Politics

Toronto media outlets today were buzzing today over a revelation that Karen Stintz, a city councillor, spent $4,500 (USD) (reported here as $2,650 and here as $1,850) of the public's money on public speaking lessons with an American trainer. Now, anytime someone starts banging on about someone wasting taxpayers' dollars, my eyes tend to glaze over because I feel like I need to save up my political indignation for matters that I think are much more appalling, like war. But when Andy Barrie and co. were discussing the issue on Metro Morning today, my ears pricked up. This is because, as the Toronto Star reported, Stintz enrolled for the public speaking lessons after some of her constituents "told her she spoke too fast and sounded 'shrill'". "Shrill," of course, is a code word for "frightening woman that no one listens to." And we've all been there, haven't we? You're in a meeting, and you start feeling pissed. You open your mouth to talk, and your emotions take over, and all of a sudden you realize oh, my god, they've totally stopped listening to me because you know that people are now only responding to the intensity of your feelings, rather than the content of your language. When you're on city council, you need people to listen to you--especially if you're planning on taking a run against the still-popular mayor in the next civic election. So you sign up for public speaking lessons. And your office has a budget for that kinda thing, so it gets paid for. The thing is, when you go to the Star website and click on the story about Stintz, you'll find an embedded video giving samples of Stintz speaking in council before and after her Eliza Doolittle treatment. And what's truly astonishing about the video is...there's absolutely nothing wrong with her voice at all prior to those costly elocution lessons. It's galling for Stintz's voice--voice being such an important marker of gender--to be criticized in the first place. Sure, male politicians' voices are parodied and satirized frequently--but no one expects them to actually do anything about them. And what's with the excessive media attention paid to Stintz, given the other councillors and their expense reports? Plus, the implication in some of these stories is that what's really wrong with Stintz spending this dough is she's grooming herself for the upcoming mayoralty race. To which I reply: so? Politicians and other professionals pay huge sums of money for this kind of professional development all the time. If we're going to criticize Stintz, let's let it be for meaningful things like her voting record in council.

Tagged as: feelings, labour, Politics, voice, women

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