A male character who is In Touch with His Feminine Side, Camp Gay, Camp Straight, androgynous looking, transgender and hasn’t done voice training or hormones yet, or just generally effeminate will often have a softer or more high-pitched voice than other males. Sometimes this is their natural voice and other times it's intentionally pitched. It's not uncommon to see even adult males voiced by women.
This is often done to set up an Unsettling Gender-Reveal. It's also common in Sensitive Guy and Manly Man, Noble Male, Roguish Male, or Masculine–Feminine Gay Couple setups, with the more masculine partner having a deeper voice. Keets often have girlish voices to accentuate their "hyper and effeminate" persona.
With eunuchs, they often have a Creepy High-Pitched Voice and effeminate appearance, especially if they were castrated at a young age.
The Spear Counterpart to Tomboyish Voice, where masculine women have gruff voices with aggressive inflections. This often results in Vocal Dissonance, especially with adult examples.
Contrast Baritone of Strength, which represents a masculine man with a fittingly imposing voice. See also Screams Like a Little Girl.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Bleach: Daisuke Kishio gives Luppi a very effeminate voice, and has only used a very masculine voice for him when Luppi is very pissed.
- Astolfo of Fate/Apocrypha is a Wholesome Crossdresser with not just girly clothes but also his voice, courtesy of Rumi Ōkubo (Faye Mata gives him a similarly feminine voice in the dub).
- Fullmetal Alchemist (2003): Envy is a very androgynous male and uses a feminine voice. He occasionally subverts this trope, usually when upset, and switches to a more masculine voice.
- Hunter × Hunter: Kurapika is an androgynous young man who is voiced by women doing a somewhat boyish voice.
- Kashimashi: Girl Meets Girl: Hazumu has the exact same voice, boy or girl. Prior to being turned into a girl, he was so girly that, as a child, he said he wanted to be his best friend Tomari's bride when he grew up.
- My Hero Academia: Yuga Aoyama is Class 1-A's resident Agent Peacock, and his flamboyant attitude and style are well-matched by a campy tenor.
- Naruto:
- Haku is an androgynous teenage boy voiced by a woman doing a feminine voice. When Naruto sees him dressed as a civilian in a woman's kimono, he thinks that Haku's a girl.
- Orochimaru has a Creepy High-Pitched Voice. He's always been androgynous to the point where, due to the fact he uses other's bodies to stay young, he often veers into Ambiguous Gender. It should be noted that in Japanese, he's voiced by a woman using a raspy voice, while in English, he's voiced by a man using a smoother voice.
- Tamagotchi: Mr. Micchi is a Camp Gay dance instructor with a voice that, while still unmistakably male, is higher-pitched compared to the other adult male characters.
- Tweeny Witches: Lennon takes his delicate looks after his mother and dresses as a witch even after his gender is revealed. He has the softest and highest-pitched voice out of the male characters.
Audio Play
- The Sandman (2020): The nonbinary Desire, in contrast to the deeper voices of their brothers, has a lighter, higher speaking voice provided by Justin Vivian Bond.
Literature
- In A Song of Ice and Fire, Varys "the Spider" is shown to have very feminine mannerisms, and his voice is described as being sweet, effeminate, and "cloying" by different characters. However, this is likely to simply be a mask, as he is seen in other disguises, with many different tones of voice.
- Windflower from Tailchaser's Song is an effeminate neutered tomcat with a soft voice. He's so androgynous that Lord Firefoot initially mistakes him for a female. Cats sing about this moment to warn others about what m'an can do to toms.
- In The Zodiac Series, upon hearing Ambassador Morscerta speak, Rho immediately notes that his voice sounds way too feminine to be a male's voice. Whether or not this is what he actually sounds like is up for debate, given that he's a magically created fake identity.
Live-Action TV
- Glee: Camp Gay Kurt Hummel, particularly in the early seasons before he hit his growth spurt, not only looks and dresses feminine, but can sing high countertenor notes rivaling Rachel Berry's. People even mistake him for his dead mother when he answers the phone:
Will: When you answer the phone, what do you say?
Mercedes: What up?
Artie Abrams: Who this be?
Kurt: (deadpan) No, she's dead. This is her son.
Video Games
- BlazBlue: Amane Nishiki is a Wholesome Crossdresser (and implied to be Camp Gay) who speaks in a gentle, high-pitched voice. He can, however, occasionally speak in a rougher tone, particularly when he's being hammy (it helps that he has a dance troupe).
- Hajime of Ensemble Stars! speaks (and sings!) with a very soft, gentle, and somewhat high-pitched voice, fitting for his sweet and feminine personality. Unusually, he isn't voiced by a woman, perhaps because having one female voice actor among thirty men would have stood out too much, especially given that many of the voice actors regularly interact with fans of the game.
- Libra from Fire Emblem: Awakening is voiced by women in both Japanese (Megumi Yamano) and English (Cindy Robinson) and has a gentle and soft voice. In- and out-of-universe, he is often mistaken as a girl, which was Played for Laughs during his debut scene that doubles as an Unsettling Gender-Reveal.
- Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc has Chihiro Fujisaki, who's a Wholesome Crossdresser with a cute effeminate voice to fit.
- Tsukasa Okino from 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim is voiced by a voice actress in both English and Japanese, with neither bothering to affect a more masculine tone of voice. However, outside of being very casual about cross-dressing and his androgynous looks, there isn't much about the way he carries himself that's feminine.
Western Animation
- Ed, Edd n Eddy:
- Jimmy is a quiet boy who likes baking, playing with dolls, and hanging out with his best friend (and crush) Sarah. He has the softest and most high-pitched voice out of the males.
- Edd has several stereotypically feminine attributes and has a higher-pitched voice than his friends. This is probably why Eddy's brother mistook him for Eddy's girlfriend in The Movie.
- Herbert the elderly pedophile from Family Guy, his voice is so high pitched and effeminate he sounds more like an old woman than an old man, he also acts very effeminate at times and also sometimes giggles like a girl.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has Steven Magnet, an Ambiguously Gay river serpent with a high-pitched voice to match.
- HIM from The Powerpuff Girls is a Creepy Crossdresser with a Creepy High-Pitched Voice.
- South Park: The soft and effeminate Butters has a more quiet and boyish voice than his peers.
- Sponge Bob Squarepants: SpongeBob is an adult keet with an extremely high-pitched voice that got even higher post-movie due to Vocal Evolution.
- Star Trek: Lower Decks: Downplayed since it's not his normal voice, but when Brad Boimler is overly anxious, he speaks in a high-pitched tone.
Real Life
- Dear God, Chris Colfer. This
video encapsulates it best, wherein he recounts the many, many times people mistook him for a woman from his high-pitched voice.
