Boys with gender dysphoria ‘speak more like a girl’ by the age of five

BOYS with gender dysphoria already speak differently by the age of five, pronouncing words in a more girlish manner, a study suggests.

US researchers studied 90 youngsters who had been brought to a gender clinic by parents because their children were behaving differently to others of their biological sex.

Some had begun playing with “girl” toys, while others had wanted to wear dresses or be called by a female name. Around half had been diagnosed with gender identity disorder, now known as gender dysphoria.

Previous studies have shown that gay adult males pronounce the letter “s” differently and researchers wanted to see if similar vocal traits could be picked up in childhood.

A group of volunteers were asked to rate on a scale of one to six whether the speech of the boys sounded more like a boy, or that of a girl. They found that boys with gender dysphoria rated one step lower on the scale than those without a diagnosis.

“Even as young as five, those boys [with the diagnosis] are rated as sounding less prototypically boy-like than the boys without the diagnosis, and they are rated as sounding more girllike,” said Ben Muson, professor of speech, language and hearing sciences at the University of Minnesota. “When we go back and find what the kids are doing, we find that some of the kids do, early in life, have a sort of hyper-correct “s” that is more characteristic of the gay speech style in adults.”

After finding that boys diagnosed with gender dysphoria spoke differently, the researchers ran the audio recordings through a computer to find where the difference lay, and discovered there was a disparity of 100hz between the “s” sounds.

Traditionally boys pronounce the ‘s’ sound in a less crisp, and lower pitched way compared with girls.

The researchers say the finding shows that the difference is likely to be cultural because boys and girls do not have different vocal anatomy until puberty. Therefore, there is no anatomical reason they should sound differently before then.

Instead they believe that children are “picking and choosing” to emulate adults with whom they identify, and unconsciously alter their speech to match, regardless of biological sex.

“The specific speech features they emulate end up being socially meaningful,” added Prof Munson.

“They are probably socially meaningful to a child in early life, but they end up being socially meaningful in a different way later in life.”

The research was presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Austin, Texas.