Note to Mom: this icon is a dreamsheep.

[sofiaviolet]

Note to other users: you can find lots of dreamsheep icons at dreamsheep.

denise would like to know how we use the update page.

This lolcat is relevant to knitters, particularly knitters with cats.

Odd thing I have been remembering off and on: last week, I had to call my credit card issuer because my card got demagnetized. While on the phone with Super Helpful Guy, I got an accidental 'sir.' I'm mostly amused, somewhat mystified. All he would have had to go on were my name and voice, but I'm actually leaning towards "completely random fuckup."

My legal name is Dominique, which is a female name in the US, which is where Super Helpful Guy seems to have been located; I was named after my great-grandfather, because French. For some reason, I get called Dominic to my face a lot - the American pronunciation of Dominique is almost the same: eek versus ick at the end, and apparently some people can't manage the eek. IDK.

I suppose I should state for the record that I'm cis and female, and unambiguously so. I am always surprised when I hear recordings of my voice (to the point where I avoid them when possible), because my voice always sounds too high - what my own ears perceive as I speak is much lower than what other people apparently get.

So, random fuckup. I keep wandering back to it, sometimes to lol and sometimes to poke at how unimaginably sucky it would have been for someone without the privilege of laughing it off.

Comments

[fleurdeliser]

Actually, you probably perceive your voice correctly. Most consumer-level sound recording equipment or things like telephones and loud-speakers only pick up certain frequencies so your voice IS distorted when transmitted through them.

[sofiaviolet]

I'm thinking in particular of a project I did for a linguistics class, in which I taped an hour of my sister and I talking, transcribed a chunk of it, and performed various analyses. Her voice didn't sound significantly different on playback. Mine sounded like a completely different person.

[fleurdeliser]

Did you ask her what your voice sounded like to her? I think we pick up on the discrepancies in transmission of our own voices a lot more than anybody else would.

[sofiaviolet]

Hm, no. I wonder if I still have the files. Or I could try recording some speech again, if I can figure out a halfway decent setup. I don't remember what I did for that class, just that it resulted in an mp3.

[sasha_feather]

There is also a distortion that occurs through the skull, or so I seem to remember people explaining to me. We hear others' voices through the air, but we hear our own voices through our skulls and through the air, which sounds different. For instance, plug your ears and talk to yourself-- you can still hear your voice via vibration through the skull. I think there are hearing aids that work this way, by vibrating the bone near the ear.

[sofiaviolet]

... yeah, my voice sounds even lower when I plug my ears.

I wonder if there's a way to train myself to talk at the lower end of what my voice will actually do? Because holy mother of fuck do I hate how I sound to other people.

[pinesandmaples]

So, random fuckup. I keep wandering back to it, sometimes to lol and sometimes to poke at how unimaginably sucky it would have been for someone without the privilege of laughing it off.

Yeaaaaaah. I haven't even figured out what my pronouns are, much less how to explain them to the people who matter. Indecision is a very comfortable feeling right now so I plan on lingering much longer here.

[sofiaviolet]

*hugs* Unless internet hugs make you uncomfortable?

And whap me if I use pronouns you're not comfortable with at the time or in the context, 'kay?

[druidspell]

I have the same problem, where my voice sounds much deeper to me than it does to other people; I've listened to recordings of myself where I sound like that one cheerful welcome wagon girl in movies, and it's not only disturbing, but kind of depressing because that's not who I am and that's not what I hear. I welcome the sound of my voice when I'm sick, because then it matches up.
As far as pronoun confusion goes, I get that a lot, too, and even though I can laugh it off, I kind of get the same feeling that I do when people try to set me up with a nice boy not knowing I'm a lesbian.

[sofiaviolet]

Yeah, that's the same weirdness for me. Additionally, my voice sounds a lot more nasal to other people, which I hate but probably cannot avoid.

Ugh. *hugs*