The Gender of Sound

The Gender of Sound

Published: 2025

Pages: 48

Rating: 4.29

Language: en

eBook status: Skipped   AudioBook status: Skipped

Publisher: Spiral House

Sources

SourceIDLink
GoodReads 46037885 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/46037885
Amazon B0DM2GCFKF https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DM2GCFKF

Description

Human history is filled with unacceptable sounds: high-pitched voices, gossip, talkativeness, hysteria, wailing and ritual shouts. Who makes them? Those deviant from or deficient in the masculine ideal of self-control: women, catamites, eunuchs and androgynes all fall into this category.

From the myths of antiquity to Margaret Thatcher via Sigmund Freud and Gertrude Stein, The Gender of Sound charts the gendering of sound in Western culture. Carson invites us to listen again, and in doing so to reimagine our conceptions of human order, virtue and selfhood.

Putting a door on the female mouth has been an important project of patriarchal culture from antiquity to the present day. Its chief tactic is an ideological association of female sound with monstrosity, disorder and death.