Comment by overgard
6 years ago
If technology is needed to create this kind of voice -- IE it's not really natural, and as others have suggested it creates an uncanny valley of voice that confuses people, wouldn't that actually perpetuate the idea that there is a gender binary?
(I don't have a dog in this fight, I just don't see that this accomplishes what you want it to)
Yes. You find contradictions all through this kind of belief system if you analyse it logically, because it's driven first and foremost by how people feel (or how people think others might feel).
The analysis of the social construction of gender is not derived from "feelings."
This technology is actually quite inconsistent with gender studies, which is why I find it quite baffling. Gender as an identity would imply that a female could have a deep gravelly voice and that a man could also have a higher pitched softer voice, as ones gender identity need not be dictated by their born sex or physical attributes.
This is quite fundamental to gender studies, making this tech not just useless, but completely counter intuitive to that project.