“My friends and I talked about using the voice…”

My friends and I talked about using The Voice. We might us it at a bar, or a party, and at our jobs. It was a soft voice, girly, not our real voices. It could be giggly-innocent or faux-oblivious or weirdly saintly. It was calculated to deflect sexual tension/attention/aggression without ‘hurting his ego,’ or ‘making him mad,’ or ‘hurting his feelings.’ I wonder now, why on earth did we have to pretend things to avoid hurting the boys and men who came at us? In those days, it’s true, guys would get mad sometimes. They’d call you frigid or square, and maybe at a drunken party or closing the restaurant, we truly were vulnerable. But we used The Voice as a matter of course, in all situations, so maybe it was how we were raised, to avoid giving offence. It never occurred to us to question the world as we found it – the desires of men and our ways of navigating them. Instead, we pretended we had serious boyfriends or strict parents or headaches. Or we pretended we just didn’t notice or understand the heat coming at us. This seems so small and un-strong, like I should have been able to deliver a firm no. But how was I supposed to know how to do that? It’s how things were. Unwanted attention, sexual pressure and use of The Voice were an everyday aspect of social life and work.

The job I’m thinking of tonight is one I had when I was 15 or 16. I was still enough of a child that I fell in love with a small woodcut of a unicorn at a pool in a forest at a local gallery and framing shop. I think it cost $30, which I didn’t have. The owner of the shop hired me on the spot and I worked it off. He seemed like a generic grown up to me, like he hardly registered, until he started to make me uncomfortable. He styled himself an arty photographer and began leaving erotic pictures of his wife where I would see them. I ignored this. He’d come up behind my chair and rub my shoulders. (Guys were big into giving massages in the 70s.) I’d jump up to go dust the artwork. Day after day, I used The Voice to pretend I was less aware than I really was, to pretend I wasn’t uncomfortable, to wiggle away. How did I know to do this? Nobody, not our mothers or big sisters had told us to use The Voice, but we all did.

One day, my boss was rubbing my shoulders and I couldn’t help it, I blurted out, ‘That makes me really uncomfortable.’ He stopped and didn’t do it again. The summer ended. End of story. It’s not like I learned some big lesson about being direct, though. Nope.

I kept using The Voice for years, through countless situations and for countless purposes, until something changed – what was it? When I wasn’t a tender young rebel-girl anymore I didn’t attract the same energy. I married and became a mother and that shifted things too. I became more mature and powerful, so they didn’t dare approach me in the same way as a young girl. The truth is, I didn’t unlearn The Voice, I just stopped needing it.

Writing this, it occurs to me, I never spoke to my own daughter directly about The Voice. When she was small, I told her nobody could touch her private parts without permission and tp tell me right away if anybody tried. But later on, say middle school, why didn’t I remember to tell her that ‘no’ needs absolutely no softening? I’m also wondering, did I teach The Voice to my girl in the same mysterious way it was taught to me? Even if I did, now is not then and she is not me and she has figured it out. My daughter has taught herself how to say no better than I ever did. And yes, too.