Why do gay men have a lisp

JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA— The notion of a "gay lisp"—an offensive stereotype to many people—has been a confusing phenomenon for linguists. For decades, popular depictions of gay men have sometimes portrayed them pronouncing the letter "s" as more of a "th" sound—even though studies have failed to find "lispier" speech in gay men than in.

Frontal, dentalized and negatively skewed articulations of /s/ (the aforementioned "gay lisp") are indeed found to be the most powerful perceptual indicators to a listener of a male speaker's sexual orientation, [21] with experiments revealing that such articulations are perceived as "gayer-sounding" and "younger-sounding". [22].