Well, my voice is probably what I'd consider my strongest asset, because it sounds unquestionably female (nobody has ever asked me if I was male or female when they only had voice to go by since about feburary or march, 100% assume female).
But it wasn't always like that...
I have a feeling that hormones probably do (despite common belief to the contrary) help to a small degree if nothing else in aiding your potential to train yourself.
What I did was I started by, in really small sessions spaced weeks apart, talking in as feminine a sounding voice as I felt I could. Wasn't very good, but around the 7th or 8th it started getting a tiny bit better, though still pretty male. After that I started keeping nightly audio diaries, and talking more in between where I was practicing and my normal speaking voice every other time.
A little while after that it got good enough on its own that it started to sound reasonably passable, around then I started using it 24/7, and not long after that it was pretty close to perfect. All totaled up it probably look me 6 months total, with the majority of effort being focused in the first 4.
My recommendation is to just talk how you feel is the best that you can do, and practice that when you can (talking to yourself is helpful
) and when you feel comfortable, switch to trying to use it 24/7.
Just don't do it so much that you strain it.
The other thing I would say is that people put way too much emphasis on inflection and intonation and stuff related to the actual content of your speech. I don't think the content of what you say has really any relevance at all to what gender people perceive you as being. It has relevance to the masculinity or femininity of your personality, but I don't think it matters as far as gender reading goes.
Pitch matters a lot, resonance slightly more, both males and females can talk at the same pitch, in the middle between the high end of the male range and the low end of the female range, and resonance still causes you to perceive the males as the males and the females as the females. In my opinion, if you have a female resonance to your voice, and a pitch that's even remotely in the female range, your voice will probably be perceived as female unquestionably.
Just a quick note about hormones. I don't think you should 'count' on hormones to do almost anything. But I started hormones and it was around the same time that I made the most rapid and effective progress on my voice, it might have had no influence at all, it might have had a subtle but quite effective influence, personally from my experience I'm more inclined to think the latter, but I can't possibly say that for sure.
I can say that hormones, in some cases (especially the younger you are), do have a tendency to do the things most say it outright can't do.
