Trying Not to “Sound Gay” on Work Calls
By: Till Kaeslin
Tags: Work, LGBTQ, Gay, Creative Non Fiction, Code Switching

“Whew, finally …” I mumbled, microphone on mute as my boss started to wrap up our two-hour meeting.

As soon as I heard those magic words, “Ok, I think that’s it,” I popped myself off mute to join the oncoming chorus of sign-offs with my signature *forced chuckle*. “Have a good one, guys,” I said and shut my laptop.

I was absolutely starving. I’d only planned on an hour-long meeting, so I’d decided to put off breakfast until after that first call — a horrible mistake I would never make again.

As it turns out, however, there was one more surprise to come before I could end my accidental hunger strike.

My roommate, who had overheard my call from the kitchen, looked up at me and said,

“Have you noticed your voice gets deeper when you’re on the phone?”

My voice does what?

I felt like I had been exposed; the same half-embarrassed, half-ashamed feeling you get when you’ve been caught in a lie.

Although neither of us ever brought it up again, her comment kickstarted a stream of self-questioning that dripped like a leaky faucet in my head for days.

Once she’d pointed it out, it was hard to ignore the truth. I really do lower my voice on work calls. In fact, I even started to notice that I laugh differently. Suddenly it all sounded so … mechanical, almost premeditated.

Am I just being professional, or am I self-conscious of my queer-ness?

Of course, I’m already conscious of the fact that I tend to speak more carefully and clean up my vocabulary at work to maintain a certain level of professionalism, but could I say the same for my voice change? How would deepening my voice make me sound any more professional?

If it isn’t an attempt to preserve professionalism, what’s keeping me from talking in the same range and style as I do with my friends and family?

The more I thought about it, the more it became glaringly obvious that I am, at some level, still ashamed of my queer-ness.

My body and expression have become queerer.

Although queer-ness shows itself (or doesn’t show itself) in a myriad of ways, mine tends to express itself in more feminine characteristics.

Since coming out in High School, my voice has naturally gotten a lot higher and even slightly lisped. Beyond that, I’ve come to embrace more and more gay slang in my everyday vocabulary, and my body language has become more feminine in absence of the need to act as a hyper-masculine vessel concealing a gay soul.

Even my style has changed, and is always changing, as I’ve learned to ease up on self-censoring and allow myself the space to do more with my self-expression than to just try and blend in.

My mind is lagging behind my body.

Clearly, as evidenced by my almost reflexive urge to deepen my voice and censor my words on work calls, my mind hasn’t caught up yet to the changes my body and self-expression have already embraced.

That 17-year-old with a deeper voice and more masculine expression wasn’t just a younger version of me, but a different version of me — a less “me” version of me.

That person only existed in the first place because the heteronormative and cis-normative society that he grew up in whispered in his ear that this was the ideal he should strive for; that he was supposed to bend over backwards to appear as a masculine, straight, cisgender boy.

Although I don’t believe in those societal norms anymore, I can’t unhear that whisper.

I’ve been trying my best recently to consciously stay away from altering the way I talk on my work calls. I tell myself that the way I speak doesn’t make me any less professional, and it certainly doesn’t make me any less worthy of having my voice be heard and respected.

And while that’s been supremely empowering, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that it’s also exhausting. Not only do I have to worry about the substance of what I’m actually saying, like everyone else, but now I also have to worry about how I’m saying it?

In these moments, I choose to recognize my privilege as a white, gay man, and I think about all the people around me that have to deal with this (and then some): my fellow queer friends, my friends of color, the women in my life — the list goes on.

If you censor your speech at work, you’re not alone.

As much as I want to end this article with a badass declaration that I don’t care about what other people think anymore and that I’ll never deepen my voice or refrain from using certain vocabulary again, I know that’s not realistic and I would never want to sell it like it is.

The way we alter our voice feels subconscious for a reason — it’s been baked into us.

For better or for worse, many different minority groups have used and continue to use altered speech and expression (sometimes referred to as code-switching) as a means of mental, emotional, and/or physical survival.

But the very fact that it is a group behavior means that none of us are alone. I know I’m not alone because I’ve met and heard from numerous queer people who feel the exact same way I do. I’m sure that you, however you may be using code-switching, are able to say the same.

Act like you aren’t the only one.

Acknowledging that reality, maybe the key is to act like we know we are not alone. Do your best to speak and act however you so choose, because chances are there is someone on the call, in the room, or in the company at-large, that expresses themselves in the same way you do.

When they see you move through the professional space as yourself, without the protection of altered speech or self-expression, they might feel empowered to do the same.

Bit-by-bit, meeting-after-meeting, maybe we can start to build a new culture where queer kids never have to second guess their effeminate voices — because they’re surrounded by people that sound just like them.