"Talking While Female" - NPR video
they left out "argumentative" and "yelling". if a woman's voice isn't "squeaky" or "childlike" enough, everything she says gets interpreted as "aggressive". it's why i don't use capital letters in my informal writing anymore. i'm honestly just that tired of being told how i'm "yelling" all the time.
and people, i'm sorry to say, aren't kind about it either. people seem to decide that since i continue to sound like me even though they've randomly chosen to believe i'm yelling (seriously, i've been told i was yelling when i was whispering, and i wish i were exaggerating about that), i'm being purposely antagonistic with them. it's actually quite scary for me to initiate conversations with people i don't already know well because i never know how "threatened" they're going to decide to be, and i don't really want to get shot over the length of my vocal cords.
i'm not the only woman with a deeper voice that i know of, but we all tend to use the same tactic to "diffuse" the "threat" we "impose" on people by... idunno, existing? we talk like we're mildly retarded. we all take on that forrest gump inflection and hope that if people think we're kinda stupid, they won't feel "threatened" enough by our voices to attack us.
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