Tone policing is the act of trying to change the emotionality of a person's message.

Tone policing is the act of trying to change the emotionality of a person’s message. Tone policing tends to be targeted at women and women of color in particular (Gasam Asare, 2023), and I would assert that it also is targeted at gay men as well, due to their proximity to femininity in the eyes of heteronormative masculinity. This leads me to believe that dispassion is an ideal of white masculine habitus. Tone policing, therefore, is centered in the white, especially white male, habitus and used to control the emotions of others.