Take up space. All of it. As much as you can.

Not just physically (as men do sitting spread legged on a subway with no regard for who’s next to them) but sonically, as well.

Use your voice. Let your voice be heard loud and clear.

So today I was in the office and one of the older female secretaries was whispering to me in an undertone. What she was saying was so mundane there was no need to whisper and even though I was standing right right next to her I couldn’t hear properly because she was speaking between her teeth and trying to communicate with eye gestures.

I got really annoyed and started thinking about how theres this whole culture of quiet that permeates law firms for the lower staff but above all for the all-female and all-above-a-certain-age, class of secretaries. Almost all of them whisper on phone calls and hiss talk between teeth when talking to each other, etc in ways that are totally unnecessary but which they think are discreet and demure and also 100% required to be polite and professional.

If I take a 2 second call at just normal voice level with someone in another department asking them to send me something I receive smug knowing glances and non verbal feedback that I’m somehow being too loud, too big, or just generally gauche- like I’m someone who doesn’t know social etiquette even though I’m already very soft spoken and never use speaker or yell.

What they think is basic etiquette actually has misogynistic undertones of shrinking and I don’t like that i’m pressured into it too, like a child that doesn’t know what they’re doing and needs to be grabbed by the collar. There’s an impulse by them that they must correct me on it and bring me in line with their unexamined, internalized misogyny way of thinking. I kinda get looks and smirks like “Omg. Doesnt she know she’s being too much?? They’re not gonna like her if she doesn’t tone it down….shrink!” When you think just behaving regularly, using your regular voice and being your regular self is “too much”, that’s problematic.

It’s so obsequious. Meantime the mostly male attorneys, do nothing but take loud calls on speaker phone day after day after day. Getting in robust fights and disputes with other counsel right on speaker phone with their door swung wide open. They can literally be heard all the way at the other end of the hall. We have one that does nothing but shout on calls all damn day long and can be heard by the entire floor constantly, all day but you must speak on the phone with a cupped hand and a voice barely audible to the person on the other end to set an appointment with the dentist or order your lunch sandwich? We can hear him shout for hours daily but he must never be inconvenienced by hearing you confirm 12 noon for that mammogram?

I realized what bothers me about them doing this is that it’s rather obsequious and it literally involves shrinking our voices as women and sending indirect signals pressuring me and other women to do the same. It seems so bizarre to me, like something completely from another time and yet Ive worked in several different firms and seen it heavily in each of those places. It’s a particular culture that permeates all of them and runs as a common thread through the legal community as a whole.

As I thought more about it a really interesting passage from Shelby Lormans book “Awards for Good Boys” came to mind. It talks about “sonic spread”- men taking up more space with their voices than they’re entitled to, thus forcing women to make theirs smaller or go unheard.

According to her the most obvious example of male sonic spread is street harassment. But men also over-occupy the spaces they’re in sonically by always having to be first to speak in class or meetings, interrupting and talking over other people, undermining ideas/ word choices of others, tone policing, being super loud/ unaware of their volume.

So just a reminder to take up space, use your voice, raise it loud and clear!

If you don’t- the silence/ sonic gap you leave will likely be filled with and dominated by a man.

I’m labeling this a discussion but really the fact that they’ve all, across several different companies and not knowing each other have been conditioned to shrink in this way suggests to me it’s actually a form of cultural misogyny having to do with how they were raised and what messages society was sending to girls/women in their youth.

We need to fight for our space. I’m not saying you’ve got to walk around shouting all the time, but in this day and age can we at least resolve to show up as our full selves using our full regular voices at all times? Is that too much to ask??

Men in corporate spaces purposely take up a lot of space with their voices as confirmation of their power. Almost as a point of showing I’m so important I do this because I can. Who can tell me no? But you want me to play this slaves/ corporate pick me’s game of shrinking? Showing what an obsequious “good girl” I am and how I serve/ constantly prioritize everyone else’s comfort over my own, even relishing making myself small to do so.

It’s a losing game. There is no prize. Cast off these shackles. Let’s get loud!