# Fundie Baby Voice **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [March 11, 2024, 12:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fundie-baby-voice/998700 "2024-03-11T12:17:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2024, 12:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fundie-baby-voice/998700/1 "2024-03-11T12:17:36Z")
I’ve never heard of this before, but I don’t travel in Fundamentalist Christian Circles, so I guess that’s understandable. I’ve seen several websites this morning explaining the weird voice Katie Britt used for her SOTU rebuttal as a case of “Fundie Baby Voice”, and comparing her normal speaking voice to the way she delivered the response to the SOTU. It all sounds very weird, but believable. Has anyone else heard of this phenomenon? Can they corroborate ir? > **[Ever hear of "Fundie Baby Voice"? If you haven't, you missed what was going...](https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/3/10/2228575/-Ever-hear-of-Fundie-Baby-Voice-If-you-haven-t-you-missed-what-was-going-on-It-gets-worse)** > > NOTE: See the UPDATE below. While Senator Katie Britt has gotten a lot of flak for her performance (and it was a performance), something else was going on. People have commented on her presentation — they way she emoted, the way she sounded, ‘the... > **[The Fundie Baby Voice](https://jesspiper.substack.com/p/the-fundie-baby-voice)** > > As soon as Senator Katie Britt started speaking, I knew exactly who she is. She is so many of the pastor's wives and Sunday School teachers I knew growing up in an Evangelical church. Be sweet. Obey. > **[What is Fundie baby voice? Katie Britt response to SOTU speech sparks wild...](https://www.sportskeeda.com/pop-culture/news-what-fundie-baby-voice-katie-britt-response-sotu-speech-sparks-wild-reactions-tiktok-video-goes-viral)** > > Katie Britt of Alabama, the youngest woman in the US Senate, also spoke in the third State of the Union speech on Thursday, March 7, 2024. It’s more than just the Voice, apparently. It’s the whole kitchen setting, the way she dressed, the choice of the sex abduction story (that didn’t even happen on Biden’s watch), all to subliminally suggest submissive women. Kind of like Bene Gesserit in reverse, only when they use The Voice it’s wheedling baby talk, not an imperative command voice. Only how that’s supposed to work on people not already schooled in the culture I don’t know. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2024, 12:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fundie-baby-voice/998700/2 "2024-03-11T12:19:47Z")
The Maddowblog’s report on Britt’s speech doesn’t even mention “Fundie Baby Voice” > **[GOP’s Katie Britt in damage-control mode following post-SOTU mess](https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/gops-katie-britt-damage-control-mode-post-sotu-mess-rcna142725)** > > The initial problem with Katie Britt’s response to the State of the Union address was her delivery. The lingering problem is a misleading story she told. ---
**Author:** ![DCnDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dcndc/32/2842_2.png) [@DCnDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DCnDC)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2024, 12:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fundie-baby-voice/998700/3 "2024-03-11T12:25:47Z")
I just thought it was some shrill, pearl-clutching bullshit. Which it was. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2024, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fundie-baby-voice/998700/4 "2024-03-11T13:43:47Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > [The Fundie Baby Voice](https://jesspiper.substack.com/p/the-fundie-baby-voice) Her voice and “gee I"m about to giggle” face actually remind me of The Charismatic Voice reviewer on YouTube. e.g.: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VqmgfZpSkU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VqmgfZpSkU) ---
**Author:** ![Mundane\_Super\_Hero](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mundane_super_hero/32/6304_2.png) [@Mundane\_Super\_Hero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mundane_Super_Hero)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2024, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fundie-baby-voice/998700/5 "2024-03-11T14:18:27Z")
Hasn’t science already found a cure for ‘Fundie Baby Voice’? [This should do the trick.](https://taser.com/) ---
**Author:** ![solost](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/solost/32/11776_2.png) [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2024, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fundie-baby-voice/998700/6 "2024-03-11T14:49:23Z")
_Fundie baby, just use a voice that’s very twee for me_ _Be a submissive girl_ _Fundie baby, so I feel like a patriarch tonight_ ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2024, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fundie-baby-voice/998700/7 "2024-03-11T14:51:28Z")
> [@Mundane\_Super\_Hero](#): > > Hasn’t science already found a cure for ‘Fundie Baby Voice’? > > [This should do the trick.](https://taser.com/) A better solution might be to force the speaker to inhale sulfur hexafluoride. As they showed on **The Big Bang Theory** , Sulfur hexafluoride has the effect opposite to inhaling helium. > [@](#): > > [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u19QfJWI1oQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u19QfJWI1oQ) > [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7XdOyZIkko](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7XdOyZIkko) > [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYDa84zAGUo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYDa84zAGUo) I don’t know what would happen if you made them inhale helium instead. You’d probably annoy all the dogs within earshot, and maybe somebody’s head would explode. ---
**Author:** ![EllisDee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellisdee/32/4531_2.png) [@EllisDee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EllisDee)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2024, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fundie-baby-voice/998700/8 "2024-03-11T14:53:42Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > the choice of the sex abduction story (that didn’t even happen on Biden’s watch) Or _any_ US president’s watch, since it happened in Mexico. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2024, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fundie-baby-voice/998700/9 "2024-03-11T14:58:10Z")
I noticed more than fifty years ago that some women use a different voice to talk to men than they do when only women are around. (I expect men are less likely to have the chance to notice this than women are; some women use the Voice For Men not only in direct address, but also whenever they think men are within hearing, so only women will ever hear their natural voices and only if they hear them in relatively private spaces.) The voice such women use around men is higher pitched, more breathy, has a more tentative tone, and to my ears is overall less strong than the voice they use around women; ‘babyish’ is a fair description of it to some extent, though babies are often very much the reverse of tentative. What it is, is a voice indicating submission. The continuous smile Britt used often goes with it; it’s a smile of submission, derived not from a happy laugh but from the primate fear grin. Men also occasionally use the “nervous smile”, but it’s much more common in women, some of whom use it automatically in public even when they’re not particularly nervous; they’ve just had it ingrained in them that this is the polite expression for women to be wearing anywhere in public. Neither the nervous smile nor the Baby Voice For Men are limited to fundamentalist women, or for that matter to Southern women; I’ve seen/heard them both occasionally in women native to the Northeast or to other continents entirely, not all of them fundamentalists. But I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they’re much more common among fundamentalists, possibly even being required by some groups. I doubt Britt has the faintest idea why she’s being called out and mocked for them; she may well think this is utterly normal, and that the women she’s around (in Congress, even if she isn’t around them otherwise) who don’t do this are being deliberately rude: just as some people from the South think New Yorkers are rude because of the different speed and intonation of speech. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2024, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fundie-baby-voice/998700/10 "2024-03-11T15:09:59Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > I doubt Britt has the faintest idea why she’s being called out and mocked for them; she may well think this is utterly normal, and that the women she’s around (in Congress, even if she isn’t around them otherwise) who don’t do this are being deliberately rude: just as some people from the South think New Yorkers are rude because of the different speed and intonation of speech. One of the sites I link to shows her speaking at the post-SOTU and also in “normal conversation”, recorded earlier. I note that there are definitely men around, so she’s not invariably using Babyspeak around men. The implication the sites give is that the use of this high-register voice is deliberate , just as the venue (kitchen!) and topics were. ---
**Author:** ![Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/son_of_a_rich/32/5439_2.png) [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Son_of_a_Rich)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2024, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fundie-baby-voice/998700/11 "2024-03-11T15:14:01Z")
What’s the deal with MTG and others saying such words as family as “fee- yammily”? Is that part of some kind of Southern accent? ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2024, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fundie-baby-voice/998700/12 "2024-03-11T15:35:06Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > One of the sites I link to shows her speaking at the post-SOTU and also in “normal conversation”, recorded earlier. I note that there are definitely men around, so she’s not invariably using Babyspeak around men. The implication the sites give is that the use of this high-register voice is deliberate , just as the venue (kitchen!) and topics were. OK, you might be right about that part. I hadn’t looked up her other voice usage. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2024, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fundie-baby-voice/998700/13 "2024-03-11T15:42:05Z")
Some weird shit. I’d heard it before but never connected it to right-wing Christian culture. Now that I think about it every time I’ve heard this voice it came from this sub-culture. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2024, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fundie-baby-voice/998700/14 "2024-03-11T15:45:05Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > I’ve seen several websites this morning explaining the weird voice Katie Britt used for her SOTU rebuttal as a case of “Fundie Baby Voice”, and comparing her normal speaking voice to the way she delivered the response to the SOTU So i’ve never heard of this a political thing, or associated with the American evangelical movement. FWIW I have heard people (but thats more “people down the pub” than “experts in the field who know what they are talking about”) claim adults having a very childlike voice is a sign of past childhood abuse. Make of that what you will. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2024, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fundie-baby-voice/998700/15 "2024-03-11T15:46:44Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > What it is, is a voice indicating submission. The continuous smile Britt used often goes with it; it’s a smile of submission, derived not from a happy laugh but from the primate fear grin. That makes me suspect the person comes from a background of abuse. A comment from the OP’s first link would seem to support this: > [@](#): > > …adults who talk in a child-like tone typically faced some sort of trauma at one point or another, especially physical or sexual abuse in their childhood. You only ever hear the tone of their real voice when they are caught off guard or are under duress. I have known a handful of people over the years who talk like that and are not RW fundies, and yep every one of them went through some kind of abusive situation when they were kids. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2024, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fundie-baby-voice/998700/16 "2024-03-11T15:51:29Z")
I’ve only seen clips of the Katie Britt response, but I’ll tell you what her performance reminded _me_ of. There’s a commercial that comes on the cable channels every so often, urging people to donate to save suffering animals who are the victims of cruelty and neglect. And the voice-over for that commercial is so over-the-top emotional, in a way that I assume is supposed to communicate “I’m overwhelmed by how awful this is and we need to do something about it” but that I find very off-putting. And that’s the vibe I was getting from Katie Britt: that she was trying to convince us that the Biden presidency was overwhelmingly awful and we need to do something about it. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2024, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fundie-baby-voice/998700/17 "2024-03-11T15:55:21Z")
It used to be Sally Struthers doing those commercials. It was really grating. ---
**Author:** ![Briny\_Deep](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/briny_deep/32/17188_2.png) [@Briny\_Deep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Briny_Deep)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2024, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fundie-baby-voice/998700/18 "2024-03-11T15:58:06Z")
I know the voice very, very well, but Katie Britt is not doing the best example of it. If you really want the flavor, listen to Kelly Johnson, the Speaker’s wife, as called out by Jess Piper (for Piper’s commentary, scroll down to the TikTok video which I’m unable to embed here). Fundamentalist Christian women all over the South speak just like this, though if they have naturally strong personalities they’re able to turn it on and off like a switch. The baby version is meant to be soothing and non-threatening to men. > **["Fundy baby voice"— Kelly Johnson, wife of House Speaker, and other...](https://boingboing.net/2023/11/06/fundy-baby-voice-kelly-johnson-wife-of-house-speaker-and-other-evangelical-women-are-trained-to-adopt-childlike-voices.html)** > > Kelly Johnson, married to Christian Nationalist House Speaker Mike Johnson, was recently invited on Fox News to tell viewer that she is a kind and loving person despite equating homosexuality… ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2024, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fundie-baby-voice/998700/19 "2024-03-11T15:59:25Z")
> [@Briny\_Deep](#): > > Jess Piper (for Piper’s commentary, scroll down to the TikTok video which I’m unable to embed here) That’s one of the things I link to in the OP. ---
**Author:** ![Briny\_Deep](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/briny_deep/32/17188_2.png) [@Briny\_Deep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Briny_Deep)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2024, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fundie-baby-voice/998700/20 "2024-03-11T16:01:58Z")
Are you certain it’s the same TikTok video by Jess Piper? I saw where she commented on Katie Britt on her Substack, but for Piper’s commentary on Johnson, I had to go searching for the TikTok video I remembered, linked from BoingBoing. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fundie-baby-voice/998700.md?page=2)