What I wish I had said to the guy who emailed me at work to criticize my voice

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a woman speaking into a microphone must be in want of a male listener to criticize her voice.  I was reminded of this unwanted assumption and its seemingly unavoidable consequence — the rude listener email — last week when New Yorker food writer extraordinaire Helen Rosner tweeted an email exchange she had with a guy who cared so much about her podcast appearance he took the time to email her a very helpful tip, that she'd sound better if she were "not utilizing vocal fry." (Let's assume this listener has a template set to autofill that he lobs at Ira Glass every week, yes?) Rosner, doing god's work, fired back an appropriately salty response, and every woman who has ever been on a radio show or podcast nodded with satisfaction.   When I worked for public radio, I would get the occasional "helpful" feedback about my voice, which apparently read young and female enough for men — it was always men — to weigh in on how they would take my reporting more seriously if I just worked harder at sounding more like them. I wasn't new to writing or to the microphone at that point, but I was new to news reporting on air. Our voice coach, the legendary Duke Meyer, worked with me regularly and I was making progress, helped along by learning to write more effectively for broadcast. Among other goals, I was attempting to sound more like myself when on air.   According to some listeners, however, I should have been trying to sound like someone else — someone older, someone smarter, someone with more gravitas. Someone with a Y chromosome, maybe?  The one email I remember took me to task specifically on my use of uptalk. I have since learned that uptalk is also referred to as the "high rising terminal," which sounds very architectural and serious, and I wish I had known that term then. The high rising terminal ends sentences on an upward inflection, suggesting a question mark instead of a period. I was told I sound less serious? When I talk like this? And maybe I should consider fixing the way I talk so I could sound more authoritative?   C'mon guy, I didn't even say "like" once.   Public radio means serving the public, and sometimes the public like to police women's voices and in the grand scheme of things it wasn't a big enough deal to make a bigger deal over. I replied politely, though I couldn't resist — I signed off with Sincerely? Erin Keane, and he wrote back with a laugh. (Disarming through self-deprecating humor, that's a trick you learn early.)  What I wish I had told him then is that the high rising terminal is not necessarily an indicator of fear, or hesitation, or insecurity. I had none of those when it came to my work. I wish I had challenged him to think about why he believes the questioning sound is something to overcome, that it is the sound of weakness, and why he believes deeply that authority depends on the blunt full stop. I should have suggested he consider instead the power that the high rising terminal can have to convey curiosity, because I am firm in my belief that it's a more important quality for reporters and critics than confidence.  Yes, uptalk suggests everything is a question, and maybe a little goes a long way. But in most circumstances, a conversation with ten questioning voices is going to end up in more surprising territory than with one that's already made up.   Women get this feedback more often than men because as soon as we open our mouths we are operating at an implicit authority deficit that we have to overcome, often through tone alone before our content can even be evaluated fairly. Speak like a man and you will be closer to being taken as seriously as we take men as a baseline, the implication goes. (Hence Elizabeth Holmes — the Silicon Valley science scammer of Theranos infamy — adopting her signature fake baritone, so she could swagger with the big boys. Look how that turned out.)   The voice police have other biases, too — against accents, against speech differences. All of this vocal monitoring and feedback is designed to reinforce a very old and arbitrary standard: this is what authority sounds like. If you read that sentence with a period, you might believe it. In the high rising terminal, it transforms into a challenge.   Challenge what authority looks and sounds like? Don't mind if I do.