The hardest part of transition thus far has been voice coaching

Tears, frustration, and not knowing what I even want

It may surprise you that the hardest part of changing sex frpm male to remale has been changing my voice.  One of the most common questions I get as a trans woman from all types of people is, “how come your voice hasn’t changed?”

Well, as incredibly powerful hormones are, they aren’t so powerful that they can undo what has already been done.  Just one more reason not to force trans kids through the wrong puberty. [If society asks that we live within the binary, either implicitly or explicitly, then make it easy for young people to avoid going through the wrong puberty].

While this reality is harder for male to female transsexuals, the same happens with women who go through puberty…even though their voices will deepen on testosterone, it will never deepen as it would have done had they gone through male puberty.

In other words, I am only ever going to sound like a girl with lot’s of hard work.  Okay, there is a surgical option.  But the surgical option is only available and only makes sense if I have made profound progress on my voice through speech therapy.  And anyway, surgery only addresses pitch, but the feminine cues coming from the voice have much more to do with affect.

We can talk about the mechanics.  The coaching itself.   The things I am asked to do to find what my natural pitch can and should be.  Or the “tricks” and exercises I am to do if I want that outcome.

But that isn’t as hard as just opening my mouth in the real world and speaking with girl voice.  Easier with perfect strangers.  But given that the bulk of my life and world is with people who already know my life and voice as a man, there is the additional dissonance and fear of how they will react to my lady voice.

I am working on it.  But it is hard.  It is hardest of all in a work context.  Male voice is associated with power.  Dominance.  I am talking about vanilla work.  In a perverse way, sex work is just the opposite, where my power goes up the more convincingly feminine my voice is.  It is deliciously perverse.

I find myself in conversation with people from a work context.  Either I am trying to find a job or I am speaking to people who seek out my expertise in the world I came from.  In both situations, boy voice just comes out.  It is “natural”.  And hard to resist.  And after an hour of boy voice, I feel weird.  Like I am betraying myself.

At other times, I think this is just too hard.  And sometimes I am angry.  Angry that it matters.  Angry that I have to spend so much time and money on this agonizing process.  But voice is so central to perceptions of gender.  And I don’t want to be perceived as a man.

Like a dog chasing its own tail, I am drawn back into the discussion with myself.  And then I renew my efforts.

The biggest step I feel I have taken recently towards female voice was to change my LinkedIn profile to my new name.  The cat is out of the bag.  It is inevitable that people will see it.  Colleagues.  Former colleagues.  Headhunters.  And along with that comes the expectation that I will sound like a girl.

Indeed, some of my friends and former colleagues say to me, “how come your voice hasn’t changed?” not knowing that as miraculous as oestrogen is, it cannot undo what testosterone has already done.  There’s an argument for not forcing trans kids through the wrong puberty and giving them access to blockers.

I sure don’t want to sound trans.  Like a femme boy.  Like a stereotypical gay man.  My voice teacher, who famously said, “we don’t want to sound like gay men,” which was part of the reason I asked to work with her, later said, when I reminded her of that comment, “yes, but think for a moment what is meant by that.  What are gay men doing?  They are doing performative femininity.   There’s a lot in that you should do.”

I find myself more and more listening to voices of women I admire, women I would like to sound like.  And also more and more saying to myself that a woman can sound like I do too.  I just got here in a roundabout way, one of the consequences of which was to give me a deeper voice.  I kind of like that thought.  Lived in.  With character.  Kind of like the lines on my face.