How Do Voices Become Gendered? A Critical Examination of Everyday and Medical Constructions of the Relationship Between Voice, Sex, and Gender Identity

Abstract

In this chapter, the author takes a closer look at one aspect of those personal attributes which tend to perceive as if they were contained in and conveyed by the voice and critically examine the assumption that "voice has a sex" that it reflects a person's gender. Common sense easily persuades us that when it comes to something like our perception of male-female differences in voice pitch, we must be dealing with a natural phenomenon, something "caused" by basic anatomy and physiology. This understanding of the relationship between notions of voice, sex, and gender is often taken for granted both in everyday life and in the scientific literature, and it forms the basis for medical diagnosis and treatment of people who experience problems with the communication of gender. The author subjects this conventional perspective to close scrutiny by raising a series of questions: How do voices become gendered? Does the voice have a sex in the sense of a biologically determined attribute? Do speakers and listeners invest voices with gendered meanings in interaction by using their voice organs in particular ways and interpreting certain aspects of the sound they hear as either "male" or "female"? Or is the gendering of voices a transient outcome of meaning-making practices that are regulated by historically and culturally variable stories about bodies, sex, gender, and communication that are beyond individual control? The author concludes by suggesting that an appreciation of different theories about the relationship between voice and gender provides us with an opportunity to become aware of an unheard of diversity of human bodies, identities, and voices and prompts us to reconsider how we habitually explain what we regard as the successful or unsuccessful communication of gender. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)