This article reports on the relationship between the English variable (ING) and two divergent accents (Southern and gay) as they are conceptualized and given social meaning in listeners' perceptions of spontaneous speech. The study used an expanded form of the Matched Guise Technique, using recordings collected through sociolinguistic interviews with 8 speakers from North Carolina and California. Excerpts were digitally manipulated to create 32 matched pairs differing only in tokens of (ING), which were used to collect responses in group interviews (N = 55) and a Web-based experiment (N = 124). The alveolar variant-in increased the perceived strength of Southern accents and dampened an accent heard as gay and urban. The influence of (ING) on these accents is linked to shared social meanings of the alveolar form-in and Southern accents on the one hand (lack of education, the country, and the term "redneck") and the velar variant-ing and the gay accent on the other (lowered masculinity, the city, and the term "metrosexual"). These two accents are contrasted with a third variety, heard as nonaccented and aregional. These effects demonstrate the status of the three linguistic objects, the two accents and (ING), as social objects as well. The concept of accent is based on the observation that some people and groups speak differently than others. Despite the simplicity of this observation, accent is a loaded construct, connecting linguistic patterns with social and economic divisions between individuals and groups. Cavanaugh (2005, 129) argues that accents must be treated as "acoustical things in the world, indexing both speakers (subjects), as well as qualities detachable from these speakers, and at times even places themselves (objects)." This characterization need not only apply to accents but is also appropriate for some individual variables, namely those which have achieved stereotype status (Labov 1966). This article explores the representation of two accents (Southern accent and the "gay accent") and their relationship to the English variable (ING) (the alternation between word-final [In] or [@n], here referred to as-in, and [IN], here called-ing), in the sociolinguistic reasoning of U.S. college students. I trace the connections between the two accents and the variable, showing both their ideological baggage and the ways they interact to influence social judgments of spontaneous speech samples.