In the first of this two-part series, we looked at how the language that orbits women is detrimental in ways that are implicit but foundational to more overt acts of misogyny. Implicit elements of misogynist language can also be directed directly at women, not just in the language that is about them but also directly to them, as in the manner that we speak to women. Our speech towards women can be used to regulate and police women as we interact with them. In this article, we aim to further examine how we talk to, or rather should not talk to, women.
Pardon the Interruption, I am Mansplaining
One of the many ways we diminish women when we talk to them is by not letting them talk. While this can and does take many forms, the most common is simply to interrupt them. While to some it would seem absurd to suggest that interruptions and a lack of conversational etiquette can have a gender angle about five decades of studies would claim otherwise.
Zimmerman &West (1975) often considered to be the foundational study in the matter found that mixed sex conversations showed significant more interruptions from men to women than in all-female and all-male conversations and Anderson & Leaper (1998) added more context almost two decades later as their work found that men interrupt women more frequently in conversations involving status.
The implication is that women are not only often interrupted but also often unheard by male peers, as interruptions often stem from mental dismissals (though not always, as cultural nuances matter).
In a similar vein, mansplaining is where men in condescending and patronizing tones explain a subject to women with the presumption that said woman does not know or understand the subject. Though not coined by Rebecca Solnit, the phrase is often cited from an essay she wrote in which a man insists on explaining a book she had authored to her. What mansplaining often does is it ignores a woman’s stated expertise, assumes ignorance and more often than not is a manifestation of the Dunning-Kruger effect in combination with an application of gender stereotypes.
Tone Policing and the Gymnastics of Women’s Speech
It comes as no surprise that a society that polices everything about a woman’s autonomy and has actively worked to wrestle it away from them would police the tone with which women speak whilst also setting standards that slide on a scale between absurd and impossible.
What this has created, in effect, is a society that almost enjoys telling women how to express experiences they have no personal or second-hand grasp of. For instance, women’s opinions are judged on the palatability of their tone rather than the actual substance of their arguments. This, of course, leads to ignoring whatever the subject matter is and focusing on the tone in which they are said, which lends itself to outright dismissal.
However, should a woman want to be heard, then she must tick every box of the “how a lady/girl ought to speak” checklist. She should be assertive in her convictions but not assertive enough to cross the microscopic line into aggressiveness; be friendly with everyone, but if a man misinterprets this as flirtation, then it is the woman’s fault. Not only does this place a series of nearly impossible standards on women, but it also cages the women themselves whilst stripping elements of their agency.
Conclusion
These regulations of women’s speech are not simply matters of etiquette or personality; they shape whose voices are permitted to occupy public and private spaces. By determining who gets to speak through interruptions, who is heard through dismissal or idea appropriation, who is believed through credibility discounting, how women are expected to communicate through tone policing and impossible standards, and who is recognised as an authority through patronising language and mansplaining, language becomes a mechanism of social control.
Challenging misogyny therefore requires more than removing sexist words from our vocabulary. It requires rethinking the conversational habits that silence, diminish and delegitimise women’s voices, ensuring that respect is reflected not only in what we say about women, but also in how we speak to them.
Let us know your thoughts. If you have burning thoughts or opinions to express, please feel free to reach out to us at larra@globalindiannetwork.com.
