In one form or another, I see this question from parents a lot:
“Why does my child have to be so rude all the time?”
The assumptions about autistic adults when it comes to tone of voice doesn’t get any better either. In extreme cases, it can even result in the loss of a job.
There are a few assumptions neurotypical people have when it comes to tone of voice when anyone talks:
- Everyone who speaks or vocalizes is trying to “send a message” based on how their voice sounds. This includes timbre, pitch, loudness etc.
- Everyone who speaks or vocalizes can control their voice with ease – i.e., can change their timbre/pitch/loudness very easily.
- Everyone who speaks or vocalizes knows exactly what their voice is actually doing while they’re speaking (whether it “sounds defensive” or sounds loud or quiet, etc.).
I literally do not know what my “tone of voice” is doing when other people say I’m being defensive/argumentative/rude/etc.
Let me say that again:
I do not know what my “tone of voice” is doing when I talk.
I do not know how quiet I am talking (for other autistic people, how loud).
I do not know what signal I am sending with my “tone.”
I do not know what my “tone of voice” represents to neurotypical people.
I do not know what emotion or intention neurotypical people think I am sending to them.
I literally didn’t know what “tone of voice” meant until I was 17 years old. And I didn’t truly understand it until I found out I was autistic. I thought it meant “how loud you talk” and “how you structure sentences when you talk.” That’s it.
A Short Story
I once tried to mock a family member because I was so mad that they were telling me “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” I wasn’t trying to say anything mean, I was simply stating factual information. I knew when they said that phrase, it meant I couldn’t say anything because I would be interpreted as “rude.”
I tried to mock them by, from my standards, lilting my voice ridiculously, as if my vocal cords were on a roller coaster going really high to really low to really high again in pitch. I was trying to be condescendingly nice and therefore patronizing.
To my shock, their response was to be polite to me!!! Are you serious?! I felt like a clown with that much pitch change in my voice, but apparently it’s how I should be talking all the time! I can’t make sense of this, and it makes me wonder if I actually notice smaller changes in pitch in people’s voices compared to neurotypical people, which could be one explanation as to why our vocal range “sounds monotone” or less expressive to neurotypical people.
Societal Pressure and High Expectations
It doesn’t help that society puts on the layers of constraint if you’re an autistic person who’s raised as a girl and/or a person of color. The gendered notion that kids raised as girls must be polite at all times is absolutely infuriating, and I witnessed this double standard growing up with two older brothers. I’m sure it’s even more constricting for people of color raised as girls and women of color.
Knowing what my “tone of voice” sounds like to NTs emotionally is literally something I don’t have the ability to do. I’ve tried my whole life to figure out this “tone of voice” thing, and while I can somewhat figure out other people’s tone of voice and what they mean, I do not know what my tone of voice is doing at any moment in time.
Just today my husband had to warn me that I was speaking “defensively” to someone else and so I stopped talking for a few minutes. He wasn’t telling me to stop talking, he was just letting me know because I literally did not know how my voice sounded to that person. It sucks when you know you may be making someone feel a certain way without intending to, and not knowing how to fix it. Depending on the context, sometimes I will stop talking to kind of “reset” my voice, though honestly sometimes this doesn’t work and that’s just how my voice will sound for the rest of the night and I can’t do a thing about it. And I never really know which one will happen unless someone else tells me, because to me it all sounds the same.
Similarly, many of us autistic people may laugh nervously in stressful moments and will be seen as rude, when the laughter has nothing to do with the situation. Instead, it’s due to our own anxiety and stress of not knowing what to say or do. This makes neurotypical people think we are intentionally making fun of a sad or stressful event, or not taking them seriously, when the reason behind our laughter is the opposite of that assumption. We are trying to think of the “correct” neurotypical response to say, have a difficult time thinking of something, and so may laugh in the interim due to stress or confusion.
Neurotypicals Need to Learn to Empathize
Imagine being expected to figure out how a brick wall “feels.” That’s impossible, right? Well it’s the same way when NTs just assume that I am emitting some hidden message with how my voice sounds. I’m not! Listen to the words! I don’t have any “intention” or “emotion” behind my actual voice. I just want you to hear the words.
It is so hard to explain this to neurotypicals because this subconscious social processing is so automatic for them. They don’t even realize how they’re interpreting my tone. I could say the same exact thing as a neurotypical person does (in fact I have) and get chided for it for “arguing” when I was simply stating a fact.
Interpreting our “tone of voice” like a neurotypical person just doesn’t make sense. It’s like yelling at someone to stand up who literally can’t stand (which actually does happen unfortunately when it really shouldn’t, because ableism is everywhere). I really wish I didn’t have to use an analogy to a physical disability, but so many people do not see anything wrong with “disciplining” their autistic kid over “sounding rude,” when it’s literally punishing them for being disabled.
I’ve learned that I have to be very heavy-handed to get this message across to neurotypical people. It seems like a very hard concept to understand if you have the ability to modulate your tone of voice in the way you want. I guess it’s hard to imagine not having this extra layer of automatic processing occurring constantly in the background.
Please Learn This for Us
We’re not trying to sound X way or have Y intentions. We are just using our words. Focus on the words!
We don’t understand your neurotypical tone of voice rules and literally do not know what we sound like to you.
We don’t know.
Please sit with that. Think about not understanding tone of voice. Try to empathize with that.
Remember that neurotypical people make judgments and assumptions based on autistic people’s tone of voice. So basically, we’re constantly getting judged and told off for something we don’t/didn’t know about.
Imagine getting told off your whole life for doing nothing wrong.
Neurotypical people: When you feel yourself getting defensive about someone’s tone of voice, try to focus on the words if you can. When you know someone is autistic and you’re interacting with them, remember that many of us cannot modulate our tone of voice and are not trying to send you any social signals with our timbre or pitch. And remember, not everyone you interact with will be openly autistic or know they are autistic. Please, please learn this. Don’t rush to judgment and make assumptions – try to ask for clarification. Try to give them the benefit of the doubt. And try to recognize that some people you meet may not be sending any kind of signal with the tone of their voice.
Thank you for reading.
Autistic Science Person 
A great post that explains the subject so clearly. Thank you for sharing this post. My son and grandson are on the Autistic scale, ( formerly called Aspergers) my grandson in particular seems to have this problem.
❤👩🦰🧡🦊💛
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Reblogged this on Disablities & Mental Health Issues.
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How I can relate. Interesting reading about autism as of late. The reason I mention is I have self diagnosed myself with autism after 38 years of being called rude and that I had behavior problems and mental issues. The way I see it. It almost feels like I am constantly being gaslighted. Due to people thinking I don’t agree with them or they think I am trying to prove myself right. Most times I just don’t know why they don’t see my point of view.
I really want to share a story of what happened today. Whether it has to due with my tone or not is unclear to me. When I write things down people seem to understand me better. (Oh, they still want to disagree even when I agree with their viewpoint.) It’s odd.
So the story.
I empty a half a can of corned beef hash into a pan. The can has 2 daily nutrition facts. 1 is for 8 oz portion the other is for the container. The can is 14 oz. I was told that I was eating what was equal to the 8 oz amount of cholesterol.
I said well just divide the container value in half that would be the more accurate amount. I was told no it almost 8 oz.
Then after I tried explaining. I was told I just want to be right and to just drop it and they didn’t want to argue. They then said my problem is I don’t understand what they were telling me. (Which I did because I already did the math when I opened the can.) Also that I just keep arguing until I’m right and won’t admit I’m wrong. Now you tell me who has a mental issue. If you ask me it has to be most NT’s. Thanks for your posts, Charles BTW sorry for the lengthy muddle. Especially since it wasn’t really on topic with your post. Hopefully I can write some articles that relate to the Neurotypical comprehension deficit.
On Sat, Jan 9, 2021, 1:22 AM Autistic Science Person wrote:
> Autistic Science Person posted: ” In one form or another, I see this > question from parents a lot: “Why does my child have to be so rude all the > time?” The assumptions about autistic adults when it comes to tone of voice > doesn’t get any better either. In extreme cases, it can even resu” >
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Honestly, that sounds less like “NT person fails to interpret your tone of voice in line with your intentions” and more like “NT person is being dismissive and defensive in order to feel superior to you.” In particular, “You always want to be right” is virtually always projection in my experience. I think that would have happened with this person even if you had performed NT tone of voice flawlessly. Some people really don’t like to be disagreed with.
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I agree. But I don’t understand it all
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No, because this is a constant thing with many or even most people. It is very common that when we relay a specific experience, it is shrugged off as a one-off event with a mean person, yet if you were there you’d probably side with them, not us. Or if you did side with us, you could easily explain to them what’s going on and they would accept it. Or you might side partially with us and partially with them.
The particular story is about a mathematical error, and how the neurotypical, in failing the mathematical computation, also failed to see the correction. They likely would have understood the correction just fine if they had realized that is what it was.
I had a similar experience with someone trying to explain that I was putting a lid on wrong. This person was being very condescending because they thought I had dyslexia and was rotating the lid counter-clockwise because I didn’t know how to screw a lid on. I tried to explain to this numpty that you have to rotate the lid counter-clockwise to set the groove before you twist it clockwise to seal it, but he seemed more interested in his rank being higher than mine as well as his perception of his mental superiority over actually analyzing the situation with any sort of critical thinking skills. To this day, I often imagine him blundering through his life, stripping the threads on expensive caps and having no idea why they break so often, but I know in reality he probably screws them on just like I do, and his disability lies wholly in how he perceived my method versus his, not in his method itself.
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Thank you for writing!
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I’m not autistic but I also have no idea what my voice is doing 99.999% of the time. I hear other people LOUD (do not whisper around me, I’ll hear everything) but don’t hear my own voice. As a result, I think I’m matching voice level but I’m apparently SUPER loud, as every last human being feels compelled to tell me. Logically, I know they’re simply pointing out a fact. Emotionally, it always feels like “shut up. Your thoughts don’t matter.” Plus some people hear aggression where none is intended.
I currently have a sound meter bookmarked for purchase… hoping it will help me learn to modulate my volume.
I’m also vaguely looking for opps to use my natural volume to my advantage (public speaking, etc)
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Im a NT parent with a autistic daughter. I love this so much I’ve share them on social media. That one nasty topic came up and these self-rightous moms who are ‘experts’ wanted to try invalid others life experiences. So I told them(NT) if you get into arguments with other AA because being straight to the point and blunt on a post is interpret as rude. Then you don’t understand AAchildren and (NT) traumatizing them bc you refuse to accept that you’re not right. *eye-roll*
Then post this article with the direct link.
Kuddos Autistic Science Person! You have one NT that understands ❤
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I can so relate to this, being told time and again how loud I am, or people reading false rudeness into what I say. Would you chastise someone who is wheelchair bound for not being able to walk? Thank you so much for posting this!
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just FYI, “wheelchair bound” is not a good term (it assumes that the wheelchair is someone restricting the person, when it actually allows them mobility). “Wheelchair user” or “person in a wheelchair” is more appropriate.
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Thanks 😊
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thank you
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That was SUPER educational; thanks for being so clear and straightforward, and also for repeating your main point several times, because otherwise I wouldn’t have gotten the full force of it.
Thanks.
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I can so relate to all of this. I’ve been getting in trouble my whole life trying to figure out how to speak. To function the way I do now required literally hundreds of hours of research on how to behave. It did not and do not come naturally for me. I’m not officially diagnosed but I can relate with all of this and I am exhausted
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This post is very insightful
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Reblogged this on On the Road Again.
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thank you for writing this
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I LOVE this, this was my whole life experience with my tone wrote up by someone else. My boyfriend and I constantly argue when I think I’m being perfectly calm. I feel calm and he says I started it as I was not calm and I cannot get him to understand that I don’t know how to be any calmer and it feels to me like he started it but of course he swears I did because I cannot have a calm conversation with him. It’s extremely frustrating.
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My asd partner, who i love, is causing me a lot of anxiety, hurt, trauma, ptsd and also is putting his hands on me in anger. He says it’s my fault for causing him to feel frustrated. His tone of voice is causing me to feel like jumping out of a window. He yells in my ears because he’s angry when i ask him to please lower his voice. In fact only his opinion counts. Maybe it works for some but it’s not working for us.
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That’s abuse. Autism isn’t part of the equation. I hope you are able to get out safely and get support.
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