Speech discrimination is one of the ways that race, gender identity, and sexual discrimination manifest.
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You just agreed with a comment explaining that people will be discriminated against if they talk like they’re black or speak the way a good number of women do, and putting the burden on those discriminated against. This kind of crap is an aspect of the hard pressing prejudices like race, gender identity and sexual discrimination. You can’t say we need to deal with racism, while excusing discrimination against members of races that don’t talk like white middle class people, or excusing discrimination against women over something as unimportant as vocal patterns.
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There is hesitant and fearful uptalk. There is also uptalk from someone who cares if the listener is continuing to follow a complex topic, or if a listener will be treated fairly by the decision being made. Unfortunately we often stereotype consensus-seeking as weak.
Am I right?
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…you inserted “its not gender” into a thread specifically about women’s voices being never “right” and yet you didn’t mean to get into an argument about gender? Haha, ok. 
I have lived my entire life being told I’m too loud, my tone too negative, my intonation too cruel, and even MrPants will say from time to time that my tone to him is too much, too mean, too whatever. And I am always surprised because in almost every instance I’m laughing and enjoying myself and joking around. Also I have a naturally low voice for a lady, no vocal fry and I don’t upspeak, and theatre training so I can project like a mofo. The only conclusion I can come to is that the first complaint is the real one: I am too loud and I talk too much. And to that I say: fuck 'em all. 
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That’s a very good point. Goes to show how deeply rooted our biases and prejudices really are.
Not excusing it at all…just pointing out that unfortunately, this is just the way things are in certain parts of society. We should all continue to recognize our biases and fight against them at every turn.
Pragmatically, if you are going into a job interview maybe it’s best to examine your speech, attire, appearance and mannerisms to maximize the probability of getting hired. That’s all I’m trying to say.
As much as we wish it to be so, we do not live in a truly egalitarian world. Not yet anyway.
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Agreed. I think ummm gets used as filler a lot more. And I think a lot of actual filler word use is down to nervousness, which is no reason to dismiss what someone is saying. I might think: I wish this person would take a public speaking course or just practice or maybe meditate so they can stay calm, but it’s basically a stylistic nitpick like wanting to hear a favorite song clearly without radio interference.
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The problem is that “How one talks” can carry implications about that person’s race, gender, gender identity, (to a lesser extent) sexual orientation, and economic status.
The joke about the girl named “Le-a” (Ledasha, “the dash don’t be silent”) is ostensibly about how the woman is talking, but both the name and the speech patterns of the mother point to the mother being a lower-to-lower-middle-class African American woman, and that’s just not an interesting tidbit about the joke, it’s an intrinsic part of the joke; it’s why it’s considered “funny.”
This whole story is about this same problem: If a woman speaks in her upper register, she’s “nasal.” If uses her lower register, the ends of her sentences become growly, and she gets accused of “vocal fry.” If she pitches up at the end of the sentence to avoid that, she’s “uptalking.” There’s not much room left for that woman to go if she wants to be respected, and so sexism asserts itself through criticism of her speech.
There’s a trans woman who writes a story online that I follow. A while back, for some reason I can’t remember, she posted an audio file of her speaking about something. That file made me really uncomfortable because her voice was in a weird place between where I would expect a male voice and where I would expect a female voice to me. And that discomfort is not her problem. It’s my problem; I’m uncomfortable with her because she doesn’t fit in with what I expect “normal” to be. It’s my responsibility to deal with it and treat her, and her work, based on common decency and their own merits instead; it’s not her responsibility to change to meet other people’s expectations: you can never win if you try to do that.
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This is the simple & short truth of it. The problem isn’t with whatever way of speaking’s singled out at this particular moment in time - the problem is with who’s talking.
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What is normative English? Who decides?
Do you believe that there’s a form of English that is not itself a regional dialect? How did you come to this conclusion? Can you corroborate it with any evidence?
And if not, why should that particular regional dialect be regarded as “normative”? Is there something special about that region? What would that be?
If by “inner city dialect” you mean Black American Vernacular, that is arguably its own language with distinct grammatical rules different from those of common American English.
What is appropriate attire*? Doesn’t it depend more or less entirely on context? And who decides what it is for any given context?
At the software company where I work, the business teams tend to dress business casual and the coders seem to dress pretty much however they want. Should I not take the programmers as seriously as the business teams? Why or why not?
It may be relevant to the subject that the business teams are for the most part majority women whereas the development team is almost exclusively male.
Don’t actually answer any of these questions. I don’t want to drag this thread off-topic. But I think you should do some serious reflection about your own answers to these questions.
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Um, no. One of these things is very much not like the other. Please try again. Maybe by actually reading the OP.
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If I would be the one the world would be a much more confusing place.
More serious - isn’t this some kind of dictatorship of the majority? English has no central instance, if we were talking about French your question could be answered much easier.
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I would guess that the majority of US English speakers speak regional dialects, so it is probably not the will of the majority.
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Also, class discrimination.
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An exception to this would be the Garmin GPS Arabic-language voice. Deep, masculine voice (EDIT: to the point of exaggeration, I thought). However, I’m not sure whether that was by default, or the preference of the person who was driving.
I can also testify that, this side of grindcore or Laibach, you won’t get a much more guttural voice than from Arabic hip-hop.
This is central to virtually every conversation around changing attitudes with respect to race, gender, sexual orientation, and so on. Does the onus fall on those being discrimanted against to conform, or on those in positions of power or privilege to try to see merits outside of a given individuals’ level of conformity? If the end goal is an egalitarian world, what is the best path?
Maybe you heard this Radiolab story about a gay black student and his experience in a national debate competition. It was a really compelling listen, and highly relevant to the topic at hand.
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Thank you!
Man (ha), it sure is hard for a lot of guys to stay focused when the topic at hand is problems faced by women while speaking.
Which reminds me of this cartoon, which I pass around often. It’s actually helped to turn on some lightbulbs.
So very often, the problem really is not how a woman speaks so much as it the fact that it’s her speaking, and not a man.
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Oh god yes, Canadians are really bad with the upspeak thing, both genders. It’s certainly not universal, but they’re even more likely to do it than Californians in my experience.
I assume it’s just because they’re just so darn apologetic. We’ve got a guy here who, when informing me some code isn’t working, will both upspeak (easing me into it) and then apologize to me for my stuff not working even when it’s totally my fault. He’s a good guy, very competent and nice (of course), but the reflexive ‘Sorry… sorry!’ is starting to spread around the office… And of course if you did something you should apologize, but when you apologize for everything then it loses sincerity.
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Can’t stand the initial “so”. Or upspeak. By anyone.
The fry thing doesn’t bother me as much except if it’s really severe.
So I’ve always wondered why I did that. Thanks.
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Hmmm i haven’t heard the voice you mentioned. I don’t have a Garmin GPS, but if I remember correctly, there are many voices to choose from, just as you might change Siri or Cortana.
