Tone policing (or tone trolling or tone argument or tone fallacy) is an antidebate appeal based on genetic fallacy, which attempts to detract from the validity of a statement by attacking the tone rather than the message.
In Bailey Poland's book, Harassment, Abuse, and Violence Online, she suggests that tone policing is frequently aimed at women and derails or silences opponents lower on the "privilege ladder".
In changing their tactics to criticizing how the women spoke instead of what the women said, the men created an environment in which the outcome of a dispute was not decided on the merits of an argument but on whether the men chose to engage with the arguments in good faith.
While anyone can engage in tone policing, it is frequently aimed at women as a way to prevent a woman from making a point in the discussion.
In Keith Bybee's How Civility Works, he notes that feminists, Black Lives Matter protesters, and anti-war protesters have been told to "calm down and try to be more polite". He argues that tone policing is a means to deflect attention from injustice and relocate the problem in the style of the complaint, rather than address the complaint.
Critics have argued that tone policing is a flawed concept. As discussed by The Frisky's Rebecca Vipond Brink, the act of labeling tone policing may itself be considered tone policing
The problem with telling someone that you have a right to express yourself as angrily as you want to without them raising an objection is that you’re also inherently telling them that they don’t have a right to be angry about the way you’re addressing them.