Why Won't She Just Shut Up? Hearing and Seeing Women through the Eyes of the Patriarchy

A few months ago, Kesha sang at the 2018 Grammys. Dressed in white and surrounded by women in a tribute to Time's Up on Sexual Assault, her song, "Praying” was an ode to women coming together, overcoming the horrors of sexual violence and inequality in their lives and moving on. And, feminist that I am, all I could do was recoil and think: Why won’t she just stop?

It is the same feeling that I had, if only fleetingly, these last weeks, during the Kavanaugh hearings. When I heard recordings of the innumerable protestors, heard the women screaming at Senator Flake in that elevator, saw videos of women confronting senators and demanding to be heard, a part of me still recoiled and thought: Why won’t these women lower their voices? Not my best moment.

But, if you're being honest with yourselves, how many of you were so much more comforted by Dr. Blasey Ford? Her embodiment of gender norms during her testimony was astounding, and we all sat, mesmerized and so relieved that here was a woman that knew her place, even if we didn’t want to admit how relieved we were. By place, I mean that Dr. Blasey Ford knew the proper way to express her pain without offending anyone. She was white and blonde and pretty. She dressed conservatively, but with some style. She was smart but did not exhibit it so much that she would pose a threat to anyone else’s intelligence, and she also laughed and apologized and showed immense deference to the male senators in front of her. She was demure. She was emotional, but only a little, and never with anger, only with sadness. She made us all feel okay with her pain, like every woman has learned that they must do. 

  

Seeing women through the eyes of the patriarchy is easy because it is the lens with which we view the world. It is the removal of this lens that is difficult, that forces us to confront our own beliefs, judgements and those snap reactions that are so stubbornly ingrained. This also goes for the ways in which we hear people. Inevitably, we judge what we hear, and that judgement is often deeply injected with lessons learned from a patriarchy built on keeping women in roles and norms where they do not affect or challenge male authority.

Take the sound of a woman’s voice. We are uncomfortable with women’s voices. It is men’s voices that we hear most often, especially as bearers of news and truth. Think of the news, think of the voice-overs in movies, think of the visible people at all echelons of power. Up until very recently, those voices have largely been the voices of older white men. Their tone and cadence project a seriousness that we associate with righteousness and truth. We are comfortable with men's voices. We trust them implicitly.

Women’s voices have long been excluded from these same realms, and instead, insomuch as they have been allowed, have been portrayed as emblematic of the tropes we pile on women’s shoulders: gossiping neighbours, nagging wives, crying girlfriends. Women’s voices are bearers of negative news, wrapped in negative emotions, and we view them with deep suspicion. Does this woman even belong here? And we look around: who gave her the authority to speak in this domain, on this subject? Since the time of the Romans, women have barely been allowed to speak at all, not for themselves and certainly not for others, lest it disrupt the power structures that gave men the voice, and thus the audience and influence, at all levels of social structures, especially in legislative and executive power.

Women who are now entering roles in which speaking is a priority (I don’t know, like life, perhaps?), are finding that of all the gender and racial barriers they are confronted with, their voice is yet another to overcome. Women in politics, women on TV, women on podcasts, women calling sports games, women speaking in boardrooms – we are all subject to the confines of having to overcome our sex in order to be heard. If we don’t manage to speak in perfect tones that seem impossible to define, the patriarchy has an entire dictionary of words that code us as unreasonable, emotional, angry. The lexicon is vast: Shrill. Loudmouth. Sexual. Grating. Shrieking. Emotional. Crazy. Ranting. Nagging. Dramatic. Women’s voices are too much of something, and since getting the perfect voice is nearly impossible, with margins of error that are dismally thin, it is incredibly difficult for us to be heard. For our ideas to land. For our emotions to be seen. For us not to be dismissed.

In all these ways, we keep understanding that men (white men, let’s be precise) are superior communicators, and have established a norm that women cannot meet. Is it any wonder that women are hiring voice coaches to make their voices lower? (Or that black men going into television are hiring voice coaches to make them sound more white?)

Interestingly, or depressingly, men exhibit the same speech patterns and tics (‘like’, ‘um’) as women do, sometimes even more, but because we hear men speak and associate their voices with authority, we recognize those patterns less in men than we do in women. We also punish women for using these same tics and speech patterns that men do, and they code as making women sound submissive, weak, and hesitant – even dumb. 

Dr. Blasey Ford eschewed all these markers. She was calm and composed in her speech, injecting it at times with some of her expertise (but not too much!), and never raised her voice, nor exhibited any anger or emotion (beyond a few minutes in which she described the attack against her). I hope we realize that this is a woman who survived a trauma in which she thought she was going to be raped and killed, that affected the rest of relationships and life – to the point where she has had an extra door put into her bedroom for escape purposes – and came forth to such criticism and harassment that she has had to leave her house and live under protection. She had many, many reasons to be angry. One might understand if she raised her voice. But one would not have liked hearing it. And thus her credibility would have been dismissed.  

Combined with the innumerable ways in which women are subject to ‘othering’ and discrimination under the patriarchy, our voices are the constant subject of policing and ridicule, and sometimes, even the best of us still have those flashes of wondering when women will just keep quiet.

Look at the Republican Senators that went so far as to praise Dr. Blasey Ford's testimony. With little to lose now that Kavanaugh has his much deserved seat (after all, he went to Yale!), the criticism and silencing of women's voices is rampant; it is now a scary time for men in America. Because, lest we forget,  what the policing of women’s voices is really about is if women have the right to speak at all.

So, what can we do about this?

Watch yourself! 
If I am any example, be aware of the judgements and labels you lay on others without a second thought. Instead of labeling a woman ‘crazy’ if she is angry, ask yourself why she might be angry. Remove yourself from the situation, and ask yourself what are the structures and relationships involved that make me think this way. If you find yourself dismissing words, emotions and ideas because they aren’t ‘packaged right’, ask yourself who came up with the right way to package, and who it serves. The next time you judge, recoil or wish someone would stop telling you their truth, realize instead that its most likely because you are uncomfortable. Breathe into that. Give people space and give yourself a chance to be wrong and to learn. 

I never forget about race 

But I’m also always learning. You should be too. Patriarchy is highly intersected with racism, and racial power structures are an entire system in and of themselves. Remember this: white women are upholders of the patriarchy all the time. So, the thoughts you might have about white women expressing themselves are usually amplified if it’s a woman of colour doing so. The bar we set for women and people of colour is so impossibly high, it may well be in the stratosphere. We judge accents as uneducated, facial expressions as crazy and skin colour and shade as reflecting violent tendencies (the darker the person, the more likely we are to see them as violent). Stop. Give people space and voice. Think. Be open to criticism (and be critical) about your thoughts. Learn. Do better. Repeat. 

Who are you listening to, reading, watching and talking to?

A truism many times over: the more diverse your friend group, the more diverse your readings, the more diverse the people you see and talk to and listen to, the more your patriarchal and racial lens gets challenged. Why are you only watching white men tell you the news or talk about the stock market? Why are you only reading books and articles by white men? In this day and era, there are countless ways to find diverse voices. This will not only expand and complement your views, but it will normalize these faces and voices, so you will not judge them so harshly and with such quickness when you hear women and people of colour speak. Watch yourself: when do you tune out and who’s words to you remember? Race and sex crosscut everything, and voice is no exception. 

Be critical, always (and of yourself first)

It’s not very fun watching movies, comedy or televisions shows with me anymore, because I no longer hold back. Sexist and racist jokes have been and always will be lame, recycled stereotypes in movies in 2018 are a bore, political discourse that features these types of attacks or ignores these issues are both sexist and racist and I no longer want anything to do with it. I expect better, and so should you… because there is so much better to choose from! Politicians, comedians, television series, books, music – there is so much political discourse, art and media and literature to consume that does not trade in patriarchal bullshit, and I suggest you be as critical as possible of those that keep dog whistling to it. Do it as loudly as possible, to keep ensuring the envelope is being pushed forward. 

Just expect others to be critical of you, so, revert back to #1 above.