The gay voice

I've been pondering on the gay voice a bit lately, mostly in conversation with my in-house social activist, Niamh. I was making the point that you can't tell someone's sexuality by just looking at them, or listening to them. But there is a style of behaviour that used to be called 'camp', associated with homosexual or bisexual males, and there's a certain style of speaking that goes with it. But that voice (the 'gay' voice), I've heard that voice from men that are in genuine heterosexual relationships (as far as I know, at least). And now this excellent article in Stuff: http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/life/10043967/Whats-wrong-with-sounding-gay explains it for me. It seems the voice is not an indicator of sexuality after all (hark back to my point above), but has been associated with 'gay-ness' (as outlined by the article, through history and then TV and film). But a study described in the article has found that a strong indicator for men with this voice is gender non-conformity in childhood (identifying with girls), but gender non-conformity WAS NOT AN INDICATOR OF HOMOSEXUALITY. Taken further, the study suggests that boys picked up female speech patterns in early life, and these, when imposed on a male voice, gave the 'gay voice'. I especially liked the article because it's dogged in using the term 'gay' voice, making the completely valid point that there's nothing wrong with being gay, so there should be nothing wrong with sounding gay.