Gay voice is one thing: You can tell a man is homosexual by the way he talks, scientists say

High, extended vowels and incredibly articulate: the so-called ‘gay voice’ is a real phenomenon, researchers say.

Two scientific YouTubers have scoured studies behind the theory that gay men have a unique touch that transcends aspects like culture and upbringing.

Mitch Moffit, a biologist, and Greg Brown, a science teacher – both of whom are gay – investigated what exactly constitutes a ‘gay voice’ and what might cause it.

In a clip uploaded to their channel, SCIENCE ASAPearlier this year the pair looked at research dating back to the early ’90s.

They found that analyzes comparing the pitch of straight men’s and gay men’s voices revealed important differences in the way they speak.

Mr Moffit explained: ‘The results show that gay men speak with a higher pitch variation, meaning their range from low to high is much more extreme than that of straight men.’

Mr Brown added: ‘It was also found that gay men have longer vowel durations for “a”, “i” and “u” – they generally hold these vowels longer when speaking, compared to straight men.’

An interesting aspect of these pitch analyzes was that the results were not language specific and were replicated in English, French and Dutch.

“The gay voice goes beyond language and doesn’t just include the words or the culture we engage with,” Moffit said.

Mr. Brown also highlighted a specific way the “s” sound seemed to be pronounced among gay men.

“Gay men also tend to hold their sound longer than straight men,” he said.

He highlighted how this conflicts with the so-called ‘gay lisp’, a perceived quality of gay men’s speech where they misarticulate the ‘s’ sound as ‘th’.

However, studies have shown that gay men do not lisp more often than their heterosexual counterparts.

But a key observed difference between the 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 led to theories that “gay voice” was related to hormones, specifically the male sex hormone testosterone.

Testosterone fulfills several functions in the body, and specifically for the voice, it deepens it during male puberty.

So the theory was that gay men, for whatever reason, didn’t get as much testosterone as straight men, which led to a different sounding voice.

However, studies to investigate the theory have found no evidence for this: homosexual men produce the same amount of testosterone as heterosexual men.

With an internal cause at a dead end, scientists started looking at external environmental factors and found something very interesting.

It turns out that both gay and straight men change their sounds based on who was listening.

Mr Brown explained: ‘One study found that straight men would speak in a stereotypically more masculine way to strangers than to people they felt comfortable with.’

He continued, “Straight men would lower 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.”

Mr Moffit said gay men would also change their voices, but in different contexts.

“A Thai study found that gays change their voices depending on whether they are talking to friends, colleagues or family members,” he said.

“They tend to use the most falsetto, or higher vocal range, when talking to friends

‘An Italian study also found that gay men would sound gay when talking to someone they had already come out to, or when talking to someone they thought was gay.’

He added that some studies also found that gay men who hated “sounding gay” deliberately changed their speech.

When volunteers were given samples of these men’s voices to listen to, these gay men were more likely to identify as straight, demonstrating that the “gay voice” could in principle be modified.

Mr. Moffit said one of his favorite studies on the subject was one on gay YouTubers, which found that after they came out, listeners would sound increasingly gay over time.

These findings as a whole 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 a theory that sounding homosexual is an adaptation by gay men to let others around them know that they are in fact homosexual.’

As such, it is context dependent and can be completely muted or changed if someone doesn’t want to broadcast that signal.

Although the pair said there had been some research into lesbian voices, such studies were far smaller than those in gay men, and while experts had found some differences, these were not as clear as those among gay men.

Mr Brown concluded the segment by saying that it is crucial to remember that the perceived differences between heterosexual and homosexual voices are general trends and can of course vary from individual to individual.

“Of course, a lot of straight men can sound gay and gay men can sound straight,” he said.

“But research shows there is a difference in speech that will change depending on who was listening to you.”

The pair also recently discussed the “gay face” phenomenon and whether humans, and AI, could tell if someone is gay or lesbian based on the physical features of their face.