Being loud and female is about more than volume – it’s about being unashamed

Should noisy people be tolerated, celebrated or stifled? And are loud women particularly objectionable? Dr Annette Plaut was sacked from her post in the physics department of the University of Exeter after 29 years, and claims that the combination of her being “female and loud” led to her losing her job. She has just been awarded £101,000 for unfair dismissal. The university and the human resources department could not tolerate her volume, she said, because it “contradicts their stereotypical assumptions of how a woman should behave”.

Clearly there is more to this case than simply volume. You don’t suddenly notice overnight that your colleague has the voice of Thor, God of Thunder, after 29 years, and the university argued during the tribunal that she was dismissed for the way she dealt with two PhD students. But the “loud” argument reveals something interesting. One person’s “valued” colleague – as Plaut was described – is another’s definition of “boisterous” and “overbearing”, as she was also called. Her reaction to the tribunal outcome? “I have a naturally loud voice. As such I have no ability to sense when I am speaking loudly.” The University of Exeter has said it will appeal against the decision.

Is it really possible to be so unaware of how you come across? A few years ago a (male) friend and I were having drinks in a bar and gossiping, inconspicuously. Or so we thought. The bar was pretty empty but we could see a few other people were around so we kept our voices down. If you had asked me to describe how we were speaking, I would have said in something close to stage whispers. As the bell rang for last orders, a woman came over to our table with a face of thunder. “I just want you to know that you have ruined our evening with your booming voices. Not everyone wants to hear what you have to say at top volume.” Oh dear. We genuinely had no idea. So I get the defence of “no ability to sense when speaking loudly”. I dread to think of how ear-splitting we would have been were we not being our version of “discreet”.

There’s a whole school of thought about why some of us speak more forcibly than others, some of it sympathetic, a lot of it not. In defence of the deafening, any number of innocent factors can play a role. Growing up in a voluble family. Overcompensating for shyness or anxiety. Momentary lapses of self-awareness, sometimes alcohol induced. Or a physical reason of some kind, from undiagnosed hearing loss to excessively hearty vocal muscles honed via rampant karaoke (guilty).

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In Plaut’s case, she argued that her way of speaking came from her “family background” and “is a perfectly normal and acceptable way to speak among people of middle and eastern European Jewish background”. She added that she had lived and worked for years in places such as New York and Germany where the volume of her voice passed unnoticed. It was only in genteel Exeter that people started to question things.

As this case demonstrates, tolerance of the loud has a cultural dimension, or is at least influenced by context and surroundings. We stereotypically expect librarians and nurses to talk quietly. Teachers, politicians, thespians and “Americans” (especially New Yorkers) are generally allowed to be bombastic. There is something about loudness that is about more than volume. It’s not just a way of taking up space and attention. It’s a way of being brazen and unashamed. Who do they think they are, making all that noise? What makes them so special? To tell someone to pipe down is to remind them of their place. This is exactly what Plaut was getting at when she referenced being “loud and female”. There are two ideas at play here: “I don’t realise when I’m being ‘loud’.” And: “Why should I speak more softly to make you feel comfortable?”

That night at the bar, my friend and I cringed. We hadn’t meant to ruin anyone’s evening. And we certainly weren’t about to start an argument about the level of decibels we had or hadn’t produced. Despite the fact that we were mystified, we apologised profusely, in the most dulcet tones we could manage. Which probably sounded like Brian Blessed giving a hurricane warning.

This is the trouble, you see. Loudness, like beauty, is entirely subjective. It’s in the ear of the beholder. And some beholders are a lot more tolerant than others.

• Viv Groskop is a writer and the host of the podcast How to Own the Room: Women and the Art of Brilliant Speaking