Transitioning vs employment

[Lex Six]

I'm a male and I want to go through HRT but I don't want any surgeries. Once I've transitioned gender Identity isn't going to mean anything to me but I'll be presenting as female.

So my question is should I be concerned about what employers think of me when I show up to an interview looking female and speaking with a masculine voice? I feel like discrimination could be a huge factor in getting hired on to a new job. Should I consider having my vocals altered?

[suzifrommd]

Depends on who's doing the hiring. Some people are supportive of trans people, some hate us, some don't understand us, and some don't like anyone who's different in any way. Some employers have anti-discrimination policies, and some of those actually follow them.

Even if you're perfectly passable, your gender at birth is bound to come up in background checks. It's really hard to hide your past.

As far as voice, please yourself. If you're OK with your voice, and you don't mind being clocked, I wouldn't have it worked on. I'd try working on it at first. My voice never gets clocked and I haven't had anything done to it.

[Dena]

Sometimes I can be slow picking up on things but voice was something I was 35 years slow on possibly setting an all time record for me. I went through therapy for my voice but I didn't really understand how low it was after therapy. I worked doing telephone support and lived life with a voice while higher than my male voice, was still gendered as male. I decided to do something about it and I was updating my boss about it. Now understand I took this job in 1986 and telephone support has always been a big part of it. I originally took the job as a female and didn't discuss my medical status for at least 15 years. In the discussion with my boss, I found they had been doing cover for me in the background when someone wanted the guy who gave them great support. They would tell them I was a woman with a really deep voice. Mud all over my face. I probably never passed after I opened my mouth in 35 years.

Surgical correction didn't exist when I transitioned and modern tools told me my voice was incapable of hitting the feminine range without surgery. As I would like to pass at some places in the future, I went with voice surgery. Many people can hit the female range with therapy alone but my voice was Bass and could hit 80hz, something which is pretty rare in the population. If I were you, I would spend some money on speech therapy as my voice surgery ran $7,000 including air fare. In addition, even with surgery, you need therapy in order to be able to use the voice correctly. I had enough therapy that I may be able to get by with what I already know. I am still waiting for this voice to heal enough that I can put what I know to work.

I can't prove it, but it is possible some of the job interviews I went, I lost because of my voice. My boss hired me partly because I was two years without work and would accept what they were paying and because I had top level technical skills and because the two Chinese men who would work with me had enough of an accent the the customers complained they couldn't understand them. So the hired a woman with a very deep voice. Go figure. The stories I could tell about working there, but that's for another thread.

Feel free to ask me any more questions about this subject.