Susan's Place Transgender Resources

It's seems , somewhat understandably so that voice is an extremely important part of ones willingness to transition. Personally for me it's transition first and worry later about the voice. Worse case for me would be just going around whispering. I do all right though when force in a situation to talk , but I have no clue how good it sounds I just wing it. just curious if voice would be enough to stop you from transitioning'

steph, i enjoy your threads lol. i can shift my voice from male to female or vice versa or keep it andro. so its important but not enough to stop me

thanks

I was with you; I went full-time well before I felt like I had the voice down, because it was that important to me to live as a woman.

(That said, it was a help to be able to break out a very female voice when someone was clearly puzzling out my gender - I'm not downplaying how much voice can matter, just saying, as you do, that I would have transitioned even if I'd never managed the voice part.)

I'd totally would love having a totally female voice. I listen all the time to other woman talking and try imagining how to do it. Sometimes I think I do all right if I only speak a few words and take it slow, but it would be beautiful to freely talk away in a feminine tone.

Practice, seriously. The hard part is getting it right AT ALL; once you can do that, it's a question of figuring out what worked and repeating it until it's second nature. I know, that sounds easy and I'm not making light of it (I put in probably hundreds of hours of practice), but I thought it might be reassuring to know you've made the important breakthrough. :)

It was a year or more before my voice was not only "good" but enough of a habit that that was what came out when I was surprised/distracted/stubbed my toe... but you can get there with time and training the muscle memory.

It was pretty important to me, I put in a lot of work to make sure I sound half decent. I don't think it would ever have stopped me, I would have just carried on working on it. I do think it's really important generally, people seem to be more prepared to treat you and consider you as a woman if you have a female voice.

For me, it is one of the must-haves. In fact, while I am seeing my therapist towards HRT, I am steadily working on my voice. it is coming along decently.

None i sound like Lemmy from Motorhead when he has a sore throat!

My voice is so important to me that I'm flying halfway across the world to get it fixed. I also go full time at work before I go!

But I'm a ham radio operator and I also record podcasts and speak in front of people professionally. I also do TV and radio interviews from time to time but I'm not sure after transition if I'm going to. So often I'm heard before I'm seen. My voice is super duper important to me!

In fact my voice dropping was one of the biggest things that I hated about myself. I was in the choir in elementary school.

I put a lot of work into training my voice, and stuck with it during it's terrible stage (when it was embarrassing to use it in public), so yes, it's important to me.

I admit, now that I'm full time I am more hesitant to speak to people than usual because my voice is not as high as cis women. And I'm not talking about 80 year old smokers either. But, it's good enough to pass but it is one of my major deficiencies.

iKate and I were discussing about voice and we both acknowledged that it is the swing vote when one raises suspicion on you. I'm blessed to have a decent sounding female voice that when I feel I am being scrutinized, I open my mouth (talk) and I can see them looking away.

Yes it is important.

I haven't done much with my voice at all.. I did have 3 sessions with a speech therapist that mainly involved her trying to teach me female vocal mannerisms and the like - and then realising that I already spoke that way. My pitch is still what most around here would call too low, but I don't find it that much of an issue.

It certainly didn't play any part in my decision to transition..

My male voice is close to an octave lower then the "Typical" male's. So no matter how much I try, there is only so much I can, with or w/o any sort of no guarantee surgeries.

Does it bother me? You bet.

Does it stop me?  It did. Back in the dark times with a negative self-esteem as well as a negative self-confidence and, no real true positive sense of who or what I am, it helped stopped me.

Is it stopping me? Nope. Ever hear a life-long female smoker talk? Well, compared to her Lou Reed voice I am Mel Torme.

I jumped into transitioning and living full time very quickly, perhaps too quickly because I was sick of living a lie. For the first year I sometimes was too frightened to speak because of my voice, but by my second year I just did it anyway whether my voice was passable or not.  Over time though and I think mostly because training and working as a social worker meant I had to work face to face with people I started to get it together and produce a voice that worked for me.  The odd thing though is I get people asking if I'm Dutch, - even Dutch people ask me if I'm Dutch! - I don't know how I managed that, but at least I don't have to worry about speaking to people anymore.

The key is to practice using your voice until there isn't any need to think about how you'll sound when you open your mouth.  I used to sing baritone, so I suppose learning to sound female wasn't quite so difficult for me as it might be for someone with a seriously bass kind of voice.

I knew a girl when I was growing up that had a very male voice and she did fine with it so having a male voice wouldn't stop me but given the opportunity I would like to get it fixed because it would help solidify my appearance as a cis woman.

Quote from: carmenkate on May 15, 2015, 06:42:04 PM
iKate and I were discussing about voice and we both acknowledged that it is the swing vote when one raises suspicion on you. I'm blessed to have a decent sounding female voice that when I feel I am being scrutinized, I open my mouth (talk) and I can see them looking away.

Agreed.  IMO, voice is a really big part of blending in / being seen as a woman.

I've spent a lot of years as a singer and musician, so working with my voice came pretty easily to me.  My pitch and resonance are well inside female range, but I'm still working on the speech patterns...the sing-songy way that women talk.  It's still not natural for me.  I can't help but feel like I'm trying too hard.

The hardest one for me seems to be interacting with cashiers in stores, or any short conversation like that.  My voice is fine when having longer conversations, but I just don't do the chit chat very well yet.

so far I'm pretty much the opposite , I'm good at short bursts, hopefully I can get to the long version.

It would be really nice if I could do something about my voice... but if I have to be 100% honest, I'm going to sound like crap no matter how much training I do... like not even just from a transitional stand point. Idk, I've been pretty successful with just about everything else thus far, I guess the voice is my one offset. It would be nice... but I'm not counting on it.

Quote from: carmenkate on May 15, 2015, 06:42:04 PM
iKate and I were discussing about voice and we both acknowledged that it is the swing vote when one raises suspicion on you. I'm blessed to have a decent sounding female voice that when I feel I am being scrutinized, I open my mouth (talk) and I can see them looking away.

Yes it is important.

I think iKate and I have had this same discussion. Voice does make a difference and helps, but it's not everything. However if something is questionable, I'm glad to have a decent female voice being 6'7". It's on the lower end of the female range (around 190 Hz), but being a tall woman gives me a little leeway.

Quote from: Emily E on May 15, 2015, 10:34:30 PM
I knew a girl when I was growing up that had a very male voice and she did fine with it so having a male voice wouldn't stop me but given the opportunity I would like to get it fixed because it would help solidify my appearance as a cis woman.

At one of my clients, one of the employees (who is extremely supportive) has a 20 years old cis daughter who has a very deep voice that is very male sounding. If you heard her from the other room you would thing there was a guy talking. On the phone she is gendered male, but in person no one thinks anything of it.

I am actually sometimes jealous of you American girls because I always think an American accent sounds a bit more feminine sometimes. I am a northerner in England and proud of it, and I didn't want to lose that identity, but it is harder to sound female when you're accent is so blunt and full of flat vowels. At least I don't have a strong Manchester accent!

I am terrible at doing character voices, I have no ear for music, I am pretty much tone deaf and my voice terrifies me, I have had more than one panic attack that left me half in or fully in tears which where heavily based on my weight, and my voice.

its bad enough that even when I try and practice i see how bad it sounds and how much work it will take even if I ever get it right and that tends to trigger me freaking out about it which end with me shoveling food into my mouth which makes me freak out about my fat/body shape which ends with more freaking out and going to bed a wreck. I watch learn to speak videos and they keep asking, do you hear that? or do you feel how that feels? and I am thinking , no i dont I dont hear anything I dont feel anything I have no clue what i am doing and I never will. Then I reach the point where I want to deafen myself so no one will ever expect me to talk. I don't think I would ever do it but my brain tends to go all excessive when I am freaking out.

All that said I don't think I am going to let it stop or slow me down from transitioning I will just have to accept the fact that I will never pass and get used to being treated like garbage by everyone I ever meet for the rest of my life.

--Serena

I don't care about frequency - I have female cousins with deeper voices than me. So as long as I manage to change my timbre and so on over time, my pitch is fine. I would only go for VFS if changing those things proved overly difficult; while VFS won't solve such problems, it could at least make them less noticeable.

Thankfully my voice has changed quite a lot over the last few months, partly due to less anxiety and dysphoria, partly to training, and I also suspect some muscular changes or something making it easier to use the voice differently. But this could also of course be my (although very limited) training having effects. Either way, since people seem to gender me a bit randomly on the phone now, I'm hopeful that I can have a passing voice within a few years, without surgery.

Quote from: katiej on May 15, 2015, 10:58:02 PM
Agreed.  IMO, voice is a really big part of blending in / being seen as a woman.

I've spent a lot of years as a singer and musician, so working with my voice came pretty easily to me.  My pitch and resonance are well inside female range, but I'm still working on the speech patterns...the sing-songy way that women talk.  It's still not natural for me.  I can't help but feel like I'm trying too hard.

The hardest one for me seems to be interacting with cashiers in stores, or any short conversation like that.  My voice is fine when having longer conversations, but I just don't do the chit chat very well yet.

Yeah. I hate talking with cashiers now. Short conversations I have trouble raising the voice. I like being chatty with cashiers and talking but it's either chat it up and get clocked or stay silent and pass. Patience for me though. In a few months hopefully I won't have this issue.

I'm currently pre-everything still unsure about transitioning and for myself if I couldn't pull off a good female voice it would make me highly unlikely to want to transition.

My voice doesn't keep me from transitioning (I'm happier now than I've ever been), but it has kept me from being full time. It'll come in time though.

Quote from: Abby Claire on May 16, 2015, 09:20:54 AM
My voice doesn't keep me from transitioning (I'm happier now than I've ever been), but it has kept me from being full time. It'll come in time though.

Pretty much this. Hasn't stopped me from starting. But it is holding back full time. But working on it day by day, and plan on VFS soon.

I've voted for "important but not enough to stop me" but it is holding me back somewhat(from going fulltime) because in my line of work I have talk to a lot of people and hold trainings and I can't say that, sorry I'm not up to it because I don't like my voice. So I'm trying to work on it to get to a level where it is good enough so people don't instantly clock me as I open my mouth. I think voice is highest on my priority list in my transition, and also that is the hardest to get right.

My voice didn't stop me, but especially early on I was conscious of it and have worked hard on it. Could my voice be better, of course, but I'm happy with that it is at least generally very passable.
Mariah