Making Quartertothree a more welcoming place

Everything else
402

Shrill is a descriptive term describing sound, in some cases a tone of voice. I have never heard of it successfully being deployed to silence a woman.

It sure didn’t work on Hillary, but that may have been because it was being attributed to those vague strawmen politicians love arguing against. “Some say I’m shrill, but that’s not going to stop me from fighting for the American people!”

But now that I think about it, if you can be silenced by someone using a word, perhaps you should be silenced. Come back later when you have your shit together.

Maybe the Google master can find us some examples of successfully weaponized “shrill.” I might even defer to a slightly disreputable source if those dozens of reputable ones don’t manifest. But then, if this goes on, the tone could just rise to a level that could be analogized to, say, something “high-pitched and piercing in sound quality.” As everyone knows (i.e., nobody), that’s the classic example of toxic femaleness.

403

You’re not going to argue someone out of being offended, and insulting people isn’t the surest path to make them feel welcome.

404

You have a point about a lack of welcome in my words (so I’ll leave the thread to its original purpose), but Soma never claimed to be personally offended. And tone policing on behalf of potentially offended speculative third parties will never fail to get on my last nerve.

405

Golf clap.

406

Yes, please do. We need to take people by their word, if they claim offense we should take that at face value, that they feel that, even if we think it sounds ridiculous with our background. They come from a different place, and have different associations.

Not saying you need to change how you think, or behave. But maybe don’t insult them in the “how to be more welcoming” thread, is all.

407

It seems that some people here are completely against the concept that women may not like the way they are named. The way that they are insulted. Okay, maybe as a man you don’t understand that. Because you never heard that used against you, personally.

But why can’t you accept that women do hear it that way? And why can’t you accept that?

408

Ok, one last post, since you asked a question.

First thought is, nobody likes the way they are insulted, that’s pretty much what makes it an insult. Insults (or even mere criticism) often take the form of identifying some essential characteristic of the individual.

As I’m sure many of us relate to, “fat” can easily be used as an insult-enhancer (chosen because we can’t actually see each other on the board, so hopefully nobody feels personally addressed). For example, one’s opinion can be dismissed because it comes from “some fat [fill-in-the-blank].” Being a regular old fill-in-the-blank is usually unobjectionable, but add fat to it and it becomes weaponized as a means of easy dismissal. Is it fair? Hell no, but it’s one of the last acceptable prejudices left standing, because fatness is often conflated in people’s minds as a moral failing. Think of all the “fat Americans” references commonly bandied about, usually as a way to show the speaker is not one of them.

But then, “fat” is universally understood as a term of insult when used to describe a person.

Okay, maybe as a man you don’t understand that. Because you never heard that used against you, personally.

Which leads us to shrill as a proposed “insult” or unacceptable word to use in polite conversation. The question here is one of subjectivity versus objectivity, specifically, when should an objectively neutral word become forbidden? When one person doesn’t like it? Ten? Millions?

Part of my job is EEO litigation. Not even the EEOC (which can be very expansive with its classifications) argues that an individual is subjected to unlawful discrimination or harassment simply based on whether they subjectively find something offensive or derogatory. The standard has been (and hopefully will remain) what a “reasonable person” would find offensive. Because allowing the standard to turn solely on an individual’s subjective beliefs is simply not workable, such a scheme would be wholly unpredictable and nobody would be able to conform their conduct to such a standard. Especially when the standard could change not only by person, but by how any particular person might be feeling that day.

What would happen if we tried to use such a standard to define when an employer was liable for discriminatory or harassing conduct? Employers would be afraid to hire any person, but especially those with any detectable degree of mental instability or histrionic tendencies (social media is not your friend, folks). Figuring out which Myers-Briggs category you fall into would be the least of your worries as self-defense becomes the threshold determination for employability. Vendors would start selling psych profiling, scrutiny of academic records, interviewing relatives, it’d be like getting a security clearance only it would be a stability clearance.

But why can’t you accept that women do hear it that way? And why can’t you accept that?

Because letting each person define an enforceable version of their own reality to use against other people is a terrible idea. And that’s what you are proposing, whether you intended to or not. This is not to say that I’m advocating impoliteness (although I will indulge from time to time when goaded) – politeness is a good thing. But unless everyone has a usable and consistent standard of what politeness is, everything falls apart.

That’s my point. Nothing further on this topic.

EDIT: Wump, if you want an FU you can have one. Your interpretive abilities are not quite there, I never gave a shit about “shrill” one way or the other, I care about maintaining a functional way of communicating between people without everyone who isn’t playing tone police constantly second-guessing themselves.

409

But what you are really saying is

  • I am unwilling to make even the smallest concession in acknowledging that a word can be problematic to some
  • I am unwilling to exert the tiny amount of effort necessary to choose literally any other word, of which there are thousands to choose from
  • I am not merely uninterested in not meeting you halfway, I’m gonna berate you about this in argument, and this is a hill worth dying on to me

TL;DR might as well just type “fuck you” and save everyone a little time, Rick. At least that would be more honest.

410

That’s a lot of words to basically say the only experience I care about is mine, and if I didn’t experience it not only do I not care about it, I won’t’ believe it happened or happens either.

411

Is it okay if I limit my use of the word shrill to SWJs? It seems most apt for them, and I’ve done it before. They weren’t very happy about it, but isn’t that the point? In that case they were guys though, if that still matters.

412

You wanna explain how labeling someone SJW and calling them shrill is at all… welcoming. Both of those usually fall into a sexist trap too but it’s clearly not welcoming.

413

Oh my god, you answered a question with a question… or, well, a directive.

414

I actually agree with you here, but need to point out that “shrill” is already perceived by millions to be a gendered insult, so to an extent that ship has already sailed. Honestly sometimes as i get older it’s frustrating to see younger generations just take things and run with it, but in this case it’s just The Way Things Are Now, imo, and it’s a generational issue for you (and me) now.

But i would agree that in this case “shrill” is a gendered insult, though i understand expanding the borders of the impermissible is always annoying. I think as we have become a far more diverse country/culture, increasingly separated from each other’s experiences and media, the circle of permissible humors, jokes and sarcasm (as well as insults) is just getting smaller and smaller. And that’s pretty annoying to someone who knew about things like Blazing Saddles to realize stuff like that will never be made again. But younger generations can no longer trust that what might be an innocent insult to you (or me) doesn’t have a rotten foundation behind it.

415

Mfw I see multiple people typing replies at once in this thread:

416

There’s a difference between a legally enforceable standard of, say, harassment or hate speech, and being willing to moderate your choice of words to avoid hurting or offending individuals you are interacting with who have explicitly informed you that they have been hurt or offended.

417

I have. I have heard someone said to me “this woman’s voice is so high I can’t hear a word of what she is saying”, while to my ear she sounded fine. So either the complaining person has a hearing problem, or something else is going on.

And then there is the testimony from women, saying that their lived experience is that calling them “shrill” is sometimes used to dismiss anything they have to say.

The “reasonable person” test you cling to so much is actually a moving goalpost. A reasonable person in another era would think there is nothing wrong with calling a woman a shrill. Now we are in an era where some of us think “shrill” can be used pejoratively. (No really “we” are all just Tom posting under different names.) Will it pass the reasonable person test now? There really is only one way to find out: test it in court. You however confidently tell us it can’t pass that test, because you dismiss all the other voices telling you that “shrill” can be and is used pejoratively. I wonder how your cherry picking of evidence will serve you in court.

PS: just like what @Enidigm said. I actually think Blazing Saddles would do just fine as an arthouse movie nowadays, with the liberal use of the word “nigger”. It is only the mega corporations who want to play it safe and sanitize everything that probably will not green light it.

And your comprehension skill failed you. I never try to police you or anyone. My position has always been, if you want to join me in avoiding using certain terms, that’s fine. If you don’t, I’m not forcing or policing you. When I try to say we should agree to disagree, you basically shove that back to me and say “no you are wrong and I’m right”.

418

So when can shrill be used? If a mother is angry at a son for not taking out the trash, and is talking faster and louder and her voice has pitched higher, that cannot be described as shrill? To me shrill is an apt description of a tone of voice, usually from a woman but not always.

She was being shrill. He was manspreading.

The former is wrong but the latter is ok? Aren’t they both descriptions?

419

https://i.imgur.com/m6a0rMI.gif

If Jeff Goldblume was a woman, this is what he would look like.

420

So in your mother-yelling-at-son-not-taking-out-trash case, I would say she is a shrill but will qualify my statement by saying that I am not riding on “women complaining are shrills and therefore can be ignored”, but this in this particular case, her voice reaches sky high pitch because she is so angry. Adding qualifiers is not hard is it?

There are many instances of “manspreading” I do object to as being unfair, in particular because the little boys don’t like to be squashed, so spreading at a reasonable distance is necessary. But there are extreme manspreading cases I’ve seen and combated. At times on public transport I have to fight another guy manspreading sitting next to me by spreading myself to carve out personal space.

421

Erm… a lot of women call men dickheads and end the conversation that way.

Edit: And in my opinion, they would be right to do so.