Girl talk: Inside GWU's transgender speech clinic

[Shana A]

Girl talk: Inside GWU's transgender speech clinic
November 22, 2010 - 11:30 AM
By Amanda Hess

http://www.tbd.com/blogs/amanda-hess/2010/11/gwu-transgender-speech-clinic-4962.html

Each semester, eight people attend the George Washington University to learn how to talk like women.

At one of the few transgender speech clinics in the country, GWU speech-language pathologists help male-to-female transgender women find voices to match their gender identities. "We work on pitch, obviously, but there's a lot of research to say that changing your pitch is not adequate to passing as a woman," says Dr. Adrienne Hancock, an assistant professor of speech-language pathology at the George Washington University. "We work on voice quality, fullness of voice, intonation patterns, nonverbal posture . . . essentially, all the elements of feminine communication. It's much more than just pitch."