Do I Sound Gay? is a documentary by journalist David Thorpe that explores the so-called "gay voice" or "gay accent". It's not the most substantial of documentaries, but it raises some interesting questions.
Thorpe interviews a number of celebrities about gay voices, including Dan Savage, David Sedaris, Margaret Cho, and Tim Gunn. Listening to their perspectives is far more interesting than listening to Thorpe talk to his own friends about his own insecurities surrounding his voice (his friends are basically like, "who cares?").
Sedaris, in particular, has a couple moments of honesty and vulnerability that are touching--such as his embarrassment when people call him "ma'am" on the phone or his shame-ridden delight when someone meets him and says "I didn't know you were gay." His comments get to the the heart of the matter: 1) the "gay accent" sounds effeminate to most people's ears and 2) a number of gay men are embarrassed by it for a variety of reasons, not least of which is, as Dan Savage bluntly explains, good old fashioned misogyny. Gay guys don't want to sound like women because being "like a woman" is humiliating for a man, no matter his sexual orientation.
Thorpe also visits a speech therapist who points out his habit of up-talking, which is the thing where it always sounds like you're asking a question even when you're making a statement. She also makes him aware of his tendency to hang on to his vowels. These are all speech patterns women tend to exhibit more than men. So, again, we have the female/gay male connection.
A theory that Thorpe points to is that people tend to pattern their speech on those they spend the most time with while growing up. So for some gay men, and many women, that's female relatives and friends. Thorpe gives the example of one of his gay friends who grew up with four brothers and thus sounds "the straightest of all of us".
I'm not a gay man, so I can't speak to that experience. But as a woman, I do know that women are given mixed messages about their speech. For example, we are taught not to sound too assertive, lest we alienate people and come off as bitchy. This is one reason why women up-talk, say "I'm sorry" a lot, or act self-deprecatingly. But then, we're also told that our speech patterns hold us back--by up-talking, apologizing, and having "vocal fry" (I'm probably most guilty of that last one), we come off as weak and ineffective. As with many aspects of womanhood, you're damned if you do and damned if you don't.
This leads to a lot of interesting, and potentially upsetting questions. Why are gay men seen as "effeminate"? Is that something our culture thrusts upon them? Are gay men more "privileged" than women...or are they less privileged? And does amount of privilege really matter when both groups still struggle for dignity and equality? Growing up, I realized that straight men seemed to reserve a special anger/hatred/violence for "flaming" gay guys. Is this because those straight men hate women...or just hate other men who don't act masculine?
The answers to these questions aren't simple. Gender and sexuality don't fit neatly into boxes--there really is no concrete definition of what it means to be "masculine", "feminine", "gay", or "straight"...and I think most of us logically know this despite our efforts to categorize people for reasons both harmless (hey, I want to know if that cute guy is gay or straight before I ask him out!) or harmful.
Thorpe's documentary merely scratches the surface of this topic. It raises more questions than it answers, and it barely touches on other markers of gayness, like body language and clothing. It also briefly brings pop culture into the mix, using clips from old movies to show how gay characters have been portrayed as harmless, effeminate sidekicks and/or dangerous killers (children's movies are no exception--think Scar from The Lion King). But not until very recently have they been portrayed as normal human beings and/or heroes.
I'd love to see more work from Thorpe. Do I Sound Gay? is an more of an appetizer than a full meal.
Grade: B-
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