to the "they do it on purpose" fire. It is one of many ways that people deliberately broadcast their sexual preferences as the first thing you know about it. This is not exclusive to gay people, and it's always annoying in every manifestation.
Purely rationalized, unscientific theories, I'm sure. I'm gonna have to put my foot down here: accents are a social construct. There is no "it just happens naturally" for accents.
The fact that accents are a social construct is such a completely self-explanatory non-point that I'm kind of forced to wonder what you think that means.
Because it doesn't mean we can decide to adopt our accents. You can learn to affect an accent, but changing your accent takes literally years (if it can be done at all). You can learn to affect or fake an accent with conscious effort, but that's not changing your accent, it's just learning an affectation.
A lot of people who don't have any experience of it think that gay speech is an affectation, that it's fake and something people put on. It's not. Noone sits in front of a mirror practicing gay speech for hours. It's simply the way some people speak. They didn't consciously learn it, many of them have been doing it since they were children and certainly before they understood what it meant to be gay, others started to do it as teenagers once they came out. Many people who do it don't like it, or wish they could hide it more easily.
So, if we do read it as a kind of strategic visibility, then I'm pretty sure finding it annoying indicates that you're probably exactly the kind of person it is designed to filter out.
Also, straight people making up a stereotype and then getting mad at gay children for internalizing it is kind of peak heterosexuality really. You can't win with the straights.
Yep. I've been living in the north east for more than half my life now, but I still sound like Ricky from Eastenders.
I can kind of be an accent changeling. Was handy working at a cool center. Even had people asking me "what part of Boston did you grow up in?" (or any other region with a strong accent). I have never been to anywhere remotely close to Boston, or most places really.
Bastard of the thing is that I can't do i consciously. It dies off as soon as I'm not hearing it for a bit
Bastard of the thing is that I can't do i consciously. It dies off as soon as I'm not hearing it for a bit
Well, conservatives consider things that are "feminine" (cutesy and non-threatening being feminine) to be inferior, so it's only natural that's the direction that would be taken.
When it comes to accents, I tend to automatically start leaning towards the accents I'm surrounded with, and more quickly than usual. It does cause some issues when someone thinks I'm mocking the way they talk because I subconsciously start imitating their patterns/accents, but that's just how it works for me.
I mean, if people want to filter out the people who don't want to have sex with them (and they do want that, that's what Tinder is), yes, I am exactly the kind of person they're trying to filter out. I don't intend to have sex with the type of person who wants first and foremost to know if I'll have sex with them.
Wait, do you believe that anyone with a "gay lisp" is a gross, sleazy person? Or is it just that anyone who clocks you for your beliefs hating them and therefore doesn't want to be around you?
Is the guy who goes to the bar and tries pick-up lines on all the women to weed out those not interested gross and annoying? Is the woman who drapes herself over guys to find one interested gross and annoying? Is anyone who enters a room with a big flashing billboard saying "who wants to sleep with me" ever not gross and annoying? Most of the stereotypes of gay men are not accurate to any significant portion of actual gay men, yet there are those who embrace all the stereotypes, and they do so for the same reason as anyone else presenting prominent outward displays of their sexuality: advertisement. And ads are annoying.
Or they're just testing the room for weirdos who think gay people are inherently sexual and will think all of the above.
Got all that from a lisp, huh
It may, possibly, be somewhat due to the switch in personal expression that comes from being released from the role of the stereotypical straight male (stoic, unexpressive monotone). Expressing oneself with lots of modulation and varied inflections and emphasis is not typically associated with straight macho men. It probably comes as something of a relief when one has accepted one is not like that and is free to, in comparison, overact almost.
I would like to see more varied expression from men that does not coincide with their sexual orientation.
If people with gay speech were doing it to "advertise" and get laid, they wouldn't. That's the simple answer. There is so much femmephobia and internalized homophobia in the gay community, and particularly in gay sexual culture, that exhibiting any form of femininity (including gay speech) is a massive negative. If you're a gay man and you wanted to advertise your sexual availability and get laid, you would adopt a hypermasculine persona. You certainly wouldn't adopt any stereotypically gay characteristics, in fact you'd reject those completely. You'd intentionally make yourself as straight-acting and butch as possible (at least, superficially).
There are two types of people who do gay speech nowadays. People who have actively embraced a more femme identity because it's who they are (even if it means being somewhat ostracised) because they're strong enough as individuals not to care what people think, and people who have done it since they were children, hate it and wish they could stop.
The fact that it bothers you so much is not surprising, femmephobia and homophobia make obvious partners, but really? All this over someone speaking with a slightly elongated 's' sound? That's some fragility. Why would anyone gay not want to filter you out if all it takes is saying a letter differently to send you over the edge? You're clearly going to go over the edge eventually, so why bother with you at all?
Not sure what that "gay speech" is supposed to be. But that is probably me being a foreign speakers still struggling with some of the finer implications or associations of certain ways to speak English.
You're mistaking two different concepts here. What you're really suggesting (and I'm taking your word on this) is that if a gay man wants to be attractive, they adopt a hypermasculine persona. That is a different thing in kind than blatant advertising of sexual availability. Pick-up lines don't make people more attracted to you, they advertise your interest. Little black dresses aren't what men find most attractive, I'm fairly confident most men prefer a pretty girl in a sundress over a drunk one in a sausage casing, but the latter is more likely to want to sleep with you. The things people find attractive and the things socially coded to sexuality are not identical.
Just to be clear... you know that hypermasculine concept was created by gay people right?
It was an effective way to show that you weren't weak like those people with AIDS.