Heterosexual males with childish/feminine voices?

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David1981
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07 Sep 2007, 3:17 am

I think I have a childish and/or feminine sounding voice.

When I was in elementary school, my fellow students would tell me "learn how to talk".

Later, when in high school, they would think I was 'ret*d' due to my voice or call me a 'fa***t'. I used to get riled up and still have bad memories of it.

Anyone have a similar experience here?



poopylungstuffing
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07 Sep 2007, 3:52 am

Flakey has a sorta funny squeaky voice...higher pitched than average i guess. I likes it.
I think he fancies himself to sorta sound like kermit the frog.



Tim_Tex
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07 Sep 2007, 4:42 am

I have a feminine-sounding voice as well.

Tim


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2ukenkerl
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07 Sep 2007, 6:23 am

Well, the feedback I have of my voice, sometimes makes me feel it sounds less masculine than it does. Luckily, I can record it, and hear as others do. Also, sometimes it is BOOMING(The old problem with controlling your voice). In such cases, I hear the feedback and think WOW. Some things vibrate so much I get complaints. Lower voices carry through walls better.

So I have a young voice, but certainly not feminine. My voice actually started cracking early. When it started, I heard like 3-4 people call me by a feminine term(like mam), when they just heard my voice, but apparently that is relatively common. Today, surprisingly, some started to talk to me like I was my father when I answered his phone, and he has a low voice, that certainly doesn't even sound young. Frankly, I don't see how anyone can say we sound so similar.

I DID have an "inguinal hernia" at one point, I see that as a consequence of my being large and delivered naturally. It turns out that a medical conspiracy of sorts caused a problem that required yet another surgery. As a kid, I thought it was just incompetence. I recently found that, at least according to the doctors, it was normal! So it is a conspiracy, and probably done to bilk the public. In the 1960s, these were normal fairly invasive surgeries(In my case two. Actually, it was worse than that having been on both sides). Today, the whole thing could be done with one laparoscopic surgery. I STILL never bothered to get my umbilical hernia repaired!

Anyway, I don't know how many of you had inguinal hernias. Today(Since perhaps the mid 70s), it is a LOT simpler, quicker, safer, cheaper, due to laparoscopy. If I was more obstinant, or my parents were cheaper, etc... I would certainly have a higher voice also. I hate rewarding such conspiracies, but it turns out we do it all the time with less necessity.

Also, do any of you have testosterone insensitivity?

I was surprised when I saw a sitcom yesterday, and a black guy with a beard and bald head had a high pitched voice. He sounded like a woman. Now THAT is something you don't see every day. It has been theorized that the whole thing(At least facial hair and voice) is to tell women that you are sexually mature. Usually, it is a package deal. If you have one, you have the other.



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07 Sep 2007, 7:50 am

2ukenkerl wrote:

I was surprised when I saw a sitcom yesterday, and a black guy with a beard and bald head had a high pitched voice. He sounded like a woman. Now THAT is something you don't see every day. It has been theorized that the whole thing(At least facial hair and voice) is to tell women that you are sexually mature. Usually, it is a package deal. If you have one, you have the other.


This actually isn't that uncommon, and we talked about it in my voice disorders class last year. The theory (which most of us found kind of insulting and unnecessary) is that men who never really separated from their mothers speak at a higher frequency in order to mimic the soprano voice of their prepubescent years. I know that sounds horrible, but it is true (at least generally) that when these men are treated, it is found that they are not speaking at their "optimal frequency," (which is a form of vocal abuse), and that they can be taught to speak at a more natural frequency for their vocal tract. Therefore, in those cases, their high voice was simply the frequency they spoke at habitually, but it was not the most appropriate frequency given the length of their vocal folds (which is what usually determines frequency).

In the case of the guy on the sitcom though, he might just be putting it on for a show, if it's part of his character. Also, if a guy is shorter than average, it's likely his voice might be higher at well (although not necessarily), because his vocal folds are likely shorter than those of a taller man.

Actually, there's kind of a reverse situation as well. Voice clinicians tend to see a number of women in male-dominated fields, like business and law, who abuse their voices by speaking at a frequency *lower* than their optimal frequency, to the point where they damage their vocal folds from the abuse and end up with vocal nodules or something similar. Often these women aren't open to the idea of speaking at a higher frequency either, because they see their current low voice as part of their image.



username88
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07 Sep 2007, 8:42 am

Oh man, this reminds me of this one aspie I met, I think he was as far from "border line nt" as you can get. His voice was extremely feminine, it took a little while for even me to get used to but he was a great guy.



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07 Sep 2007, 8:52 am

My voice has been deep (at least since puberty). But there are some things related to stereotypical gender roles I didn't get for a long time after everyone else. Enough to earn some wrath from the self-appointed gender identity police. Having studied other cultures, I know now that these things I didn't pick up on are not really ingrained biologically - they were social, pretty culture-specific and arbitrary.

A few of the trivial things that come to mind:
A very functional military surplus pouch with a sling that I carried - labeled 'a purse'
The most comfortable watch band I could find was thin - labeled feminine.
Scents I enjoyed were labeled feminine - but when it comes to perfume, gender and testosterone, the last laugh is on them.

Combine things like that with being scrawny and a somewhat late onset of puberty, and I got labeled and taunted sometimes.



poopylungstuffing
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07 Sep 2007, 10:09 am

I've gots a pretty high pitched and childish voice for a 32 year-old female....but I have "masculine" hands and a sorta (rotund-but boyish) bodytype....(boxy with no waist)



woodsman25
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07 Sep 2007, 10:29 am

I have a very deep and loud voice, yet im scrawny as hell and have a nerdy look (lack of a better term). Even in middle school people would say what a deep voice I had, yet really kinda developed later then average, tho not by much.


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07 Sep 2007, 10:55 am

I wouldn't say my husband's voice is "feminine" at all, but it is very quiet and higher-pitched than average (he sings tenor, for example). But he doesn't have what I would consider feminine speech patterns (like a lot of sing-song-y-ness) so I don't think of it as feminine. He does often get asked if his mother is home when he answers the phone, though, so I guess people think it sounds young. (I don't think it does, personally.)



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07 Sep 2007, 11:08 am

While working as a cashier and stock person at my last job, some people from a group home for people with mental disabilities came in. One of them was a really tall guy (he had the height to be a good basketball player). He also had blond hair, a high-pitched voice (more like a young child's voice than a woman's), and did not make eye contact with me. He did not sound or look ret*d, so maybe he was autistic. I replied to him, no; I had not heard of the name before; and still no eye contact.



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07 Sep 2007, 11:54 am

I think it does have something to do with lack of separation of the mother. I've just noticed the guys with high voices are the ones that didn't have a father figure in the home and still live with their mothers into adulthood.



RasdenFasden
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07 Sep 2007, 12:14 pm

woodsman25 wrote:
I have a very deep and loud voice, yet im scrawny as hell and have a nerdy look (lack of a better term). Even in middle school people would say what a deep voice I had, yet really kinda developed later then average, tho not by much.

I also have a rather low and manly voice even though I'm all scrawny and stuff.



mmaestro
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07 Sep 2007, 1:04 pm

monty wrote:
But there are some things related to stereotypical gender roles I didn't get for a long time after everyone else. Enough to earn some wrath from the self-appointed gender identity police.

Oh, I still get into arguments with people about that stuff. I just don't get why people are so attached to gender roles, they don't seem sensible to me, people should be able to do what they want to do, regardless of sex. I've always been more attracted to the traditionally female roles, had mostly female friends through school and university (now I've moved to the US from the UK, gender roles seem more firmly ingrained in the culture and that's ended, but here I seem to have less friends in general so it may simply not be a big enough sample group) and that doesn't threaten my sense of maleness in the slightest, but it does annoy the crap out of me when people assume that men cannot be nurturing or caring. My sense of empathy may not be the straight gut emotion of most people, and be more based on an intellectual involvement in the wellbeing of those I care about, but it's still there.
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Scents I enjoyed were labeled feminine - but when it comes to perfume, gender and testosterone, the last laugh is on them.

Interesting article, but not all that surprising. I mean, I love vanilla-based perfumes, and certainly know that they can raise my testosterone, but we don't wear scents for ourselves generally, but for our partners. I'd rather not wear a scent that leaves me permanently aroused. If my wife wears that, though... :wink: I'm all good with that.

Anyway, to answer the question, my voice is probably higher pitched than most, but not enough to be feminine I don't think.


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2ukenkerl
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07 Sep 2007, 2:16 pm

Ticker wrote:
I think it does have something to do with lack of separation of the mother. I've just noticed the guys with high voices are the ones that didn't have a father figure in the home and still live with their mothers into adulthood.


I think that is more an effect than a cause. And the pitch of my voice isn't high. My voice couldn't pass for a womans. And I haven't been asked anything like "Are your parents home?" in a LONG time. Frankly, the only characteristic a stranger calling has ever aluded to is that they thought I was an answering machine!

Frankly, I am GLAD I didn't live with my father much.

As for the problem I had due to the hernia? At one point about 33% of all males had it to some degree. I don't know how many times it is due to a hernia though. I don't know how many have that problem now, though correction is now almost routine and fast. One site says 30% of premature, and 3% of full term. About 1/2 of them need an operation. WHO KNOWS? Maybe the people fall into THAT group. That has NO correlation to AS though.



Nafydalgol
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07 Sep 2007, 2:39 pm

I have a somewhat feminine voice. Not "very" feminine, but a little still. It has happened quite a few times that people mistook me for a woman when I talked to them on the phone.

The strange thing is, my appearance is not in the least feminine. I'm a fairly big guy (or at least for my length) with a beard. No-one would mistake me for a woman when they see me, but sometimes when they hear me on the phone they're like "yes ma'am", "thank you ma'am". I guess they think I'm a woman with a low-pitched voice, while in fact it's the reverse. It's a bit like that scene in the sit-com which 2ukenkerl mentioned above.