by MARK O’ CONNELL
PHOTO/Think Thorpe
I hated my voice when I was a kid. I was taught to hate it by the people around me. Neighbors called me, “fairy,” and though I loved fairies, I knew this was not a compliment. Uncles tightened their fists to get me to sound “tough.” Cousins looked at me with disgust and said, “You talk like a girl…” Classmates called me “Faggot,” a name I would hear all through high school until I left. Early! They all wanted me to know my voice was “girly,” and for a boy there was nothing worse. (For more on this phenomenon see my HuffPost piece, Bully Gets “Girl”
No wonder I wanted to be an actor. Most days at school I dreamed of being anyone but myself. In the rural town I grew up I was surrounded by boys who played sports like their lives depended on it; talked a big game about premature sex with girls; and took every opportunity to make fun of boys like me. One day I told a peer about my plan to escape via acting career, to which she replied, “You’ll have to change your voice. No one cares if you ARE gay but you can’t ACT gay…” Since then I have pondered what it even means to “act gay”– or to “act straight,” for that matter.
Psychology Today for more