Erica Berger

❄️️William Henry Harrison, the 9th US prez, defeated his opponent by savaging his manhood. When he won, he gave the longest inaug speech in history and refused to wear a coat, presumably to show toughness. It was the dead of winter. He got pneumonia and died 31 days into office.

Years later, Americans still associate the male voice with authority. Which is precisely why it’s so important to have a system to shut these interruptions down. That did not happen tonight.

But there is also deeply ingrained bias: Dating back to the phonograph, engineers created a device that was designed for the male voice — newscasters, presidents, public figures — to the extent that if a woman spoke into it, her voice would sound distorted, thin or scrambled.

Men’s voices also tend to be lower, which does in fact allow them to carry better in a crowd — it’s why women politicians have, for decades, trained themselves to slow their pace, lower their tone, adjust their cadence (Margaret Thatcher for heats to make her voice deeper).

Manterruption (n.): The unnecessary interruption of a woman by a man. Studies show that women are 3x as likely to be interrupted when they speak.