Tone Policing is a dangerous habit that has real psychosocial consequences.
CHANDRA PRESCOD-WEINSTEIN
If tone policing is anything at all, then it is bad. This is pretty much a truism on and off the internet; the term is only ever used either pejoratively or sarcastically. No one defends themselves by saying, “well, in this case, it was justifiable tone policing” or “things were getting a little out of hand, but after some sensible and appropriate tone-policing we were able to move forward.” Instead, you’re more likely to hear denial: “that wasn’t tone policing!” or “not everything is tone policing, you know…” Implicit in these responses is a normative claim: if what you’re doing does count as tone policing, then you’ve already gone wrong.
Given that debates over the validity of tone-policing-adjacent interventions take the form of arguments about whether the remark in question counts as such, it’s useful to think clearly about the contours of the phenomenon – even if the resulting shape has fuzzy or even blurry edges. After all, tone policing pops up as a ubiquitous example of why demanding civility in discussions of oppression can be so dangerous and harmful – something that contributes to broader categories of harms like gaslighting, microaggression, and silencing. In these contexts, tone policing is typically described by its effects on the person being tone policed:
Tone policing is when someone (usually a privileged person) in a conversation about oppression shifts the conversation from the oppression being discussed to the way it is being discussed. Tone policing prioritizes the comfort of the privileged person in the situation over the oppression of the disadvantaged person.
IJEOMA OLUO
I happen to think this description is accurate and informative – that is, it gets at the substance of what it is to be tone-policed, and why it is so bad. In fact, Oluo’s chapter on tone policing in So You Want to Talk About Race is one of the clearest and most extensive discussions of the topic I’ve found.
But focusing on the effects of tone policing and on the context of oppression and unequal privilege can leave this type of explanation superficially vulnerable to accusations of circularity or unfairness, especially from those who reject the very idea of social oppression and privilege. Indeed, coupled with calls for those with race and gender privilege to “decenter” themselves and to not “make it about your feelings” it can – superficially if not actually – seem like the concept of tone-policing sets a double standard: angry feelings are welcomed – but only some people’s and only some of the time.
It’s not hard to imagine a skeptic complaining: “so what – if I express my feelings then it’s white fragility, but if I tell someone else to calm down it’s tone policing? This is an attack on my speech.” While, on the one hand, I tend to think there is little merit in this kind of complaint, as it confounds very different conversational interventions, the objection is sufficiently familiar that some debunking is in order.
Let’s consider some proto-typical instances of tone policing:
“Calm down. There’s no point in engaging if you can’t even have a civil conversation.”
“I’m happy to discuss this rationally, but I’m not going to listen if you’re going to yell.”
“You’ll catch more flies with honey than vinegar, you know. You’re going to alienate allies if you’re angry all the time.”
“Look, I’m not the real enemy. There’s no need to get so upset. Just explain what the actual problem is.”
Of course, Audre Lorde describes it best in “The Uses of Anger”:
I speak out of direct and particular anger at an academic conference, and a white woman says, “Tell me how you feel but don’t say it too harshly or I cannot hear you.” But is it my manner that keeps her from hearing, or the threat of a message that her life may change?
At its core, tone-policing is first an argumentative move sideways and then a stall. It first shifts the focus from the content of the conversation to the tone, language, or manner of discussion (as the quote above says) and then – unlike other interventions about tone – policing announces that the shift cannot be reversed until tone is addressed. The tone-policer doesn’t just declare that their interlocutor’s tone is inappropriate and heightened (usually because it is too hostile, adversarial, or aggressive, upset, or irrational). They insist that the conversation cannot continue until the speaker adjusts it. It often involves a further demand – implicit or explicit – that the interlocutor address their infraction with some apology or other gesture of accountability before things can proceed.
The term “policing” is crucial here, carrying implications of vested authority and the right to enforce one’s judgment. Focusing on authority and enforcement is useful for distinguishing tone-policing from other interventions around tone. So, for example, I might offer a colleague feedback on a funeral address by suggesting joking isn’t appropriate or I might nudge a morose friend to smile at the brides on their wedding day. Decades ago, I trained in crisis intervention work, and much of the learning process involved cautioning trainees to adjust their instinctive responses – including, crucially, our tone. In other words, not all tone interventions are invalid; in a certain context and in light of our impact on others, we ought to revise our tone. There are, of course, broader questions to ask about conformity here and the extent to which managing our faces, voices, and emotional expressions according to social convention – is ableist and oppressive for neurodivergent folks and others whose social-emotional patterns and reactions may not match the neurotypical mainstream. But none of the examples I gave, even though some of them were directive, are tone-policing. Why not? Again, it comes down to an implicit claim of authority – both in judgment and in enforcement. And this is an exercise of power.
In tone-policing someone’s speech, the tone-policer asserts at least three things to the speaker:
1. Their tone is too angry, aggressive, adversarial, emotional, upset, or heightened for this conversational context, and this represents a sufficient violation for intervention.
2. The tone violation endangers the conversation at hand, while a lowered tone does not – i.e. the discussion can and will go better without the speaker’s emotional expression.
3. The standard the speaker has violated is either the policer’s own sense of comfort and safety, or their [rightful] sense of propriety or civility; this is too much according to the policer (as a personal boundary or as a broader norm) and that too much alone makes the remark a conversational violation for which the speaker is accountable to the policer.
These aren’t terribly controversial or revelatory. But what’s not always explicit is that the tone policer is, in asserting these, making a claim to three different kinds of authority: conversational, epistemic, and emotional.
Conversational authority: the tone policer makes themselves the source of the authority to intervene and the standard by which the need for intervention is judged. By expressing emotion, the speaker has invalidated their claim to set conversational rules and, thus, made themselves subject to the policer’s claim. The norms of conversation are no longer being mutually negotiated; they are legislated from one party to the other.
Tone policing is a redirection and a refusal, not simply an intervention. There is no appeal to some mutually recognized external context (a funeral, a wedding, a crisis phone call) and the only reason offered is the tone policer’s own subjective experience. My own sense that this is too angry for decent conversation – that is, my feelings of either discomfort or disapproval – become themselves sufficient warrant to act – a warrant that supercedes the need to talk about (for example) racism or sexism or other forms of oppression – or, in more mundane cases, the reasons there might be to listen to the speaker’s perspective or experiences (i.e. their subjectivity). The ability to make oneself both the source and the standard for intervention is an assertion of conversational power, often tied to social identities like whiteness and masculinity.
Epistemic authority: the second claim – that the conversation can continue unabated in a different tone – has the effect of divorcing anger from its message and leaving it free-floating as something problematic, and this in turn undermines the speaker’s epistemic credibility. If we can be told of anger and reasons for anger without experiencing that anger, then any additional feeling of anger is unnecessary and – since unpleasant – therefore counterproductive. Alison Bailey describes “anger-silencing spirals” that becomes “tone vigilance”; for example, a Black woman’s anger at racial injustice prompts a white woman to demand protection from that anger, refusing to hear the message. Each repetition of the angry message becomes, to the white woman, further evidence of the Black woman’s unreasonableness, and more reason to deny her epistemic credibility, to refuse to hear her. It’s a closed system that produces the very anger it then refuses to ultimately deny someone a voice.
Emotional authority: Finally, in judging that their present disapproval or discomfort is more serious than whatever grievance the speaker has raised (including broader harms of social and political oppression) the tone policer asserts the authority to decide whose disapproval or discomfort takes priority – and does so without appeal to anything beyond the sheer fact of their own judgment.
This brings us back to the skeptic I mentioned earlier – and the difference between tone-policing and other conversational interventions. What is distinctive in tone-policing is not just that these three forms of authority are asserted, but that they are asserted as a form of self-standing authority, without further justification or appeal – it’s taken as a given that the speaker’s subjectivity and sense of comfort or propriety, even their own limitations (“or I cannot hear you,” as Lorde’s white woman remarks) are sufficient. This is nothing more than the exercise of power – and it is insidious precisely because it is couched as an appeal to rules that both parties have accepted, rather than a demand that one person conform to the other’s standards.
The tone policer takes it as natural or given that their subjective experience is an appropriate standard for conversation and warrant for conversational intervention. This, more than anything, is what makes the bracket in Ijeuma Oluo’s definition so telling “(usually a privileged person).” Those of us with sufficient social privilege and power that we are used to experiencing ourselves as the standard are far more likely to assert this authority casually, without further explanation. Unlike an intervention that asks someone to decenter themselves (“listen – we’re talking the effects of racist schooling on Black children – this isn’t about you”), tone-policing offers no justification beyond the tone policer’s subjectivity.
Moreover, tone policing or any approach to conversational norms that takes as its standard and starting point the ideal of disinterested impartiality, will inevitably give the upper hand to the person who is able to appear most dispassionate about the topic, precisely because they are least (harmfully) impacted by it. The effects of this subtle prioritization are not just conversational; epistemic authority is conveyed, as is a dangerous model for what epistemic authority in difficult conversations looks like. If, in difficult conversations, we ought to speak and comport ourselves like someone who is unaffected by the subject as much as possible then, it is implied, there is something of value in being unaffected by the subject, something worth paying attention to.
In other words, tone-policing reproduces and reinforces the idea that the kinds of people who are able to tone-police are those who ought to be speaking, and setting the standards for who speaks, how they speak, and what deserves to be heard. Much like other kinds of policing, the tone police do not just enforce the status quo, they create and maintain it. Tone-policing as a freestanding conversational intervention – as something that can be assumed and asserted without further justification – reveals the unequal terrain of the playing field they are refereeing.
I write this in a country that continues to uncover the mass graves of Indigenous children at the sites of former state-run residential schools. I write it on the day it became clear that millions of people with uteruses will soon lose their reproductive rights. An ongoing global pandemic which many insist no longer exists has only widened the wealth gap between rich and poor. On the one hand, this makes it hard to take seriously a blog post about the business of conversational niceties. On the other, there is clearly a great deal to be angry about, and many, many reasons to raise our voices. In her excellent book, The Case for Rage, Myisha Cherry invites her readers to expand our concept of anger management – reminding us that management at its best does not diminish those who are managed, but brings out and develops their strongest qualities. Bringing out the best in our anger will require that it be articulated, amplified, and addressed – and not policed.
Thanks to Barrett Emerick for helping me think through these ideas.
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Alice MacLachlan
Alice MacLachlan is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at York University (Canada) and is a Co-Editor and Co-Founder of Feminist Philosophy Quarterly.
