Just to be perfectly clear, I’ve never complained about it or tried to “police” the way people talk. People can talk the way they want to talk.
If it starts to bother me, I just turn if off.
I never said someone was sexist for finding vocal fry annoying. That was someone else assuming something about me.
The way women talk, how people talk, the code-switching that is required to participate in male dominated industries and hobbies… it shouldn’t be required, not here or anywhere else.
Somewhere out there are people looking at the top games for 2020, looking at these lists, looking at the communities making them and the reason for making them. Somewhere out there is someone who has an accent someone doesn’t like, someone who grew up in a certain part of the city and was told they’re not okay because they speak this way, or that way… that it’s not acceptable and right in the middle of our list… are people talking about vocal fry, listing out examples of only women, because it usually is… and we want to know why people don’t feel welcome.
Heck I don’t feel welcome because for pointing this out and NOT calling someone sexist but pointing out how often there is a sexist component to this topic, and why hundreds of academia, and media coverage and women in the workplace are talking about it, have been talking about it, my participation on the forum is questioned by the owner of the site.
Oh, of course. It quite literally goes without saying. :)
-Tom
You said:
So if not sexism, what reason were you referring to? What am I missing?
-Tom
That’s there’s a norm, and when people don’t comply to that norm, what can be described as annoying is actually a means of control to get back to the norm. And who decides the norm? Well that depends on the majority. And for language, the norm is men… that’s why so much of our written and spoken language is written from that perspective and the default is men even when society thinks they meant men and women.
There is code-switching, language changes, tone switching, like the volume and pitch of the voice is changed, accents are forced to be lost… you go to private schools and the teachers belittle children to get rid of something that might just be a part of their culture.
We have people shamed in this country to get rid of their accents because people find it annoying or inconvenient to understand. Vocal fry is just like everything else, it’s something a lot of us is not used to, or maybe don’t like, or hell maybe someone around here even knows they do it… not that they will EVER admit it after today.
Thanks for the reply, Nesrie, and I appreciate you articulating that. I wish you’d put it that way initially, because it would have felt – to me, as least – less like an attack. In fact, it sounds like we agree when I say that finding it annoying is not inherently sexist. So I’m not sure why you were pushing back rather than telling me you weren’t claiming it was sexist.
And I totally get that attacking the way people talk can be a way to minimize what they’re saying. But I hope you get that it’s perfectly reasonable to be annoyed without attributing that annoyance to malice, or hatred, or an attempt to control. Someone can say vocal fry bothers them, and when they say it, they’re not necessarily trying to minimize anyone.
-Tom
I hate to jump into the middle of this, but in the audio clip in question, the voice actor talks about making her voice as low and quiet as possible, and adding as much vocal fry as possible. So it’s not like the complaint is about a normal speech pattern; it’s about this specific case where the actor is exaggerating it to an extreme.
You’re not sure why I didn’t reply to this:
Oh, please. There’s nothing inherently sexist about finding vocal fry annoying. Give it a rest, Nesrie.
-Tom
or this
In the most calm way inhumanly possible?
I think you expect a lot of me. I think that bar is set so freaking high that all I can do is fail and be pointed to the door every time I don’t meet your expectation of a perfect debate… which is not my profession by the way.
There are just not enough people on the site to try and explain in a way that is not me but from a point-of-view that is similiar. I am me. I cannot change me to fit every topic perfectly. I’ve been spending the last 30 minutes trying to find this damn video of a woman who is an inspirational speaker who talks about how her poor mother moved her to an area to go to a private school and the teachers there treated her like garbage to change her language. Because that person IS a professional orator and communicator.
What a stupid topic.
I’ve led a sheltered life obviously…I had never heard the expression “‘vocal fry” before.
Me either. (my sole comment that will ever be in this thread)
I don’t find vocal fry annoying, but I’m aware of it and I hear it. I sometimes wonder if a particular speaker always had vocal fry or if they adopted it over time.
This topic reminds me a lot of the search for the origin of the “gay voice” - that slightly lispy, drawn-out, uptilt-at-the-end-of-sentences sound that a lot of gay men use.
The subject turns out to be a minefield, because what’s more connected to personality than the way we speak? Gay adolescents, Thorpe points out, often learn that the “tell” of their sexuality is their voices, even more so than physicality—a limp wrist is easier to straighten out than an inflection. The world’s homophobia becomes internalized homophobia. Even within the gay dating community (and in gay porn), hyper-masculinity is habitually prized, so self-disgust gets easily turned back outward. The pop-culture roots run deep, from the aristocratic pansies of the pre-Hays Code cinema through wink-wink camp figures like Paul Lynde and Liberace, up through the effete Disney villains of “Aladdin” and “The Lion King.”
Sigh. Well, I tried.
I expect from you exactly as much as I expect from everyone else on this forum.
-Tom
I came in here, skimmed it, and had the same thought. I’m glad some folks are getting to air their grievances, I guess.
Well, it was pulled out of an unrelated thread. I know it looks like I actually started a thread to ask the question, but I promise I didn’t.
-Tom
Also this. I still don’t know what it is! (No, I don’t care, or I’d have Googled it or clicked on any of the provided links).
Well they weren’t just talking about dislike a specific game because of the voice acting it was devolving into:
I refuse to reward companies for hiring hack losers that speak this way,
And then medical claims that don’t actually cover vocal fry.
I have no doubts that some gay men are told to sound “less gay,” whatever that means, and it’s completely inappropriate too. If this is how someone speaks, there is nothing outside of enforcing norms that says we should for force them to change their voice.
I regret not bringing up this point myself, because I almost did. If the thread had been about voice acting or something, I would have.
You’re not sexist if you react negatively to vocal fry, but it’s worth self-examining whether it’s always young women’s voices that you react to, and if it is, whether there are unfair and narrow ideals you’re judging women by.
Here I thought this was a topic about a heavy metal screaming style.
Yall are weird.
Edit - I am also weird, so please carry on.
Scarlett Johansen and Mila Kunis have lots of fry in their voices. Not annoying!