The documentary, Do I Sound Gay?, follows journalist, David Thorpe, as he attempts to alter his voice so that he does not sound gay. The documentary, beginning after David’s breakup with his boyfriend, is not only made up of David’s experiences, but the thoughts of other men on how they sound. It should be noted that David did not want to change his voice in order to come across as straight, but he felt that he was disconnected with the way his voice sounded.
For instance, David mentions how he does not think that he always spoke like a stereotypical gay man speaks. David came out during his first year at college, and his college roommate explains that David’s voice did change those first few months after coming out. David’s high school friend says that she didn’t care that David was gay, she was more disturbed that he altered his voice in order to fit this certain “gay” man mold. David’s sister related his voice change to her experience of coming out. She said that when she first identified herself as a lesbian, she went out and bought a leather jacket. Both the leather jacket and the voice change show a response to a change of identity within the individual. When David identified as being gay, he felt the need to take on the role of a stereotypical gay man.
One interesting topic in the documentary was how these men become versed in this so called gay accent. One man explained that he picked up this accent by listening to his mother and her friends converse on the phone. In addition, many times in the documentary, the men mention how their voices sound feminine and not very forceful. As David goes to more vocal therapy sessions, his instructor constantly reminds him that he must lower his voice. I find it interesting that in order to sound more masculine, a person must possess a lower, demanding voice, but in order to sound more feminine, a person should retain a higher, softer tone. This simply instills that women have been socialized to be more passive when men can be more aggressive. Many straight men with “feminine” voices say that often times people will assume that they are gay because of their voice. Some of the men who were interviewed mentioned that their high voices were the reason that many times they were made fun of in middle or high school. The negative connotation associated with the term “faggot” was one reason that many of the men in this video denied being gay in grade school.
One interviewee said that when people did not know he was gay from his voice, he took it as a complement. I think this would explain that although these men are proud of their sexual orientation, many of them do not want this characteristic of being gay to become their master status, or in other words, they don’t want to be defined as the “gay friend” or the “gay bartender” or any other person with the word “gay” automatically tacked on to the front of it. I think it is interesting that when someone is homosexual, people find it necessary to point out . On the other hand, some of the men in this video said that they did not care about what other people thought of their voice. They took pride in the fact that people could identify them as gay right away. One of David’s friends was even disappointed that David wanted to change the way he spoke. David’s friend thought that David was trying to hide who he was in order to fit into the mainstream normal way of speaking.
After all of the work he put into changing the way he sounded, I would not say I could really tell too much of a difference from the beginning of the documentary. With that being said, I would say that by the end of this, he was more confident in his voice. I feel as though David connected more with his voice as it related to who he identified with as a person.
http://www.netflix.com/watch/80018333?trackId=13752289&tctx=0%2C0%2Cf9f78ded2012c215fb4148d12c71233b2b41ccb3%3Af84b066d9664106143be08fcfe7bc1acc81696ce