'Fundie Baby Voice' Is The Chilling Vocal Trend You Need To Know About
'Fundie Baby Voice' Is The Chilling Vocal Trend You Need To Know About
Experts break down this vocal phenomenon — most recently displayed by Sen. Katie Britt — and what it means in politics and pop culture today.
I found this to be a very well-written article about a concept I wasn't previously aware of. Here follow some interesting choice quotes - but I recommend reading the actual article:
When activist Jess Piper heard Alabama Republican senator Katie Britt deliver the GOP response to the State of the Union, she had a visceral reaction. The senator spoke in a breathy voice with a soft and sweet quality ― even as she described horrific acts of sexual violence and murder and painted a dystopian picture of the United States.
For Piper, there was no mistaking that sound, which permeated her childhood in the Bible Belt. Britt was using “fundie baby voice.”
Then more context - conveying submission to male authority:
“I would describe ‘fundie baby voice’ as a woman’s voice that is higher than average in both pitch and breathiness,” said Kathryn Cunningham, a vocologist and assistant professor of theatre and head of acting at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. “While the average woman’s voice is higher-pitched than the average man’s due to a combination of anatomical and social factors, some women who speak this way seem to be intentionally placing their voices higher than their natural pitch range in order to convey submission to male authority and childlike innocence.”
These changes in voice are deliberate:
Deliberate voice changes are very much a reality for women in fundamentalist Christian communities, noted Tia Levings, author of the upcoming memoir “A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy.”
“From a young age, we were taught over and over again to modulate our voices,” she said. “It was all about sounding sweet, soft, and childlike. There were very strict gender roles, and women were supposed to never sound angry but keep sweet, obey, dress modestly, speak softly, be very feminine.”
Interesting roots:
This sort of Christian vocal training has roots in Helen Andelin’s 1963 book “Fascinating Womanhood.”
“This book encourages fundamentalist Christian women to sound ‘childlike’ in order to convey submission to male figures,” Cunningham said, noting that there are “references to an idealized voice that a compliant, Christian woman should have.”
I found this quote referenced in the article very remarkable:
“It is important to emphasize in this discussion that women’s voices are always scrutinized and policed. The truth is that we can’t win, no matter how we speak.” - Kathryn Cunningham, vocologist and assistant professor
Of such women in power who use the fundie baby voice, the article goes on to quote the following:
“What they produce is a lot of abuse and subjugation,” Levings added. “And it always stings more when a woman is used as a tool of the patriarchy to promote it. They’re the Aunt Lydias and Serena Joys of the program ― brought in and given power when it suits men, but they will be discarded when it’s no longer useful to those men.”
Toward the end of the article, the very valid warning:
Piper urged those who are interested in the fundie baby voice phenomenon to educate themselves on the Christian nationalist movement in U.S. politics and the Project 2025 agenda. Directing ire toward those in power is more useful than tearing down everyday women for the way they were trained to speak.
Solid recommend at the end.
I do agree, but my experience with fundie women (Christian women who "know their role") is that yes, there is point where they are victims of this system of belief, but they will NOT think twice about using their proximity to power to victimize/bully/subjugate others, whether it's people of color, lgbtq or anyone not in their bubble.
That is hauntingly fascinating
I’d heard that voice, but didn’t know it was actively taught. What the actual fuck‽ Also why the fuck do these people want their wives to sound childlike‽ Maybe it’s just the lesbian in me talking but as I get older (not even 30 yet) I increasingly want my women more womanly. Give me an opinionated 40 year old over an insecure 19 year old every time. Every time I learn about fundamentalists pushing unnatural youth onto women I’m reminded of how I’ve heard that child molestation is more often about power than desire. And they act as though it’s all just nature, but if it was what was natural they wouldn’t have to put so much effort into reinforcing these hierarchies and forcing dominant women into servile roles and punishing men who are insufficiently dominant.
Me too, I thought it was organic. Like they develop their own slang, why not their own accent?
It's really disgusting how we still have these ridiculous "norms" to deal with. In opposition to the baby voice we have women who need to modulate their voice to be deeper if they want to be taken more seriously in "professional" settings. It's all very stupid...
Or they have to curse, and tell filthy vulgar jokes to be "one of the guys" in corporate environments.
Listening to Love Line back in the day and they could almost 100% predict who had been victimized as a child based on “little girl voice” which seems awfully similar to me.
fundie
victimized as a child
That venn diagram is a circle.
Ugh that's deeply disturbing.
Drew's goin for his wallet!
Yeah, and Drew claimed that he could ID "marijuana addicts" based upon how they laugh. The guy's a nut job.
Sorry for the YT Shorts link, but here's a video of comparing Katie Britt's previous speaking voice and whatever the hell was going on during the SotU response. It's so bizarre.
Honestly the “after” sounds like some sort of surrealist comedy skit like out of Portlandia or something.
Damn, that makes it sound even less likely that it really happened. How was this a good idea?
It wasn't a good idea. She was over-coached to pieces. I've heard pundits on the right and left say it's a shame what she did because by all rights she's a smart and capable woman.
Edit: I didn't say I agreed with her politics. Downvote if you want, but this kind of marginalization of a smart woman on either side of the conversation erodes the condition of all women.
Shor's blood, the Thu'um!
I grew up southern baptist and I've never heard of this. It's kind of blowing my mind that people perceived as women would be told how to talk, but it rings true because I had similar things like no long hair or "walk like a man" and other things imposed on me.
In my experience as AFAB with a more monotone, less femme voice, I got 'you sound bossy' 'you sound like a bitch' or just ignored until I 'asked nicely' which meant 'sound subservient'.
It has caused me so much trouble in sounding authoritative, because I always had to be high pitched to be heard, but deep pitched to actually be listened to.
In my experience as AFAB with a more monotone, less femme voice, I got ‘you sound bossy’ ‘you sound like a bitch’
What kind of inexcusably rude asshole has said that to you?
Even if I don't care for someone's voice (I'm in Indiana and the Hoosier twang can be highly irritating to me), I don't say anything about it.
Any man who likes that voice wants to fuck a child.
I honestly couldn’t listen to the YouTube video comparison of her real and fake voice the whole way through. It was so hard to hear.
no one:
Reminds me of the "Mormon General Authority" voice. If you've ever had the displeasure of having to sit through 8 hours of Mormon general conference talks over two days, twice a year, you know exactly the voice I'm talking about. And if you're an ex-Mormon, someone trying to use that voice on you will give you a visceral feeling.
I wasn't raised fundie, so I didn't recognize it when I heard clips of the speech. But I appreciate the anger from the people that were.
You just brought back my memories of hearing the emotional wet lip smack
Holy shit there a name for that now. I still use after years of being an exjw. Its so fucking cringe.
Edit: I feel bad about starting this whole thread. Retracted
Moreover, trans women develop the same kind of vocal characteristics on HRT, so saying that women are doing this as some of cultural phenomenon is judgmental and wrong.
Just correcting a common misconceptions, for trans women the voice doesn't change on HRT, as the change in voice with testosterone is not reversible.
Getting similar voice/speech characteristics as cis women is pretty much cultural.
Thanks for the correction! Regardless, attacking women on their physiological traits just seems like such a misguided approach to attack someone for their ideas.
These characteristics exist in women who’ve never been exposed to such fundamental ideas! Policing women’s voices is just another way that conservatives are going to win allies.
Edit: what some transphobe might say based on Jess Pipers criticism—“apparently trans women cannot get soft voices on HRT, so these woke people want to police women’s voices out of existence.”
For the love all that is honest and good, I implore people to not attack others on aspects related to their genes and physiology. You’re no better than your ideological enemies then.
I am having a strong reaction to this post because everything about critiquing and policing something physiological about women just seems so misguided to me. Again, we can attack bad ideas without ad hominem attacks.
Edit: I listened to Jess Piper in detail, her voice doesn’t sound any different to me than the voices of women she’s criticizing. What a weird dimension for women to attack other women on, and tbh that’s just a wrong approach to take!
This is something she addresses herself and says she learned as a trait growing up in the same environment as the women she's criticizing. She's still trying to unlearn it. You should listen to what she's saying instead of just the cadence of her voice.
Did you listen to the video?
Yes