Want an article that's a bunch of poop to look at?

[etana.livejournal.com]

I thought ya'll would appreciate an article on "fake voices" and how they are "male because male voices are easier to fabricate" neuro-wise.

I found it annoying and thought someone else would like to share in my annoyance.

Hi! Welcome to annoying journalistic reporting of academic studies, and annoying academic studies that end up being so completely bullshit....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/4675103.stm

happy reading :)

Oh there's a lovely thread, by the way, in feminist on this article, which is where I got the article. Feel free to munch on in :)

Comments

[parisstar.livejournal.com]

I hear lady voices.

[etana.livejournal.com]

ah but see really, you hear male voices, because anything else is fake.

and the voices are fake anyway, by the way.

/sarcasm.

stupid article :)

[thehumangame.livejournal.com]

Er... do you actually experience the other people's voices as hallucinations, indistinguishable from external noises? Because that's what this article's about.

I guess some confusion comes from the fact that 'voices' can be interpreted a lot of different ways. When we talk to each other, it's like the little subvocalizations people talk to themselves in, only with hers also. The article cites statistics saying 71% of 'voices' are male regardless of the person's gender; I... highly doubt that at least 42% of females are going around talking to themselves internally in a male-sounding voice. ^.^ Two different phenomena, I think.

[etana.livejournal.com]

That's the thing, I think this article washes over the whole phenomena of "voices" being heard by people and what they mean and swipes them all as "false" and "male"......

And I usually hear the others as voices, yes. As living, breathing, people with voices in various parts of my ear, best way to describe it.

Other times it's like an idea I get, or a ringing sound.

But definitely not "71% male" that's for sure!

[littlebus.livejournal.com]

Huh... I never thought about weither the voice inside my head when I talk to myself was male or female - it's just "me". It's low but gender-neutral, after I think about it for a second.

When I talk to myself inside my head in Danish (my second language) it's different, a lighter tone, but I didn't start Danish until past puberty, so that might have something with where my brain put Danish in my brain.

*shrug* But that's me talking to myself, not anyone else's voice.

[littlebus.livejournal.com]

It's more referring to "audio hallucinations" - the "hallucination" part implying fake - than to actual other people talking to you that just happen to live inside.

My cousin has paranoid delusions with audio hallucinations, where "voices" tell him his roommate is poisoning the food and other delightful things. It's a different phenomenon than MPD/DID/insert other name here

[duathir.livejournal.com]

Yes, precisely. Thank you for putting it so clearly.

I hear my sister's subvocalizations constantly, whether she is corporeal and I am not, or vice versa. She internally 'speaks' everything she reads and a great deal of what she thinks; it can be very difficult to ignore. However, the difference between her voice and external voices is always unmistakeable.

Apparently I do not usually 'talk to myself' in subvocalization. My brother often sings in his own language when he is not corporeal, but very rarely uses English words to communicate with us, preferring instead to project direct emotion/impulse. He does not sound particularly 'male' or 'female' when he sings either aloud or incorporeally, his preferred vocal range being roughly midway between tenor and alto. Mine is between baritone and tenor; our sister's is between alto and soprano.

[etana.livejournal.com]

see i worry if people that aren't multiple-savvy distinguish between teh two. I've been to a few therapists/counselors who've assumed that 'hearing voices' was the same for multiples and schizophrenics and paranoid folk and those on drugs (and I've *heard voices* because of some bad *trips*)....so I get nervous when I read stuff like this

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

It seems like a sizable portion of them don't-- we have heard of systems diagnosed with schizophrenia because they were asked if they heard voices and said yes, and whatever boneheaded counselor they were talking to didn't bother to ask if they heard the voices outside or inside their head.

[etana.livejournal.com]

mhm....

[mouseears2007.livejournal.com]

Concidering there are no males here, I find this funny lol

[etana.livejournal.com]

yeah!

[(Anonymous)]

This is about hallucinations, not multipicity. You're real; the voices that plague the minds of schizhophrenics are not - they do not belong to "real" people. Get a grip. I don't think there's anything bullshit about that article at all. Tone down your arrogance over "annoying academic studies" and conduct one yourself.

The article isn't talking about you. Sheesh.

I wouldn't have found it offensive for this to be posted here because it just seems to be a case of simple misunderstanding. It was the superior tone over an entire field of medicine that was.

- anonymous 'cause I'm afraid swarms of multiples'll start attacking me

[karma-silenced.livejournal.com]

*Attacks you*

JK (:

[changelyng14.livejournal.com]

don't worry! youre in a 'no swarming multiples' zone :p
there haven't been any swarmings here since...
ack! oh no! im switching, hold on

BWWWRRRAAAAARRRRRR!!!! chomp-chomp-chomp

eeep! it wasn't me! it wasn't me! i swear!

:/

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

I shan't attack you, but please watch the phrasing in your counterarguments. Purplesockz's attitude might more accurately be described as impatient.

Besides, even though the article describes something real, I'm as fed up with the smug attitude of these know-all academics as she is. They're the arrogant bastards with the superior tones -- even when they're right. Dufresne used to refer to them as "the big fat heads".

[etana.livejournal.com]

my annoyance, as an academic who does grant-funded research...cough....is that I see studies like this that seem to me to borderline the absurd or skewed, and I wonder gee - that could've been a pool of funding someone doing something interesting or maybe empirically significant could have gotten....

because i read this article as something overly-male, or another one of those "see the genders are sooo different" studies when I would argue that the "genders" aren't different at all (there are actually so many genders on the map, to water things down to male or female seems absurd) and to say 'voices' to me, as someoen who has been targeted my therapists as camped with schizophrenics and paranoid folk when I'm a multiple, and the damage that's caused, causes me alarm.....I think hm....wonder what they're getting at?

I didn't mean to be a big headed academic at all....just voicing my frustration over a study I found to be a bit offensive, know what I mean?

Not that you were attacking me or anything but I felt I had to justify myself??

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

Oh, no, I didn't mean you were a big fat head; I meant that the academics who behave in that smug, condescending, self-righteous manner are what Dufresne used to term big fat heads.

You're quite right, by the way, about the funding. Have a look at this:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/ksol1460/116464.html

The brain-sex, "men-and-women-are-soooo-different" meme was bought and paid for from the beginning. Everything is up for sale to the highest bidder, including but not limited to our children, via that godforsaken New Freedom Commission (http://www.astraeasweb.net/politics/screening.html) study.

Read more about David Brock here:
http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript351_full.html#farewell

[etana.livejournal.com]

Yeah...I'm familiar with David Brock. I'm familiar with grant fundings. And I'm always mad because of it.

This is why so many hippie, liberal academics are stoned most of the time. We just can't handle it.

Don't quote me on that though :)

[etana.livejournal.com]

excuse me?

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

I don't think anyone will start attacking you-- I'm one of the mods here, and part of my job is to make sure that no one starts flaming. If people are going to disagree with you, they'll disagree whether you post anonymously or not. If you mean you're afraid of people following you back to your journal, I sincerely hope no one here would participate in such a childish act of harassment, but you can report people to LJ Abuse if something does happen.

[kasiya-system.livejournal.com]

It's kind of a funny article actually. Someone took the time to map the brain for male and female "voices"? I don't think it has anything to do with the brain, but more with who's doing the "talking". But they're talking about hallucinations anyway, like with schizophrenia, not those who have actual people speaking to them. Don't see anything to get upset over, personally. It doesn't have to do with Multiples. :shrug:

[etana.livejournal.com]

well i wonder if they could apply it to multiples?

there's enough in the camp of psychs that would argue multiplicity is just about 'hearing voices' anyway...

just worries me.

[karma-silenced.livejournal.com]

When I've had hallucinations, they've been female a lot of times. But I could just be in the lower percentage... Or my brain isn't lazy enough to settle on just male voices. XD

[etana.livejournal.com]

hehe....you have a hard-working brain, guess that's good info, right? :)

i suppose mine is the same, or it's because my brain is all gay and doesn't want a male influence...

hm...but then again there are a few guys in here so I shouldn't say that :)

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

This would tend, however, to explain the auditory effects we've experienced when overtired and overstimulated, just as we begin to try to fall asleep. Anyone who is at front at the time will hear them. The voices are invariably male, and are none of ours; this is not coming from home. No Laurad announcer or operator would sound like that.
Various frontrunners have called them "surly sports radio football analysts" or "snide AM talk-show hosts."

There are no clearly audible words -- it's as if a radio is being played in the next apartment, or in a house next door with the window open, so that one hears the sounds without the sense. In addition, it occurs directly inside the ears, which would indicate to us that it is a neurological misfire. The other sound we hear is that of a door slamming, a minor explosion, or a medium-weighted box falling to the floor.

We all recognise it when we hear it, and take steps to put a stop to it. This is not a by-product of our multiplicity nor the brain's autism, nor of any special senses since the body is entirely human and has none. That we experience it in terms of radio is doubtless our personal enculturation.

Thank you, this is most enlightening.

[etana.livejournal.com]

that's an interesting response. I took this to be a "see, all those crazies with the voices...." bit, and so male-focused, I just thought it was rubbish and figured folks here would get a good chuckle....

But this has made me think. heh.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

I don't doubt that the article may have been written in a way that gave it an "all those crazies with the voices" subtext. I have certainly seen that before.

[etana.livejournal.com]

right, which is why i am hyper-sensitive. i realize not everyone is, but I am, especially as someone in academia, I deal with the bigotry of pseudo-psychs all the time. it's easier to be a lesbian up here than to be a multiple, that's for sure, at least at my university and in the liberal arts circles I float in.

so i cringe fast....

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

I do remember one time when we were running a fever and heard what appeared to be a gravelly-voiced female singer on a radio outside, which disappeared as soon as we woke up fully. Hmm... food for thought.

[changelyng14.livejournal.com]

i don't know, it seemed reasonable to me. basically that they were offering an explanation as to why 71% of reported 'auditory hallucinations' are male.

do many multiples actually hear 'sounds' in their internal comm? we pretty much just get 'thoughts' with differing, uhhhh, patterns that distinguish them?
when we were actively working on our census, we found one we named 'the critic' who was ironically middle-aged, male, and condescending. our frontrunner of that era rid himself of that voice thinking then the outrageousness that he still had to listen to his dad bitch at him with 2000 miles between them. (the critic wasn't auditory though, im fairly certain)

-Tia

[effrenata.livejournal.com]

I can think either verbally or nonverbally (in abstract conceptual gestalts or "vibration tones"). When I think verbally, it's sort of in between hearing and feeling. That is, I seem to "feel" the words in my mouth and vocal apparatus more than literally "hearing" them in my head. Sometimes, however, I do "hear" inner vocalizations, generally short phrases of one to three words. Sometimes these communications are psychic or intuitive, sometimes they appear completely random (as far as I can tell.) I don't consider this voice a specific "personality", though, but a nonpersonified process of my inner mind. It's not really very "sound-like", actually; I would describe it as "shadow sound" -- sort of like sound but not exactly.

When I'm in the hypnagogic state, which I enter through falling asleep or through meditation, I can hear complete verbalizations such as conversations or radio broadcasts, and can even see whole pages of text scrolling down my closed eyelids. It's very hard to remember the content of this after I wake up, though.

I've been practising speedreading, which involves consciously suppressing subvocalization while one reads. I do this by making a subvocal "humming" noise, "zhoop, zhoop, zhoop," as I swing my eyes back and forth across the page like windshield wipers. I've found that when I do this, I sort of "hear" the text being very faintly verbalized in my head in a "ghost voice" which is very subtle and only vaguely sound-like. I'm reminded of Eastern meditative practices dealing with Shabd, or inner sound, which exists at a range of levels from gross to subtle.

None of my waking "voices" have much gender definition that I can discern. They are just pure semanticity in almost-sound. The voices I hear in the hypnagogic state are often gendered, however.