3min chapter

What Works cover image

What Does Power Sound Like?

What Works

CHAPTER

Navigating Identity and Conformity in the Quest for Acceptance

This chapter examines how societal pressures influence individuals from marginalized groups to modify their behavior and communication to align with mainstream expectations. It highlights the emotional impact of these adaptations and the tension between personal authenticity and external norms.

00:00
Speaker 1
Now, for me, that means things like adjusting my behavior so that I physically stim less when I'm around non-autistic people. Or pretending I'm fine when multiple conversations, music, or construction noise is completely overwhelming my ability to function. It can also mean performing small talk and putting on a smile when I'm depressed or emotionally exhausted. In terms of language, Black children are often taught standard American English rather than learning about African American vernacular English because it's not, quote unquote, professional. AAVE isn't what success sounds like because it's not what white people sound like. Upwardly mobile young people in the South often learn to soften their accents, something that the podcast Dolly Parton's America explored with college students. You need to change your accent. I willingly changed it can't Can't you know as a kid in addition to being based here my dad was in the military we moved around so I got to Hear a bunch of different accents and I thought wow I'm different. I want to sound like them And transgender people face all manner of challenges when it comes to their voices Here's Mackenzie Dunham, a therapist who specializes in working with transgender kids and the host of Camp Wild Heart. I've known kids who have completely stopped talking because of their voice. I've also known kids, primarily trans girls, who simply won't talk in public places or in school. They'll ditch choir or theater, things that they used to love, all to avoid having to hear their own voice. Many kids feel that their voice is a huge giveaway of their transness, which isn't a big deal if you don't care about being trans, but many kids do care about being trans or being seen as trans. They care because of their own internalized transphobia, but also because they know that people will treat them differently based on their perception of their gender identity. So what do we do about it? How do we help a girl whose voice has dropped? Or a boy who's the only one of his friends whose voice hasn't changed at all? And this American Life recently did a story on one man's vocal transition. all those concerns? The reason I would give myself was I can't give up my singing voice. Maybe I thought the universe would punish me. You know, I maybe I thought that, hey, if I do this monstrous quote unquote thing and start testosterone and ruin this beautiful voice that I spent so much of my childhood building, then the punishment I'll receive is that I won't ever feel the pleasure of singing again. This each time we overcome one of our differences to become more like what's considered normal, we get incrementally closer to what power sounds like or looks like. But at the same time, we alienate an important part of our identities and have to put in extra work to do so. And to make matters worse, no matter how far we inch toward normal, toward what power looks like or sounds like, we can't ever quite get there. At least not for long. As Beard put it, we become impersonators of rhetorical roles that we'll never own.

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