Oooh, I thought the same thing! Plus, he's done pray-away-the-Gay therapy, right? I think that's as good of proof as a photo of him kissing Ted Haggard.

Serious question though: what causes the sterotypical gay voice? Is it higher estrogen levels? A quick google search just yielded idiotic conjecture and a wikipedia page that said:

"The phenomenon of "gay lisp" and its study are poorly understood similar to other secondary external attributes or verbal and non-verbal mannerisms of both gay and straight people. These attributes have proven difficult to define and quantify but seem somewhat independent of other variables in the phonology of the English language, such as accent and register. The gay lisp stereotype has never been substantiated in an experimental study."

He's a sithky. A real sithky.

Takes one to know one.

And beyond the somewhat stereotyped tone and pronunciation (some of it could be the Minnesota flat vowels), the content of his comments is TOTAL BULLSHIT. Just because he "sees it" and predicts it does not mean it's right or that it's going to happen.
Personally I think the "responsibility as authority figures" thing is 100 times more creepy than his lisp. (But I agree, my first take was, ohhhh is that guy gay?")

Dear Larry Flint,

Please offer a reward to any gay man that comes forward about having sex with Michele Bachmann's husband. Thanks.

@3, I always just figured it was caused by a bad case of hemorrhoids.

I saw this on Lawrence O'Donnell yesterday. There's not a chance in hell Lawrence was unaware of how he sounded.

That voice plus being a raging homophobe involved in pray-the-gay-away abuse? Let's just say he could be straight, but I don't see it as particularly likely.

Oh and just for fun everyone should go on Google and put Marcus Bachmann in. Three guesses as to the first autocomplete option...

You know, I almost want Bachmann to win in 2012 just for the total entertainment value of her being in the White House. Though it would mean the US launching nuclear weapons on some unsuspecting country because Jesus told her to destroy them in His glory.

I for one am looking forward to all the crass "firtht lady" jokes we're going to hear starting next year.

I'm straight, so theoretically I shouldn't have any gaydar. But he definitely sets it off!

I think the stereotypical "gay speech pattern" incorporates elements of the typical feminine speech pattern, including some intonation, nasality (or what my voice teacher called "head register" as opposed to "chest register"), a wider range of pitch associated with emotional expressiveness, and keeping the mouth partially closed when speaking -- which leads to a bit of crowding around the tongue, and sometimes that lisp. But, I'm just a casual observer, certainly no expert.

@7 Spell the man's name right -- Larry Flynt. Yes, and please! This would be an insane coup.

He has admitted to struggling with homosexual desires in the past.

And there's this. Whoa. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wU66lIHW1…

Let me add that one of the things I don't understand about this type of person is that he's decided gay people should not live their lives the way they choose, the way that makes them happy. Who's he? Really, who the fuck does he think he is? To me this is unmatched arrogance. The words"...with liberty and justice for all." mean absolutely nothing to this creep. Well, I think he's an ignorant asshole and his wife is a fag hag bitch.

Queeny Queen Queen!

No wonder Michelle Bachmann is crazy. She's been some gay closet case's beard for the last 30+ years.

@15 Yep. That there is one pretty uninhibited gay-acting man.

Is a gay guy with a no-lisp "straight" voice a closeted heterosexual?

Seriously, what's up with this kind of stereotyping? Bachmann is a reprehensible human being, but come on.

To be fair, I know two men with "gay voice" who are straight (to whatever degree of certainty is possible in matters of human sexuality: they date/have sex with women, express no sexual interest in men, and display no signs of self-loathing homophobia). That said, Marcus Bachmann screams "self-loathing closet-case".

I'm a straight white man from the south whose lisp is among the least of my weird traits that led to having so many people hang a gay label around my neck in middle school that every now and again I still doubt at the age of 42.

So I refuse to call Dr. Bachmann as gay without actual evidence of actual cockery.

But damn, the only person that gay seeming I've ever been wrong about was Michael "Blue Light Special" Jackson.

The anti-gay bullying (sorry: counseling) aside, he is showing how he's made a choice to be straight(ish), right? He's his own proof. It sucks, it's not right the way he portrays "God's Will" and uses the term "barbarian" (classy, btw). But he can prove that the "homosexual lifestyle" can be chosen and rejected.

Now, if he could be HONEST about it all (and apologized for the bullying), would that make it okay?

We should probably sign Bachmann up for that "Straight Spouses" thing you were talking about yesterday Dan.

George Rekers makes out with a guy ONE TIME and all of the sudden that makes him GAY?

Marcus could've done worse, Bachmann actually looks like she's been reverse-aging.

it's like he's made a video for the ' this is what happens when it doesn't get better' project.

...aka 'it gets worse'

AWESOME

lyle the effeminate heterosexual!

Sullivan posted this video next to a video of Corky St. Clair's introductory scene from Waiting For Guffman. They are virtually voice-twins.

Ugh. Slog, this doesn't help. Every time you go ape-shit over a Palin malapropism, or Bachmann's tenuous grasp of history you are promoting the spectacle over substance. You are playing into personality politics. Do you think the average GOP voter finds it embarrassing or disconcerting when Bachmann mistakes a serial killer for an actor in her home town? No, in fact they find it charming. Did we not learn anything from G.W. Bush?

It's the policy stupid!

If you don't trust me, how about Eleanor Roosevelt: "Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people."

@15. The audio Dan posted didn't convince me. But, that video...well, that says it all. Wow.

Uh, maybe this is too obvious to state, but when a guy with a gayish lisp says "just because you think it, doesn't mean you should act on it," in reference to sucking dick, is he not obviously talking about himself?

Perhaps he didn't get enough therapy from George Rekers when he was a child. Well, obviously he didn't; he's still alive.

@11:

"/ Donald Trump slash fiction"?

@30, yesssss! Corky St. Clair!

So, we have the initiator of the It Gets Better project pointing at someone and saying, in effect, "hey, he sounds like a FAG! isn't that funny?"

Yeah. That so helps.

As a linguist, I'm curious about "gay speech". It exists in my mother tongue (Portuguese), and its features there are so remarkably similar to "gay speech" in English that it can't be a coincidence (I'll bet that, if you can identify gay speech in English, you also can in Portuguese, even if you don't understand a word of this language...). Also in Dutch and in German.

Why is that? Where does "gay speech" come from? It can't be (as with Black English Vernacular) a dialect transmitted by other speakers surrounding the gay person, since in their linguistic formative years most gay people are not surrounded by other gays... Also, it can't be like a local dialect feature, since gay speakers, like all other speakers, pick up their own local dialects (a gay Texan still sounds Texan).

So where does "gay speech" come from? Is it indeed an attempt to mimic female speech patterns? And how widespread is it among gays (and does it correlate with any other gay cultural divisions, like bears, twinks, drag queens, etc. etc. etc.?).

Just curious.

@38 FTW.

It is endlessly curious to the troll that Queer,Inc.'s supreme weapon it unleashes on its most despised enemies is to accuse them of being homosexual.

curious.....

This guy is a dead ringer for Eric Stonestreet's character on "Modern Family." He couldn't be gayer if he tried.

@39 (anlylosaur): What are the features of "gay speech," beyond the lisp? It is just inflection? Are there grammatic or syntactic elements? Is it only recognizable in oral form or also in written? There are theories about BEV that suggest it corresponds to Kiswahili grammar and syntax. Those should be present in written form, and indeed they are. But the pronunciation "axe" for "ask" isn't a grammatical issue, but something different.
Just curious.

@3 and others:
Actually there is a historical origin for the stereotype of the "gay lisp". Ancient Greek playwright Sophocles (maybe it was Aristophanes) wrote a comedy that included a parody of a famous general of the day who both:
1) was gay
and
2) spoke with a lisp.

Both were well known facets of his public persona and were included in the parody. The association has been with us ever since.

@31..ahh but in the case of these folks spectacle IS the substance. i'd wager that madame roosevelt didn't have to endure the smallest of people daily forays into bad ideology aided by soundbites. don't blame the victims here.

@38 & 41
the accusation isn't that he's homosexual .if he were merely homosexual i don't think anybody here would care.nobody is using the term as a pejorative. but if he's is in fact ' a raging self hating closet case' whose wife is running for the highest office in the land , who hopes to be quuen of the known universe'..well.. that's a unicorn of a completely different color dont'cha think ?

Much as I despise agreeing with the troll, we can't help Gay be accepted as Normal if we ourselves use gay stereotypes as pejoratives.

@3 and others: An acquaintance (a gay linguist, actually) did his undergrad thesis research on gay male speech and his major finding (forgive me if I misuse/misremember terminology; I am not a linguist myself and this was years ago!) was that some gay men, like women, use more "registers" than do straight men. So most English speakers have (I think) four registers-- very low, low, medium, and high-- and women also have a "very high" register (think of a sorority girl saying "oh my GOD! How ARE you!" where "god" and "are" are higher in pitch), and that very high register is also used by some gay men, making their voices sound more feminine. I could definitely hear some of that fifth register use in the audio of this guy.

Interestingly, when women are trying to sound more authoritative, they lose the high register and end up sounding very flat-- think Hillary Clinton.

Did he say they need to be "diciplined"???

@39 check out the work of William Leap and Robert Podesva - there are other people, but those are the two linguists who come to mind.

First of all, the basic assumption is that, since there hasn't been found any physiological difference in the vocal tracts of gay men to my knowledge, that it is a *social* pattern, not something inherently about being gay that causes the voice. The same thing is true about, say, Japanese women - their unusually high voices are a feature of Japanese culture, not a feature of Japanese female anatomy (as seen by the fact that most Japanese-American women who grew up here do not speak with exaggeratedly high voices in English).

I don't feel like going back over what I've read by them just for a post here, but basically, we can't even precisely quantify what is a "gay voice" - the assumption is that it has something to do with intonational range and patterns, fricatives (length and quality) as well as there being a tendency towards hypercorrectness - but the studies don't all agree on what the exact qualities are, and it may in fact be that there are a number of features that a gay man might utilize, and he wouldn't need to use all of them in order to construct a "gay voice". However, in spite of Even though people can, in fact, guess a man's sexuality based on their voice significantly better than chance. It is not simply a stereotype that a man who sounds gay is more *likely* to be gay, although obviously you can't assume that anyone who sounds gay and claims not to be is a liar.

And it's not an actual lisp - a lisp is where there is a confusion between th/dh and s/z (although some might refer to a confusion between s/z and sh/zh as a lisp as well), and this is not actually a feature that has actually been found. The "lispy" qualities typically mentioned are in fact a more enunciated and drawn out /s/, rather than a true lisp.

The fact that some gay men speak this way before they come out, even in some cases, to themselves, and without necessarily having significant interaction with the gay community is what's really puzzling. As a gay guy who doesn't have much of a "gay voice" (although by no means an especially masculine voice either) I've always wondered about why so many gay guys talk this way - including men who are in the closet (but who I know to be gay).

I actually wanted to do my master's thesis examining the social factors that lead to gay men having "gayer" voices - like, is it related to how long you've been out, your age, race, where you're from, how you identify personally (i.e. a queen, straight-acting, queer vs. gay vs. man who has sex with men, etc.) but I decided that would be too time-consuming of a topic to do in one semester. I'd also be interested if these things vary from gay community to community (does San Francisco "gay voice" sound different from NYC, or DC or Chicago?). If I go for the PhD I might do that study though.

@46:
And on what basis are you assuming that he's a self-hating closet case? That he despises gays (and most haters are indeed straight) and, well, he sounds like a big fairy. Great way to help the battle against gays and dated stereotypes, thanks loads.

@43 I don't think theories that AAVE (African-American Vernacular English) are influenced especially by Swahili are given any currency in linguistics. I just got my master's, in a program run by a prominent expert on AAVE, and I have not heard any reference to Swahili.

In fact, it would be quite surprising, given that most African-Americans' (in the sense of the descendants of American slaves) origins go back to West Africa - where Swahili is not spoken.

Did he just say barbarians? It's a good thing that Michele CAN'T GET ELECTED because if she did, THIS guy would be in charge. She actually swallowed all the bullshit about "wives, obey your husbands".

@51- "most haters are straight"??? WTF? I've never met a hater that didn't look like he could have skeletons in his closet. Every one, to a man, is insecure about his masculinity, at the least, if not a narcissistic, preening peacock, ala Ted Haggard. The non-haters could care less about gay because they're confident in their attraction for and to women.
For the haters, it's all about visions of buttsex in their heads that they cannot turn off when they hear the word gay.

3/nseattlite: Serious question though: what causes the sterotypical gay voice? Is it higher estrogen levels?

21/John: To be fair, I know two men with "gay voice" who are straight...

I know a guy with "gay voice" who's straight (as far as I know...he's married) and, conversely, a gay friend I've known for 30 years doesn't have an inkling of "gay voice" so obviously "gay voice" and gay don't go hand-in-hand. However, a lot of gay men do have "gay voice"; I wonder what the percentage is and, like nseattlite, I wonder why?

55: @51- "most haters are straight"??? WTF? I've never met a hater that didn't look like he could have skeletons in his closet. . . . The non-haters could care less about gay because they're confident in their attraction for and to women.

I agree that straight men who are non-haters couldn't care less about gay men, but I don't agree at all with the claim you seem to be making: that all or most straight men who are haters are closet cases. I think the vast majority of straight guys who are haters are as straight as can be. I don't think they see gay men as threatening to their masculinity. Rather, I think they have contempt for what they perceive as unmasculine behavior in any man, whether he's straight or gay. I suspect a typical straight man who's a hater of gay men is also the type who has disdain for any straight man he views as "wimpy."

It is fascinating that the author of IGB is himself a homophobic bully.

A high percentage of the victims of anti-gay bullying are not actually gay but exhibit traits stereotypically associated with homosexuality;
"gay voice", for example.

And, as Danny frequently points out,
the gay teens most vulnerable to bullying are those who exhibit traits stereotypically associated with homosexuality;
"gay voice", for example;
and who can not pass as strait at least some of the time to avoid the attention of bullies.

So how ironic is it that Danny employs classic anti-gay bullying techniques against his political 'Enemies List', mocking stereotypically homosexual traits or behaviors his victims exhibit?

Were the setting high school how would Danny's mocking of Bachman's voice be any different from what high school bullies do every day?

Perhaps a new series of YouTube videos collecting Danny's homophobic rants against his enemies called "It Gets Bitter" is appropriate.

It's worth mentioning that psycho fraud got his "PhD" from a limited residence “distance learning” college called the “Union Institute & University” in Cincinnati, Ohio--a diploma mill that barfs out degrees in General Studies. This jerk could’ve been Sekruhtairee of Edjookayshun during the Boosh Preznitsee.

If Marcus Bachmann has indeed used his therapy practice to "ungay" any queer people, then he himself has bullied and abused to an unacceptable degree. Much as I don't particularly care for the somewhat derisive way this post goes about it, if Bachmann is actually not straight, he deserves all the vitriol directed his way and then some for the flagrant hypocrisy then is then displaying.

As for the lisp, I got nothing. I can only tell you the letter "S" is the hardest fucking sound to make in the entire English lexicon. Of all the sounds, it has the highest frequency whch is well out of my reach. If you listen to me, I drop most of my s's in my own speech. At least there's a documented physiological reason for that ;-). I'm fascinated by the commentary on the "gay lisp" here, though I haven't the faintest idea of what this is supposed to sound like. (Imitating female voices? Really? Lisping seems like a feature of children, not women (though of course women are often neotenized, so...). The thought that it might be due to using a greater vocal range (perhaps paired with better/more sensitive hearing?) was intriguing.)

But carry on -- I'll take all y'alls word for it that he sounds swishy.

Danny's propensity for cruel bullying is best seen in his stalking harassment of Sen Santorum.

Again transfer the setting to high school;
Danny's use of name calling and the internet to stalk Santorum and rally his allies to pile on is no different from what teen bullies tormenting other kids through social networking sites do every day.

Perhaps if Santorum, like Phoebe Prince, cracks under the abuse and kills himself Danny's bullying will be seen for what it is.

Danny and his credulous adoring homoLiberal Internet Lynch Mob Monkeys will protest that Santorum's positions on homosexual issues place him beyond the pale and that any tactics are justified. "It's OK to bully a bully...."

They are wrong.

Some fights don't have any good guys.
Just hateful bigots wailing away at each other.
Being a bigoted bully in the interest of a worthy cause still leaves you a bigoted bully.
Corrupt means corrupt the end.

Danny's juvenile vile behavior tarnishes the cause he seeks to advance.

oh put a lid on it.

All you trolls or quasi-trolls (38, 41, 47) who think that it's somehow hypocritical of Dan to point and laugh at Marcus B's femme qualities need to remember this man makes a BUSINESS of oppressing and terrorizing queers. If there's even a CHANCE he's a projecting, self-loathing closet case (SLCC) - and I think there definitely is that chance - then he deserves to be mocked. Actually, he deserves to be mocked in any case.

@47 - my apologies, you don't actually sound trollish. But I think exposure of closeted haters is worth the occasional leveraging of a stereotype.

@51.. god ...some peoples can not read to save they own souls.. i didn't say he was ' a raging self hating closet case', dan did, which is why the phrase is in quotes. however i suspect he might be. not do to his lisp but rather because all his own hubbub and faldereol around the subject.
what i'm pointing out is that homosexuality isn't being used as a pejorative here. no one really cares if he likes, or used to like or never did like sucking cock. his spoken agenda ( not his speech ) seems fairly homophobic. as does his wife's politics and her speeches. remember she's running for president, she has a record of this. this is the true context of this post.you're willfully ignoring this context. to construe this post as anything else is counter productively apologetic and timid. to construe it as bullying is stupid.

Posted this in the first Mithter Bachmann thread:

It'ss Prom Sseathon!

(1:25)

@61 - it's not bullying if you are fighting back against abuse a bully started. Santorum is a holier-than-thou bully who hides behind his perception of the Bible and whatever his pollsters tell him his opinions should be. Dan is taking a firm stand against Santorum so the man can't continue his bullying stance against gays (and who knows what else). As long as assholes like Santorum keep spewing hate, I'll stand behind Dan's defensive tactics.

He reminds me a lot of George Alan Rekers. And we know about him. Wonder if he has a rentboy.com account?

67

Sooooo-
the message of IGB is that if you're a conservative kid you deserve to be bullied?

and the bullies; well; bullies is just being bullies--politically incorrect, unafraid of stereotypes, and gleeful about an opportunity to mock and/or otherwise discredit kids who are 'different', especially faggoty acting pukes.....

you gotta love the rascals, don't you.

68

You seem to be channeling Cheney defending waterboarding (and other defensive tactics.....)

WTF. 61 - Your statement is filled with absurd false equivalences and blatant logical fallacies. Aw. Bigot get's accused of being bigot. POOOOOR BIGOT.

It's not bullying to fight back against an authority figure who has absolute power over you and the oppressed class of people to which you belong - and abuses that power to incite hate and violence towards you. That's called resistance.

Dan is fighting back the only way he can and the way that is most effective. With words and wit.

Dan is not defaming, using libelous, or slanderous accusations against Santorum - those being legally actionable. If he was Santorum would be suing the shit out of Dan. He'd have everything to gain (MONEY!) and nothing to lose (OTHER PEOPLES MONEY). But no.

Yes. Dan is being crass. He's also telling the world the truth and exposing Santorum as the viscous power hungry bigot he is.

us

I applaud your brave un-wavering stand defending the unfortunate rich white anti-gay conservative senators of the country. It must so hard for them to be mocked so.

C'mon people. Why won't we think of the rich white anti-gay senators! Their collective voices have been so silenced and ghettoized for so long!

Gosh. If only they had their own news network!

us. You should start an all white rich white conservative anti-gay senators YouTube channel called the 'WAAAAAAAH! It's Not Fair" Project.

Run along now. Get to work. This injustice has gone on long enough. The world HAS to know. There is not a moment to lose!

I've been told since I came out that I do not read on anyone's gaydar with my voice or mannerisms. That said, I am aware of a lisp (a rare friend to point this out to me calls it a "Sisstle" rhymes with whistle) and I feel like I get more "gay" maybe in a feminine way when I'm laughing or excited (happy!) inside. I think for me then I relate that feeling with abandon and goofing around, maybe kundalini(?!) whatever. Can't square that with these closety conservatives, though. Haggard, Craig etc have "it" all the time and don't strike me as happy people. But the out gay people I know by-and-large are on the happier side.

@71 et trolia.

I love femmey men. That higher register, a sibilant s, and a little looseness in the wrist is adorable, piquant, wonderful. So I am going to point out that M. Bachmann would be just the kind of queeny fellow I might get along with famously...

IF HE WASN"T A HATE-MONGERING BIGOT.

...but he is.

Is it stereotyping to refer to gay voice, gay face, gay grooming and fashion sense, &c.? Sure, insofar as humans use imediately observable information about each other to form preliminary opinions. But that is not in and of itself hateful.

But I don't think anyone here is really making fun of how he speaks. The post is about the irony that a man who works to rid the world of gay has mannerisms that--to a reasonable, non-hateful person--read as very gender non-normative.

Do those mannersims make him gay? No. But those mannerisms, plus the fact that he is a consumate homophobe are grounds for speculation. We have seen this story before.

Is it wrong to wonder if a raging anti-semite who frequently says "oy vey" and gives little fatalistic shrugs might--just might--be a self hating jew?

@79, You're right, Dan is not in the second grade anymore. I, however, will be starting my second year of grade-school this fall, and you are poo.

There, I hope we all feel better now that things are more age appropriate.

I don't know about his voice being gay but he's one of these "reparative therapy", pray-the-gay-away nut jobs...and those are usually "ex-gays".

This video gives me the vapors, I do declare

@31:

...and people with no minds discuss internet memes.

@72:

Santorum is viscous?

Depends what you've been eating. (badump bump)

This guy's voice sounds just like Sassy Gay Friend.

A Feather Boa and Neckerchief would butch him up a bit.

"homoLiberal Internet Lynch Mob Monkeys" made my morning.

Stereotyping is bad...but statistically accurate.

http://www.aip.org/asa_laypapers2011/Tra…

I prefer to call it the gay accent.

Yes, he's pretty nelly. But that's not what makes him a closet case.

We know he's gay because he's a gay-hating Republican.

@us: oh, you're so cute with your faux outrage... It Gets Bitter, ha ha ha.

To all who answered on 'gay speech' (especially @50 above), thanks! I hadn't come back to check on you guy's ideas, and I'm happy to see I apparently have several colleagues right here.

Based on what you guys wrote (I'm not a specialist in gay speech), it seems it's not a gay dialect, it sounds more like a gay accent or even speech style (more high-pitched registers, lisp/fricative changes). The remark about there already been connections between gayness and speech patterns in Ancient Greece (I'd expect the play to be Aristophanes', who wrote comedies, rather than Sophocles', who wrote tragedies), however, gives me pause. As far as I know, there is no consistent speech style that can be traced thousands of years back to other civilizations -- they seem to be too culture-specific for that. Or am I wrong?

Also, what is the origin of this style? It certainly isn't biological. Are gays trying to imitate other gays when they talk like that (just as girls are certainly imitating other girls, i.e. reproducing patterns they had heard before and are attempting to emulate, when they use their more 'girlie' speech registers)? Or are they trying to imitate girls -- and if so, why? Does desiring men sexually have to lead to behaving like the traditional men-desirers, i.e. women, even in areas so far from sex as speech patterns?

Is this by the way characteristic of only one kind of gay? Some gays (as Dan once pointed out) actually emulate very masculine guys -- these, as far as my experience goes, do not seem to speak with 'typical gay speech style'.

@97 the answer to most of your questions is "We don't know" haha

I did a paper about atheists' adoption of the terminology of coming out, for which I did a fair amount of reading in lavender linguistics, and there doesn't seem to be a consensus about the properties of gay male speech (lesbian speech seems to be less distinctive) and what the origin of it is, or how it compares cross-culturally.

It certainly would be an interesting study to do a cross-linguistic study of gay male speech in varied locations/cultures and language families (English, Spanish, Hindi, Arabic, Japanese, Turkish, something African like Swahili or Xhosa/Zulu). I would be surprised if there were articles about gay speech in that many languages though, so it would probably require a lot of travel (and hence money) or a lot of cooperation from people in other countries...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRT3zs23s…

@52: Oh, totally. My high school used to offer Swahili as a foreign language course in the hopes of getting black students more interested in languages. And that was, of course, misguided and idiotic.

I just discovered this today. Did you know that the first moving picture with sound was a short (30 sec. ) film of two guys slow dancing to violin music. It was made by the Thomas Edison in 1894. Check it out.

http://gocart-mozart.blogspot.com/2011/0…