CFP: Gendered Voices, 12/15/2014

A recent NPR video, “Talking While Female” presented six common complaints about female voices. All of the complaints relied on sound to make assumptions about women, even though the tone of voice is not directly related to a woman’s capabilities to, say, lead an organization.

Sounds give people aural cues not just about race and class but also gender. What does a woman sound like? What does a man sound like? These ideas are socially constructed, and at Sounding Out! we’d like to explore this further.

For our February 2015 blog forum we are interested in thinking through the connection of sound to gender, and we will be hosting a series of posts on that topic for February 2015. For this reason we are issuing a call for posts that look at sound and gender.

Use the following questions to get your brain going, but please feel free to consider the subject from other angles, especially from an intersectional context.

• What is the relationship between voice and gender?
• What sounds are commonly associated with women/men? How are these sounds raced? Gendered? Classed?
• How does transgender identity challenge ideas of what gender sounds like?
• How is vocal fry racialized or classed?
• What has been your experience of how people react to your tone of voice?
• Where does sound studies and gender studies intersect?
• How does sound mediate experiences of street harrassment?

Your post can look at different genders, or even do a cross-examination of more than one. We welcome research-based posts and posts examining aural experience through a first-person narrative style; many of our posts mix both. We also welcome ideas for podcasts as well as artistic posts that use the blog format to create an original audio-visual experience.

Please pitch your idea to us in 250 (or less) of your best words by December 15th, 2014.  Send submissions to Liana Silva-Ford, SO!’s Managing Editor at lms@soundingoutblog.com. Feel free to also send questions via email or through Twitter: @lianamsilva. Don’t forget to read our submission guidelines before sending us your stuff. Good luck!

Featured image for Gendered Voices CFP: “i have a voice.” by Flickr user kathrynemily, CC BY-NC-SA.20