This speaking habit is present among men too. It's also a bad speaking habit when men do it.
This is someone crying "oppression" when given simple criticism. There is oppression for sure, but it is not of people who can't take criticism.
But the phenomenon, "unnecessary querying tone", is not a dialect and it is not exclusive to female English speakers.
It is not as widespread as the habit of injecting the phrase "Oh my god" or the word "like" into sentences in English. But consider these habits. They too are something that many English-speakers do, regardless of gender or orientation or social status.
If we were to tell a speaker that injecting "Oh my god" and "like" into sentences is distracting and reduces the effectiveness of a presentation, we would be right.
Presenting is an important skill. The healthy response to constructive criticism is to reflect and improve.
With that disclaimer out of the way, I would have serious concerns about a male employee with 'valley girl' rising terminals in meetings. According to Wikipedia [1] while there are differences between the way men and women 'valleyspeak' it does in fact apply to both. I would address both the same way, seeking to understand - in open dialogue - whether there was a basis in (lack of) confidence and trying to find ways to support them further in their career development. Maybe suggest public speaking classes, especially if available through work.
[edit] further to [2] I found the way the feedback was communicated around the rising intonation friendly, positive and when addressed, the progress was kindly affirmed and remarked on. I saw no negativity in this. I did see someone who was indignant about receiving criticism, however, and took it to a level rarely seen in a professional setting. To call this the 'nuclear option' would be a bit of an understatement.
Reading the back and forth documented in [2] is an absolute train wreck. Once I got a few pages in, I started to empathize deeply with Apple ER. That's not an easy job some days.
One tweet the author posted said:
> "... when #Apple just tried I said 'No thx, Mr Suicide Nets.' If you're going to create a nervous breakdown you get to watch it unfold in real time & now I'm on Twitter again."
Referring to Tim Cook as 'Mr Suicide Nets' on Twitter seems like an insta-fire.
That's one spicy meatball of a tweet.
I'm not saying there aren't some legitimate potential instances of concern documented here, or at least grey areas (director inviting Ashley to drinks alone, 'looking sad' when she brought a friend and talking about his ex-wife) - but they are glossed over, and instead the focus is on sensationalizing some things I would consider trivial. The things I would consider particularly concerning are deemphasized in Ashley's narrative [2].
I suspect some of her 2015 concerns amounted to her manager and team really just not liking her very much. I suspect the behavior Ashley is pointing to wasn't sexism (from her female manager) but rather that she went over her manager's head to the director and shit-talked her. Naturally this was filed under a "Quid-pro-quo" complaint to HR.
It appears she had an open conversation with HR for almost six years complaining about many of the folks she'd ever worked with.
Then when the seed is planted everything the gossip target says it does gets put under a microscope to confirm the suspicion that they hate you or are discriminatory or are retaliating over something or other.
I don’t really know what the fix is. I think the basecamp furore recently might be the way. Just discourage this sort of clique formation around airing grievances. But then that has the effect of not giving space for valid grievances.
Some people think they are hated because they are in $OpressedGroup, when in reality they are just insufferable.
Update: from reading through some of this, as well as her "I thought I was dying" article (https://sfbayview.com/2021/03/i-thought-i-was-dying-my-apart...) I honestly think she's having some kind of mental health crisis. Some of the logical leaps she makes are bizarre and she seems extremely paranoid.
I don't particularly think that the original complaint has much merit, (ie, being coached is not sexist) but that said I also find this sort of attitude wholly unhealthy. Is room full of paid professionals unable to distinguish the content of someone's speech from the quality of their delivery? Particularly in a case where we're just talking about tone of voice, and not difficulty with word choice or articulation? I believe it says more about the audience if they are unable to analyze an idea on its merits rather than using body language to evaluate the value of an idea.
Also, plenty of communication works better via text. For example, a book has a very different format than a speech, precisely because of the strengths of the two formats. The same is true of something like a small talk vs. a technical document. And people, with their reliance on body language of course benefit from books and technical papers quite often.
Anyhow, this is a sore point of mine, and I seldom see much agreement on my position. So, thank you very much for your polite discourse on the topic.
It's not humanly possible to do this, which is why it's such a false narrative. No one ever really knows what the "best quality idea" is, and expecting regular people to have mystical powers isn't helpful.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/media-gets-its-facts-wrong-wor...
If you had two employees, one man and one woman, and they both spoke like a “Valley Girl” which would you judge more harshly? I suspect the man, for fairly to conform to expected gender norms/stereotypes.
That’s exactly why it’s sexist.
Even if the person who got the feedback doesn't want to change, at least take the opportunity to educate the person that gave you the feedback, rather than reporting them.
Reporting it to HR doesn't address anything, and only sets things back.
I used to receive the same feedback, though I don't have what commenters or the person in the complaint describes.
My voice deviates in tone a lot, sometimes for no reason at all. The deviations sound like inflections. Additionally, I also have body language that is quite off from what people might expect. On top of that, I have a perma-scowl. I attribute it to time in the military. I've had someone in authority (two levels above me) give me this feedback fairly bluntly. I don't know if there's ever a good way to give this feedback but I would not describe that meeting as pleasant much less positive. I subsequently was not awarded a raise I was promised despite delivering on numerous advancements technologically (and monetarily), the program I was involved with was dissolved, and there was talk of reassigning me. I quit within the month and did not regret it.
A couple notes I have, some dissonance included:
- Critiquing tone and body language is straight up junk. Society has an expectation of what various things look or sound like, however, in a neuro-divergent field you should expect deviation from these things. Maybe even celebrate it.
- I did follow that directors advice. I wear thick frame glasses to cover up my scowl instead of wearing contacts. I don't cross my arms. I don't look up at the ceiling when I'm drawing on information. When I'm excited or engaged I don't let the pitch of my voice change. Does it work? Sure, but work also gets a very shallow clone of me in front of people I won't have a beer with.
Edit: if it's not clear, I'm a man.
This is all fine and good, until you have to communicate with people who are not engineers. Not being able to communicate effectively with non-tech people, whatever the reason is, is certainly going to be a career-limiting factor. You can celebrate it all you want, but you also need to acknowledge the reality of the situation.
Conversely I've also been told stuff that boiled down to fitting a mold, working customer service or delivery and being told that tattoos weren't professional while consistently seeing doctors or other 'real' professionals with tattoos.
I feel like the dividing line kind of comes down to the difference between "this is how I personally interpret and feel about your actions/communication" and "this is what I suspect an imaginary other desires".
At the same time, though, it looks like you've already experienced some consequences because of these things:
> I subsequently was not awarded a raise I was promised despite delivering on numerous advancements technologically (and monetarily), the program I was involved with was dissolved, and there was talk of reassigning me.
This is what I was talking about regarding it being a career-limiting factor, and acknowledging the situation. You can say it's bullshit all you want (and, for the record, I agree with you on that), but, in this case, you've seen first hand what can happen when you don't fit that imaginary mold. And, I would claim that, at least in this instance, it was constructively communicated to you, since you mentioned making changes and subsequently getting better results.
Whether we like it or not, people pick up on things like body language and vocal intonations. If you're lucky, not conforming to peoples' expectations there will make you seem "odd," or maybe "eccentric." If you're not, then, further down the scale of reactions you may receive could include thinking your manner of personal interaction is "weird," "unsettling," or, even "creepy." And, these are all serious problems if you ever want to hope to communicate with and be taken seriously by the majority of people.
Again, I want to reiterate that I agree with you, and this is all basically bullshit. But, like it or not, that's the game you have to play if you want to get your ideas across to people.
While the things this director rattled off were taken of note, "consequences" would've been good to stop at a conversation. They became non-constructive when they went too far, especially for something far out of my control. The biggest change I made was not interviewing at product or traditional businesses. Engineering firms tend to not have these problems. I once regarded Apple as an engineering firm, but it could be argued they've grown to such a size that they lost homogeneity that would otherwise benefit them in these scenarios.
Thanks for the thoughts regardless.
But I'm a woman and I'd love that kind of candid feedback from my manager. If I'm doing something that limits my career I want to know, regardless of what it is or if it's "fair".
I absolutely think we should be having discussions about how women are treated and calling out bad behavior from companies, but from a selfish, personal perspective I worry that news reports like this are going to make managers less likely to give me useful feedback.