My wife and teenage son both have fairly high voices, and they find that people infantilize them or take them less seriously because of it. We live in the Midwest, and I’m wondering if this is a regional thing, because I don’t remember it being an issue when I lived in Northern California, and I’ve heard that it’s not a problem in the Northeast either. Thoughts?
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I think it’s just a stupid masculinity thing
Never heard of this towards women, raised in New England. Teenage boys? Well they will always find something to make fun of, c’est la vie.
South here… TX/GA/TN (all places I’ve lived) and I can’t say that a high pitch voice is shunned here. It’s the northern proper grammar that rubs us wrong
It hasn’t been an issue for me here in the SW. I don’t have a super high voice and it does fluctuate, but when it is high, it’s higher than most guys, yet my employees have always respected me and people recognize my competence in many areas.
I think it’s just a natural association between higher voices and youth.
Anecdotally, I’ve seen it be a problem for someone trying to exert their authority. I used to have a boss who sounded like, and I shit you not, Mickey Mouse with a Cuban accent. Incredibly nice dude, and usually well respected, but it was *extremely* hard to take him seriously when he was upset or trying to take charge of something.
It didn’t help that we referred to ourselves as the Mouseketeers when he wasn’t in earshot.
Sadly, a lot of research (and there is a lot of it) over the years has found that higher-pitched or “feminine” voices are often viewed as less serious or authoritative by society while deeper more “masculine” voices are taken more seriously
You see it with comments saying women’s voices are annoying, bitchy, whiney, fake.
This cultural idea (and it’s not just men, research has found other women also can think this about other women) has created a system where women will sometimes deepen their voices or make it more deadpan while in professional settings.
While she’s a terrible person, Elizabeth Holmes did it with her voice likely because she found investors weren’t taking her natural softer voice seriously
midwest tends to have a more conservative masculine view of men. i could see how a guy with a lower pitch voice could face some problems but it’s also human nature. a deeper voice sounds more intimidating thus people may take a deeper voice more seriously simply out of human instinctual fear.
Mostly it’s just a people thing, though the “average” you’re judged against vary regionally. Spanish is generally spoken higher than American English, for example, especially some regions. Most people are not aware of this bias and would likely deny it if asked directly, as with many things.
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2012.0311
This is a bit dense and goes on a tangent about animals but it’s heavily sourced so it’s a good gateway to a whole bunch of other research on the subject of you care to read.
I didn’t think it was regional, but here in the plains I would say that’s true, yeah. I taught myself to speak in a lower register in my early 20s when I realized that I tended to speak in a higher register than your average guy. It took a few weeks of practice, but it’s not that hard of a thing to change.
Probably. i think its more of a broader thing across most cultures and most regions, and its more noticeable among Northern regions and places with less speakers of English as their 2nd language.
I don’t know whether it’s regional, nor what the prejudices are around it. I’ll often point out [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=Lkm0rmigGOw) about stereotyped gay male speech, but the aspect of Chris’s speech (the produce buyer) that I most notice isn’t his speech mannerisms but his pitch. So I wonder if that association exists, George Takei not withstanding.
On a different subject, like many older people I’m losing some hearing in the higher octaves, which means that I’ll more often have trouble with female audiobook readers. Not always, because not all women talk that high and because sound mixing is more complicated than that, but it is an issue for me. Or maybe my analysis is bogus and I don’t correctly understand why I have trouble with those voices.
I grew up in the Midwest and moved to Northern California a few years ago.
Gender roles are definitely stronger and more pronounced in the Midwest, both consciously and subconsciously. For example, this is not judging these lifestyles as right or wrong, but everyone in the Midwest seemed to want to settle down right out of college, a lot of times to high school and college sweethearts, and the women were all pink collar careers like nurses and teachers. Then they have a couple kids and quit their jobs if they can. Not knocking it, it’s just what you do there, and it was hard for me to find other people who didn’t want to do that.
I’m a tiny Asian girl with a high voice and I was constantly infantilized in the Midwest. That’s actually part of why I moved out here. I am taken far more seriously on a professional level out here than I ever was when I worked in the Midwest. I’m in corporate management now in my 20s at a fairly large biotech company, which I don’t think would have been as possible back home.
Idk I saw the movie grownups and it made me associate Canda with higher voices lol
Is it vocal pitch, or vocal fry that is found infantilizing?
I’ve never witnessed discrimination of a woman because of a high pitched voiced.
However, if your wife has the Californian vocal fry? Where a statement is never made? But always a question? Like she never matured past eighth grade?
Then she might be treated like she’s a bit simple. That particular vocal habit sounds vacuous to a pragmatic midwestern ear.