Muted Group Theory

Muted Group Theory attempts to explain why certain groups in society are muted which means they are either silent or not heard. Women and men are obviously biologically different but socially treated differently as well. These differences explain why women (and minorities) are considered muted groups because they are considered to be lower in status or subordinates than the dominant groups. Because women as a muted group feel muted, they believe that they have no choice other than to conform and to change the way they act and talk.
This clip, shown above, is from the comedy series Everybody Loves Raymond and the episode entitled Debra Bad Moon Rising. In this episode, Ray's attempts to alleviate Debra's PMS moodiness but only makes her more irritable. When Ray witnesses Debra's hypersensitive mood and generally annoyed reaction to everything he says and does, he checks the calendar and realizes it's going to be a long couple of days ahead. In his convenient desire to get a "quick fix" for Debra's womanly problems, he turns a bad situation worse by suggesting that a simple pill will help with his wife's insufferable mood swings.
We live in a patriarchal society dominated by men. Ray is showing his dominance over Debra by being insensitive to her biological issues. He thought he could conveniently help her with a pill, which really he just wanted to help himself. He diminished and simplified her problem, but ignored the bigger issue which was his lack of support for her needs. She wanted to her express her feelings of the way she felt throughout her time of the month but he kept silencing her. He tried silencing her by ridiculing and saying that he understood but just wanted to get the pill. He also used control but making his male dominant role as central and her needs as eclipsed. He interrupts her and does not want to listen to her needs but tries to stop her bad mood from rising.

Muted Group Theory

The muted group theory explains why certain groups in society are either silenced or not heard at all. Because women, as a muted group, believe that they have no choice but to "fit in" or conform to the male dominated society than to change the way they talk. Women are not only considered as less powerful than men but a group that doesn't speak the same language. Males are mostly the cause of women's mutedness because they do not want to even begin to understand a language that is not their own.
The muted group theory relates to this clip of Martin starring Martin Lawrence and Tisha Campbell because he uses control as a method of silencing Tisha. Martin thinks that Tisha works entirely too much and he feels that she should be home more often in order to perform her duties as a wife such as cooking. He went to her boss and demanded that he cuts her hours. In the process, her boss fires her.He uses a "sugar-coated bullet" when silencing her by praising her accomplishments and telling her that she could get another job anywhere. This is an example of gender-based differences in perception. The explanation lies in the division of labor that allocates work on the basis of sex, such that women are responsible for tasks in the home while are responsible for work outside of the home. Martin exerted his dominance by taking control of the situation and demanding that his wife take her place in the home while he worked.

Muted Group Theory

This cartoon demonstrates some of the basic concepts behind mute group theory. The man is part of the dominant group and the female is not so she is silenced. Harassment is one of the processes of silencing that we learned about in class. In this example the silencing is done through sexual harassment. The man in the cartoon is letting the female character know that sexual harassment by upper level employees is alright and she should not complain about it. Harassment like this makes women feel as if they do not belong in the workplace. When sexual harassment occurs, it portrays the message that women are not real employees and are simply sex objects.

This cartoon also demonstrates one of the strategies for resistance to silence. By giving the harassment the title of "sexual harassment", women are preventing further harassment. If everybody knows that sexual harassment occurs and is not okay, it is far less likely to occur. Unfortunately for the women in this cartoon, men also control the subculture of the office. The person that the woman is supposed to go to if she is being sexually harassed is also a man. The man in the cartoon clearly sees no problem with harassment done by himself or by his superiors. This is definitely a huge problem for women because men not only are the dominant sex in our culture as a whole, but they also dominate smaller cultures like the office, the media, and the criminal justice system. That is why the silencing of women continues.

Muted Group Theory: Sex and the City

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The Muted Group Theory suggests that language is limited in its ability to serve all groups equally, so it serves the dominant groups better than subordinate groups. Because the English language was created by men, many woman experiences are left unnamed or difficult to express, making women appear less articulate or “muted.” Women can employ several strategies to resist being silenced; one of them being to create a language that better represents themselves and their experiences.

Since its creation in 1998, the television show Sex and the City has “fought back” on behalf of single women, famously contributing to pop culture by creating its own words and phrases. There had never before been a show like this on television that revolved around the lives of four, single, successful women, so a new lexicon representing these women was just waiting to be established.

In this episode, titled “Evolution,” the girls are discussing how men have evolved in relationships. In the older days, men were either gay or straight. More recently, we have coined the phrase “metrosexual” to describe men who embrace some aspects of the homosexual lifestyle, like nice clothes, designer hygiene products, etc. However, these words were still not sufficient to describe the experiences some women face while dating. In this scene, starting about halfway through the clip, Charlotte is out with a friend, a pastry chef from Chelsea. She had thought for some time that he was gay, but at the end of the night he kisses her, clearly making her very confused. When she brings up her dilemma to her friends, they bring up a not-so-simple question: Is he a straight-gay man or a gay-straight man? Carrie goes on to explain that a gay-straight man is just an overcultured straight man, similar to a metrosexual, while a straight gay man is just a gay man that watches sports and acts tough.

Because this is clearly an experience that most men would never have to deal with, it is not surprising that there was no real phrase prior to this episode to describe this phenomenon. Rather than having to translate the “male” language or talk endlessly around the subject, these women compensated by coining a phrase for this event to make conversation much more direct. In the future, women will be able to say a “gay-straight man” or a “straight-gay man” and it will be accepted and understood. Now these women have officially named the experience of dating questionably-cultured men, and helped give women in this position a voice.