And I never called anyone sexist for doing it. That was an incorrect assumption made about my position.
Voice Policing. Do you find women’s voices shrill, hesitant, un-confident, not authoritative, or childish? Then you might be one of the voice police.
Let’s be clear. There’s nothing wrong with finding an individual woman’s speech unappealing
Voice policing and tone policing are difficult to notice until someone points them out. Let’s try to remember that the message — the content — is the most important piece of the act of speech. Let’s try not to let the sound of speech overwhelm the substance.
And the most important piece:
It is also associated with the much-deplored “Valley Girl” speech patterns of the early 2000s. (I must confess that I personally find uptalk annoying, but not enough to “correct” someone who does it.)
Finding it annoying is not the problem. It’s the need to… correct it, or you know medically justify it instead of it just being subjective, is where the line really falls, and if if someone is punished in their career, in the way people evaluate the content of what they say or who they are as a person, then it’s not just about annoyance anymore.
A teacher once instructed me in the hallway: “Aaaaaas-king.” She said this loudly. “Dena, it’s not ‘axing,’ like you’re running around with an axe. That’s silly.”
02:53
Now at this point, you can imagine the snickers of my classmates, but she continued: “Think about breaking the word into ‘ass’ and ‘king,’ and then put the two together to say it correctly – ‘Asking.’”
09:03
You know, every time I hear or say the word “asking,” I am in high school again. I am thinking about “ass” and “king” and putting the two together so that I speak in a way where someone in power will want to listen.
There is one significant difference with “gay voice” from vocal fry or other affectations of speech and that’s that “gay voice” almost always announces a person’s sexual identity. Within the gay male community, there’s some folks that pressure others to normalize speech patterns and not “sound so queer” because it’s such a stereotypical (artificial) accent that they feel hurts the rest of the LGBTQ effort.
I knew a guy in college, (I guess he was/is considered a “bear” in the gay community) and he hated “gay voice” a lot. Like, just despised it. He’d always go on about how “fairies” were making things harder for him and every other gay man. At the same time, he was very obviously using an affected growl in his voice all the time to seem more manly.
An argument can be made that correcting a young person on their enunciation of words is ultimately a boon for all the people they might interact with in the future for whom English is not a first language.
I believe there are a number of individuals from the UK who claim Americans should enunciate our words differently, in fact, they claim to own the language and to know best! And do you know why we don’t spend even an ounce of effort in complying with their demand, it’s because they don’t have power over us and we established a different norm a long time ago.
Just because we have norms doesn’t mean enforcing them is harmless or something we should do.
This should not only be not required, the original voice should not be discussed in a way that makes them feel unwelcome in a setting either. No one is required to like another person’s voice, but if someone finds themselves grouping a whole bunch of people together… they’re approaching or might be already in voice policing.
It really isn’t okay that someone in power demands that everyone else sounds the same way as they are used too. This doesn’t apply only to women and minorities. There are more than a few people who hide their Southern drawl too, because there is an unfounded idea that having a Southern drawl somehow implies that person is not intelligent, which has no foundation at all. The answer isn’t to get rid of the drawl, whether or not someone finds it pleasing.
This line right here literally suggests there is something to be corrected in the person who speaks differently.
It literally uses the word correct. That is the wrong side to correct. How is that not implying that the change has to be done by the young person instead of the people in power who actually made the poor for society rules in the first place?
I am not trying to attack anyone. I am simply affirming my position.
In an odd coincidence, today I was just watching a linguistics video about annoying language habits. It included a section on vocal fry, with an experiment in which a man and a woman both used it on purpose.
I have to admit, it sounded much different when the woman used it, which I suppose is evidence of cultural bias / sexism.
Feel free to listen and see if you agree. It’s followed by a bonus section on how vocal fry forms part of various languages:
The worst speech patterns I heard was when I was in high school. Anyone that would use F bombs and profanity in-between every third or forth word. Extremely annoying to listen to. Makes my ears bleed.
Although around the same time I was super guilty for over using the word ‘like’ as sort of verbal static, sentence starter, and what have you.
These were bad speaking habits when I was a teenage, and I do think people should work on cleaning these things up although I don’t ever police someone else’s speech (outside of a Toastmasters).
It’s an expression of futility from Chinatown, which is indeed an old movie. Very nearly a grampa movie! I love you to bits, Nesrie, and I apologize for the passive-aggressive gif, but it can be equal parts enlightening, informative, and exasperating trying to have a discussion with you. :)
Is it possibly that vocal fry is less annoying when there’s less high ↔ low pitch transition as is the case of the man’s voice in the video? There’s a few accents in Ireland that involve a lot of pitch transition, whether male or female and they can be …divisive as to how attractive or unattractive they are.
I’m sorry Kerzain whom I quoted but didn’t quote.in the Discourse way.
I consider all of you friends, even the ones I constantly butt heads with and the ones that scold me so often. I keep forgetting that unlike the friends and family I have physically around me, well did until last year anyway, no matter how many years I’ve been on here, I keep expecting people to read me better than you do, and better than you can really. And probably the main reasons are you can’t see my eyes, you certainly can’t hear my tone and most importantly, not experience my expressions. It’s probably my expression that helps them the most because I honestly don’t understand what I am missing from some of these engagements or why what I think I am saying is being heard differently than I think it should be.
And that’s not an excuse. You just won’t find me engaging much on other online communities because it’s a lot of work for me and them to get to that point where anything works, and I know a lot of that is me; I really do.
Please know I do not think this community is full of sexist, racist or bigots… I just think, occasionally, it comes off that way and then I try to explain what the issue is and why I think that… to wildly varying degrees of success.
I promised myself as soon as a new president was installed I would try and back of on
Haha. She doesn’t sound like that. I have no idea why, almost every single person in the two trees above me smokes a lot, but they tell me it’s not a lot because it’s less than 10 dollar pack a day, that’s what it’s been moved up to this year. I have heard from all of them how unhappy they are with my vote because of course I admitted to it.
