For all your policing of young womenâs voices and how we should give up âvocal fryâ and uptalk for assertive, man-spreading speech patterns, I hope that the question Iâm about to pose meets your criteria for legitimizing a strong and empowered female voice worth hearing: Did you even once consider that your misguided criticism might be better aimed at the patriarchal culture that stifles womenâs voices into uncertainty or no?
As a young twenty-something in the final stretch of completing her bachelorâs in English, Iâm here to paint the lines of the lane that you, a fifty-something living in the comfort of her lucrative career, need to get the fuck out of.
To my knowledge, my voice isnât infected by the Cher Horowitz-esque vocal inflections you believe are keeping my generation from feminist greatness, âdisown[ing]â the power that previous generations have apparently blessed us Millennials with. But a good chunk of my vocabulary consists of those âlikeâs, âumâs, and âoh my godâs that you and every other crotchety baby boomer in the world find so flinch-worthy. While Millennials are the best educated age group in the United States, I canât go a day existing without having my words picked apart and presented as evidence that my âjustâs and âsorryâs are the sole reason why my generation is so horribly underpaid.
Iâm supposedly undermining myself in a way that makes me sound uneducated and unconfident to a world of said crotchety baby boomers who determine the economy, legislature, media, and pretty much every aspect of the environment thatâll greet me after graduation.
By the way, your (unconvincing â seriously, try harder) attempt to take responsibility on behalf of older feminists for failing to teach us baby feminists that itâs not our job âto placateâ our elders really holds no meaning when you spend every other word telling us to placate your expectations.There were much more radical things that had to be done between the late â70s and â90s than hold a feminist charm school. Â
Iâm not trying to say that I should expect to be hired after answering all questions at a job interview in a knock-knock-joke format, so letâs not take it to extremes. We of the do-nothing-but-twitter-and-be-triggered generation are quite aware that different social situations call for adjusting the way we communicate. Professional interactions require a level of professional words and phrases. Same goes for writing. I donât drop F-bombs in final papers for English classes and Iâm not penning this letter to you in MLA format.
But what youâre trying to pass around as empowering feminist advice is nothing but sexist voice-policing, continuing the tradition of silencing and dismissing womenâs voices. Women werenât voiceless before the dawn of the first-wave â what words we spoke were buried alongside all the Judith Shakespeares and credited to Anonymous if they managed crawl out of the shallow grave. Those eons of silence were actually eons of silencing. How dare you forget that?
âVocal fryâ is supposedly dumbing down young women, and yet when Ira Glass, Noam Chomsky, and every other cisdude employ it thereâs not even a whimper of criticism. As Thom Dunn for Upworthy suggests, this whole debate over womenâs vocal fry and upspeak is âjust another way of trying to define gender rolesâ. What your friendly feminist advice is really doing is perpetuating the real problem in this situation â the imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy. Our society has provided the context in which certain tones of voices are acceptable for certain genders, races, and classes. One raised pitch or tongue click out of line and an entire identity in invalid. For women of color and women whose first language isnât English, such criticisms are part of a long process of dehumanization and Othering. For trans women, if their voices donât pass as feminine enough, their very lives may be in danger. What our society deems as the correct ways to speak and sound are tied just as much to other -isms as they are to sexism. Â Â
After living most of our lives being told itâs better to be seen than heard, that their ideas and identities donât matter, and that loudness and anger is only good as the butt of a joke, are we really so surprised that women have internalized these values and placed a tonal question mark at the end of their sentences?
Or, as spoken word goddess (and Simmons alumnae) Melissa Lozada-Oliva says, "It's like maybe I'm so used to speaking in questions because I'm so used to being cut off".
She explains it better in three minutes than I could ever hope to in a lifetime.
If you truly support my generation, then youâll give us the microphone. Youâll stop playing the role of the Sea Witch and take your tentacles off our tongues. Youâll judge us based on what we say, not how we sound. And youâll celebrate our âjunkâ words, upspeak, and vocal fry as weapons of revolution to deafen the patriarchy with.
Speak now or forever hold your peace Ms. Wolf.
