Just had to revive this old thread after reading J. Michael Bailey's 'The Man Who Would Be Queen: The Science Of Gender-Bending And Transsexualism'. Although essentially a (slightly overstated but readable and well-summarised) review of the research literature on the origins of gender dysphoria (and the politics surrounding the diagnosis itself), a good third of the book is devoted to discussion of the very phenomena we've been talking about in this thread.
Loading his text with pre-emptive disclaimers (science can only confirm or refute stereotypes on average, not all gay men are alike and not all straight men are alike, etc., etc.), Bailey nonetheless manages to apply the scientific method fairly convincingly to some of the cliches of gender and sexuality, and challenges some old assumptions.
He cites the work of the social psychologist Richard Lippa, and repeats some of his experiments. Lippa studied occupational and recreational interests and found that, on many scales, gay men were midway between men and women in terms of sex-typed interests (conjuring up the 1950s spectre of the 'third sex') and that this appears to be consistent across several cultures.
The concept of the 'gay accent' (what's referred to as the sssibilant "lisp" above) is also studied:
"We recruited homosexual men and women to the lab to provide several types of data. We got approximately 30 from each group; the relevant groups here are gay and heterosexual men. The relevant data, for now, consisted of short speech samples. Every subject read the Harvard Sentences, a collection of sentences that are interesting to linguists because they contain all the phonemes (elemental sounds) of the English language. Some example sentences include:
"It's easy to tell the depth of a well.
Four hours of steady work faced us.
Help the woman get back to her feet.
The soft cushion broke the man's fall.
"Subjects read the sentences into a microphone connected to a computer, which stored the recordings. Next, we recruited an entirely different sample of homosexual and heterosexual men and women to listen to the four sentences above. This new sample (Listeners) rated each person in the first sample (Speakers) on a scale of 1 (very heterosexual sounding) to 7 (very gay sounding)."
Basically, Bailey found that only 10% of the heterosexual men were rated above 4, while 75% of the gay men were - suggesting that, although it's difficult to define a 'gay accent', we're generally good at identifying that if a man sounds gay he probably is. One qualifier being that 25% of gay men have speech patterns well within the 'straight' range. Furthermore, there was twice as much variation among the gay speakers as in the straight speakers.
Bailey went on to replicate Nalini Ambady's 1999 study suggesting that gay men move differently. He videotaped 10-second clips of the same sample of gay and straight people standing, sitting, etc. and used a computer to remove all static information (clothing, hairstyle, etc.) and produce a gender-neutral 'outline-only' image. Raters used an established scale to assess 'masculine' and 'feminine' movements.
The results were similar to the 'gay accent' study in that there were significant differences observed between gay and straight men, and that gay men exhibited a much greater degree of variation. Gay men scored in the direction of heterosexual women but were much closer to heterosexual men (ie. there was more difference between male and female than between straight men and gay men).
So... although the jury's out on whether the recognisable 'gay accent' is feminine, it could be concluded that the average gay man moves in a more feminine way than the average straight man.
The chapter on 'Gay Masculinity' looks at gay male sexual behaviours and concludes that, in this respect, gay men are much more similar to straight men than to straight women - but that's probably straying outwith the remit of this thread.
It can be argued that Bailey's sample sizes are on the small side, and he doesn't provide detailed accounts of his methodology - but these are still intriguing results, particularly following on from the earlier studies which inspired them. Do they answer any of Foust's original questions?
Well, it would seem that there certainly are observable (and statistically significant) differences in the way (on average) gay and straight men talk and move, and in the careers and recreations they choose. It's also true that gay men exhibit around twice as much variation in their behaviours - which possibly lends weight to my own assertion that attempting to confine my own behaviours to the 'straight' end of the spectrum was pretty stressful.
Are these behaviours "affectations"? Difficult to say, as the question strikes at the heart of the various theories of 'nature/nurture' with regard to human sexuality - and there's a whole separate thread in this.
It's a good book, though. Recommended. |
