Dr. E's Thoughts on What Happens When We "Notice" Gendered Writing
“Recomposing as Woman: An Essay in
Different Voices”--Terry Myers Zawacki
“Instead
of trying to discover what makes a written voice distinctly a woman’s, or a
man’s, I want to focus on how language can be manipulated to make readers
believe that there is a gendered self contained in the margins” (36).
“New
Chrome App Helps Women Stop Saying “Just” and “Sorry” in Emails”-- Christina
Cauterucci
“The
Just Not Sorry extension, which is downloadable at the Chrome
app store,
underlines self-demeaning phrases like ‘I’m no expert’ and qualifying words
like ‘actually; in red in Gmail like they’re spelling errors. Hover your mouse
over the red words, and you’ll see explanatory quotes from women like Tara
Mohr (“‘Just’
demeans what you have to say. ‘Just’ shrinks your power.”) and Sylvia
Ann Hewlett (“Using
sorry frequently undermines your gravitas and makes you appear unfit for
leadership.”): http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2015/12/29/new_chrome_app_helps_women_stop_saying_just_and_sorry_in_emails.html
“Telling
women to apologize less isn’t about empowerment. It’s about shame”-- Jessica
Gross
“[F]or the sake of argument, let’s
say women do use “sorry” and “just” more than men. (These words certainly are
perceived to be more associated with women.) If this is the case, I’d argue
that they are doing so not because they are carelessly conforming to gendered
expectations to the detriment of their careers, but because they’ve learned
through trial and error that using speech this way is ultimately more effective
[for women who are discriminated against throughout their lives for sounding too
“masculine”]…What [the app] doesn’t seem to grasp is that
communication is a complicated dance between speaker and listener, writer and
reader, and that use of these words and phrases can be incredibly useful in the
realpolitik of the workplace. ": https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/01/04/sorry-language-shamers-but-women-just-dont-need-your-new-email-policing-app/
Guiding
Question(s): Zawacki implies that gender is performed through the texts
we write, and that we should become more rhetorically aware of this fact. What,
though, do we do with this awareness that gender socialization affects our language
use? Should we use it to encourage assimilation on the writer’s part? Can assimilation ever be a conscious and effective choice? What role does the audience play in the
reception of gendered texts?
ReplyDelete“It's risky to talk about women writing their gen- der and to suggest that some voices are more natural or authentic than others because they come from somewhere inside the self. There are dangers too in
saying that certain forms of writing might somehow represent women's ways of constructing knowledge better than other forms. Women's lives are always
already being read into texts as if to say that women can write only from the
perspective of their own personal experience, whereas men can transcend narrow self-interests and "write" the world.” (Zawacki, p 34)
“Study after study has suggested that low voices, "masculine" voices, are an asset to those seeking leadership roles, in politics and beyond. And that's so in part because we don't simply think of vocal pitch--the physical trait determined by the size of one's larynx and the length and mass of one's vocal folds--in terms of physicality. We prefer low voices because, we assume, voices say something far beyond the words they convey: We perceive men with lower-pitched voices to be more attractive and physically stronger--and also more competent and more trustworthy--than their less burly-voiced peers. And we perceive women with lower-pitched voices along the same lines (though we also tend to perceive them, tellingly, as less attractive than their Betty Boop-y counterparts).”
[http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2012/12/why-we-prefer-masculine-voices-even-in-women/266350/]
Guiding Questions: The masculine voice is preferred, not only in literary works, but in real life. Why are we drawn so drawn to it? Looking at some of the firmer voices in our lives, do they not also belong to mothers, grandmothers? Why are we so quick to dismiss these voices?