One thing that I notice about myself, is that my speech patterns seemed to have always resembled that of a woman a lot more than that of a man. ie I use more tonal flux and higher pitch etc. Half of the time with telemarketers I get mammed on the phone, and this is when I am still trying to present as male. It is flattering that this happens, but also makes me think. Perhaps the way we process language is much more similar to the gender we are transitioning to. To be honest I never even tried to deepen my voice growing up and nothing really seemed to crack. Which I am fortunate for, however you would think that people would have picked up on this or something. Like as a teenager I am pretty sure most people were oblivious to it. I do not talk with a gay lisp or anything like that. Which of course would have got me a lot of negative attention. But a womans voice on a man. Perhaps people are not as easy on picking that up.

Has anyone else here had the experience of getting mammed on the phone while still living in guy mode, or whenever you start talking to someone it comes out almost at the same level as a natal woman. or is it just me. Do you find that your natural way of speaking resembles that of a woman much more than a man? I would think that our brains would most likely process language very differently than a male brain. Just my thoughts.

No it's not just you.

I could never pass as male, particularly on the telephone, although in my case, as I grew up partially as a girl, and my voice never fully broke that wasn't really a big surprise.

As far as I know, my voice is never gendered female, but my speech pattern definitely is. Not sure about my vocabulary, but I know guys tend to emphasize by increasing the volume of their voice, whereas I use tones. Listening to myself, I talk more like a woman with a bit of a butch vocabulary than a man.

My old voice was very male, but I was always tags a being gay in those years because of the speech patterns I have.

I think I was more a speech chameleon before I started transition. Around men the pattern and tone was masculine. Around men & women, mixed with a stronger leaning to masculine. How I spoke with women (and gay or cross-dresser friends) depended on the relationship I had with them. The average woman probably got mixed with a leaning towards feminine. Good friends got pretty feminine.

However, now everybody gets the same and it is drifting further and further into feminine. I made a video the other day and I actually surprised myself with some of my feminine mannerisms and intonations when I just let it fly. Still working it out though.

My voice has never really been masculine...I've always used pitch and tone to emphasise things, though I would pitch down rather than up. Put that down to a life of constant depression. I've also been quite expressive with my body language and hand gestures.

I used to hate my voice because it was too male, but at the same time not male enough.

Quote from: Helena on January 25, 2011, 02:29:07 PM
My voice has never really been masculine...I've always used pitch and tone to emphasise things, though I would pitch down rather than up. Put that down to a life of constant depression. I've also been quite expressive with my body language and hand gestures.

I used to hate my voice because it was too male, but at the same time not male enough.

Depression hasn't stopped me from pitching my voice up, rather than down. Of course, when I'm really bad, I do not emphasize at all, rather speaking in a monotone. I've also tended to be quite expressive with body language, though I toned it down over the years due to the fear of being read as female.

My voice sounds normal male.  I am very expressive with my hands and voice.  I do not think I sound "gay" but always had a lot of gay friends.  I taught in an inner city school and the teenagers were positive I was gay and could never have married a woman.   I continue to present male and people just are not sure why I look younger.

Sometimes I just have to laugh at myself.  My friends vary in that some: sound quite female with their male voice, others sound gay, others have trained their voice with varying degrees of success, and still others had SRS and have deep male voices.  I find training my voice very difficult.

I was very feminine growing up. I had a page boy haircut and was always called little girl and such. I spoke girly, but when I got tired of being beat up in elementary school because they thought I was gay, I tried really hard to "masculize" my speech patterns and even laughs.  It worked but I was not myself.  Now, I have to undo all the years of faking I was a guy! 

My speech pattern is toned and deliberate, I'm very confusing to talk to, and I admit it. Inside my head I won the voice of a woman, and that's what I hear. No one has commented about my voice at all, other than to tell me that it's not deep.

Realistically, I think I'm a tenor, a high one that can reach whatever notes I need. Gotta work on it.

I used to work in an office taking calls and the vast majority of male callers took me for a woman. They called me things like love, pet, miss and such. The middle-aged women didn't make any remarks either way but I also got called love and pet from eldery women. In fact, face-to-face, many elderly women who couldn't see very well took me for a girl with my grown-out hair.

My partner tells me that I still sound feminine, not stereotypically feminine but on the andro side of female. Recently I was on radio and listening back to the podcast it sure sounded like a woman's voice - my voice never really seemed to break fully.

As for mannerisms and speech, people have told me I talk like a woman, lots of hands and feminine patterns. It's never something I stopped to think about, it's just always been the way I have talked, and I guess that's a reason why a lot of people take me for a gay man when they meet me. Upon meeting me for the first time one of my partner's friends told her that I talk and act like a woman.

Ive always had a high voice..whever im on the phone(always) i always get mammed and she from telemarkers....i even tried to deepen my voice and still go called mammed. I always got picked on for having such a femenine high voice..but im glad! I also dont have an adams apple.....i always though i had an extra x because of this..but im not sure. I remember having breast pains at thirteen and it hurt to touch them. But idk..what you think? lol

Has anyone tried the Andrea James "Finding your female voice" program? I'm thinking of ordering it tonight. The hangup I had was that I saw some previews and she looks like she's in obvious pain while talking.

If I had talked like a woman while I was in the army I would have been brutally murdered.
i.e. killed. Dead. Deceased. A messy red smear on the parade ground.
Thankfully my survival instinct is horribly strong 

It depended who I was talking to. In the Navy, around equals and junior Sailors/Marines, and in any environment where I had a leadership role, and any time I was confident/comfortable, I talked like a guy. But strangers - especially those in positions of power, and especially women - don't react well to women who talk like men and have masculine mannerisms. When I was talking to someone of higher social status than me, or a stranger, or a service worker from whom I needed something, I talked like a child. I could never master adult female speech patterns and intonations - "child" was the best I could do to avoid pissing people off. Of course, it tended to get me seen as weak and shy.

Voice is something that I used to worry about alot, but it ended up being one of the least problematic things. I can't remember a single instance of anyone getting my gender wrong over the phone, even when not thinking about what it sounds like. Now that I think about it I do remember somebody teasing me for having a squeaky voice as a kid. I've always had better language and vocabulary than most people I've been around too.