Yelling, once associated with toughness, strength, and power, is now seen as imposing and aggressive, a negative side consequence of arrogance and unearthed advantage. With the widespread public reaction towards the online clip of Republican Majority Leader Jake Corman yelling at his Democratic opponent Kate Muth, the precarious position of yelling in modern American consciousness became apparent. Screaming is currently associated with toxic masculinity and anger issues that frequently stem from it. People who lose control and start yelling are met with a mixture of surprise and humiliation. It’s not an appropriate course of action for anyone who wishes to achieve public respect and be taken seriously.
A large part of this movement is undoubtedly due to a wider trend away from conduct that promotes abusive and blatantly patriarchal structures. While there is no proof that men yell more than women, a man yelling is nearly always a more physically and psychologically dangerous experience. Another element of the transition seems reasonable to attribute to a shift in generational temperament, assisted, maybe, by the rise of internet culture (Petrusich, 2019). Today, there’s less need for someone to raise his voice when it’s quite easy to be cruel, abusive, and disruptive trough other communication channels.
Personally, I find the evolution of the understanding of yelling rather fascinating. Social connotations of behaviors are not fixed, but rather evolve with time, depending on the state of society itself. As the general public becomes progressively more and more respectful towards one another, at least hypothetically, it is natural for screaming to become somewhat obsolete. I only hope, that respectable people are allowed to deal with the emotions conveyed previously trough yelling in healthy ways, rather then forced to suppress them for as long as possible.