Please, PLEASE do some basic reading:
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No one is shouting you down. The world is literally full of examples of how white, straight, cis-gendered men understand and experience the world. Itâs full of art, culture, commentary, scholarship, music, and literature written by men, much of it insightful and wonderful. There is much less of that from the rest of us - at least thatâs respected and celebrated in the same way. How about instead of rolling your eyes every time someone makes a critical assesment of the world, you maybe try and listen instead of automatically assume itâs an attack on youâŚ
Also:
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How other people experience and understand the world doesnât necessarily correspond to reality though, itâs just another piece of information to be evaluated like any other. You should certainly listen to people, but that doesnât mean you have to believe everything they say.
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Having a penis doesnât make you the arbiter of reality.
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Really? 
Thanks for clearing that up, thatâs totally something I actually believe.
Good. My job here is done! 
[ETA] But seriously, Iâd like to point out (not just to you, but others in the thread) that this is also poetry, an art form. Hence the reality found within is subjective anyway. Not everyone is going to grock it or agree with it, but thatâs the point of a work of art no? Not to tell the objective truth (which, what is that even), but to explain a subjective experience. Thatâs part of my problem with the comments in this thread, that a work of art has to be objective reality that conforms with ârealityâ actually is⌠but art isnât about that.
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My point, which you artfully sidestepped with the Internet Judo so popular with some of the regs around here, isnât that I specifically am being shouted down: it is that the very first post here was figuratively shouted down by the very second post. There are more ways to âshout downâ than actual shouting. Clever, snarky gifs are one. Another is to brand your opponent as a âdudebroâ, or use their previous posts to across-the-board dismiss whatever they have to say. When itâs done often enough and cleverly/snarkily enough, the likes and har har hars successfully diminish whatever point was originally being made. Itâs allllll about silencing people hereabouts, taking away their voice by ridiculing said voice, when itâs a voice that needs to be silenced.
Not very long ago, I actually saw the following on a boingboing thread, not directed at a comment of mine, but 1984 enough that I wanted to remember it: âIâm flagging your post as hate speech for your own good.â Wow.
And while the following isnât the only reason this poet slam person is being castigated by some people here, this at least has something to do with it. If, instead of the poet slammerâs target hadnât been âold white menâ, sheâd instead complained about just âold peopleâ, think about how youâd feel. Now imagine sheâd said âold black men.â Both of these alternatives, if youâre honest, should make you a bit uncomfortable with her argument, and would make her seem, well, like a bit of a douche. But: since âold white menâ are her target, itâs alllllll okay. That is a problem.
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Did you read the first post? It was incredibly dickish, actually.
And Iâd suggest you read my above post to @caze about art and what itâs attempting to do. Itâs about expressing a subjective experience and seeing how it flies.
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Why can I only like your comment one time?!??!
Iâm so sad for your daughterâs sakes that youâre so accepting of the ânormalâ ways of speaking in settings where men established the norm.
Look, dad, one thing that a LOT of men do is talk over and interrupt women. They often do it because a woman is thinking through her thoughts while talking, something that men often do too, but sheâs using indicative markers (like, you know, tonal uptick, etc.) that many men donât recognize as valid (that is, âconfident maleâ) modes of communication. So men interrupt or talk over her, and the usual male modes of communication once again validate men who communicate that way, and what they have to say.
Women also OFTEN say something in gatherings where men are present, only to have men repeat the same thing later as if itâs their idea, and then other men give him credit instead of her for saying it. Gee, I wonder why that happens? (Hint: itâs partly because most men think the way most men talk is the ârightâ way to talk.)
Itâs infuriating that more men donât even understand this cartoon!
Women do need to learn to talk like most men do to succeed in settings where the communicative norms have been established by men, and kudos to you for hoping to help your daughters understand that. But really, more men should learn to talk the way more women do (in a more MUTUALLY communicative mode, for one thing) as well. Maybe instead of âtrying to help co-workers and acquaintances with direct advice about their speaking flawsâ [flaws, REALLY?], you should try to correct men who respond negatively to women who donât speak like men. Maybe start with yourself? 
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people should be able to talk about the implications of someoneâs artistic expression without erroneous claims they are attempting to silence them. engage with the substance of what people are saying if you want to have an genuine discussion with them, otherwise youâre basically trolling.
From an excellent (but too short!) response to Melissaâs poem that includes understanding of something else in it that AFAIK, no one here has discussed yet, the protective form of defense that seemingly weak language can be:
Criticizing womenâs speech is nothing new, but people have been paying a lot more attention to it lately. There are plenty of examples to focus on: People who still seem unreasonably upset about the word âlikeâ used as a filler word. People who donât like the word âjustâ at all. People who donât like upspeak, or the tendency to increase your pitch at the end of a sentence. People who hate vocal fry.
And itâs not just stogy old white men; even prominent feminists have espoused the view that young women just need to start speaking properly already if we want to be taken seriously.
In response, let me just say this: Um, Iâll, like, pass? Or whatever?
As Melissa Lozada-Oliva points out in her poem, the problem isnât how young women speak. The problem is the world that forced women to adopt vocal defense mechanisms; itâs the world that defines proper speech as whatever old, white men are doing; and itâs the world that generally refuses to respect what young women have to say unless we say it exactly the way they want us to say it. And she does it in a way that is thought provoking and sophisticated â and also peppered with âlikesâ and upspeak.
Indeed. So whatâs with the men here (and so many places elsewhere) claiming theyâre being âsilencedâ simply because someone expresses disagreement with something they said?
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Do we know if the âmaleâ and âfemaleâ [1] styles of presenting ideas in meetings are objectively better or worse at getting points across? Youâd have to do some smart testing to make sure youâre not just seeing âpeople listen more attentively to male speakersâ, of course, but it seems like the sort of thing a researcher somewhere might have looked at.
[1] Iâd really prefer to find a more neutral set of labels, but given the context here you probably get my point
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Objectively better or worse? Since the listeners are listening subjectively, Iâm not sure your question makes sense.
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Indeed. So whatâs with the men here (and so many places elsewhere) claiming theyâre being âsilencedâ simply because someone expresses disagreement with something they said?
The new rule seems to be that you can argue with the content of somebodyâs opinion, as long youâre not a white male and the person being argued against is anything other than a white male, if you are actually a white male then you must defer to your betters (i.e. everybody who isnât a white male).
In the case of this poet, nobody has so far claimed that she should be silenced (though maybe she should, because slam poetry, eugh) they are merely disagreeing with the implications of what sheâs saying. There hasnât even been much defence of the notion that these vocal patterns are a big problem that needs to be dealt with. So not only is nobody here trying to silence her, nobody here is even trying to police how she speaks.
All that has really been argued against is that the people sheâs talking about are not actually the only people trying to silence her, that itâs more of a generational thing, or possibly a snobbish thing. That it might be wrong to draw conclusions about whole swathes of the population based on the perceptions of one young poet.
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Over a broad selection of speakers and listeners, does one style of speech leads to the listeners retaining more of the salient points, or does it mostly depend on the gender/age combinations involved?
Just to clarify - both would be interesting. The latter would be yet another good argument for âmen need to shut up and listenâ, the former a good argument for âwe should teach girls and women to not speak in ways that undermines their messageâ. Iâd honestly like to read a properly sourced article either way. 
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Holy crapsticks. ⌠I just said I was tired and exhausted of this exact shit!
Amazeballs!
We have âI donât see it so sheâs lyingâ and âIâm gonna raise my daughters rightâ and âitâs not a gender issue itâs a communication issueâ its the crap Iâm tired of trifecta! /sigh
Did you know that not only does no one hassle Ira Glass about his vocal fry, he didnât even know he had one! And heâs had whole episodes about vocal fry. Funny that eh?
To me policing tone is just the newest version of âwomen talk too muchâ.
http://www.pbs.org/speak/speech/prejudice/women/
So tired. Iâm going back to Tumblr.
Edit to add âMen explain things to meâ - because if youâre a woman, all this shit is the same old ball of wax. All of it.
https://www.guernicamag.com/daily/rebecca-solnit-men-explain-things-to-me/
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Which is sadly ironic because the commenters youâre defending didnât convey the same courtesy to the poet.
âSheâs pretending to be outragedâ
âA feminist complaining about someone else policing her speech is a little rich.â
âthis slam poet manufactures an ersatz non-issue topic to complain about and claim victimizationâ
" if itâs such a normal socially-acceptable behavior, enough of a Thing to rail against, then yeah, I think I would have seen it a few times."
âpoetry (slam or otherwise) is basically an irrelevant dead medium in the 21st centuryâ
Which part of those comments actually engaged with the substance of the poem rather than just railed against the manner or topic that she chose to convey?
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Itâs probably worth noting that there are degrees of vocal fry and up-talk. Some people are far more extreme in how they use it, Ira Glass would be on the minor end of things by my ears. Another interesting factor might be that fry might appear more prominent when used by someone with a higher pitched voice, if you start off lower to begin with and fry-down itâs far less obvious because of the fact that human frequency response is non-linear (i.e. we have far higher ability to discern differences in high-frequency sounds than we do low-frequency ones).
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FTFY, youâre welcome.
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lol, human hearing is socially constructed now apparently.
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