Friday, August 03, 2018

I Wouldn’t, Would You?

I have thought about it but I decided to not do it because of serval reasons. What I am talking about? Voice training.
Helping transgender women find their voice
The Washington Post
By Amy Ellis Nutt
July 30, 2018

A soft-spoken, middle-aged woman slides into a chair in a small, bare room at George Washington University’s Speech and Hearing Center, then smiles at the clinician sitting across from her. After a few minutes of chitchat, they begin their hour-long session, during which the woman repeats sentences and answers seemingly random questions:

“Why do you go to school?”

“Why do we have stop lights?”

“Why do we use clothes hangers?”

As it turns out, it’s not the answers that matter. It’s the sound of those answers. The woman is transgender, and she is here to learn a new voice.

“We’re not just changing their voice pitch,” said Adrienne Hancock, an associate professor at George Washington and a pioneer in the field, according to many of her professional peers. “We’re changing how they express themselves.”

It is vital to transgender women to find the feminine voice that matches their gender identity, gives them confidence and helps prevent harassment.

Dena, the woman undergoing the training session — she asked that her last name not be used — explained the danger of being a transgender woman with a man's voice in the company of strangers.
Okay these are my reasons that I didn’t want to have voice lessons, I realize we are all different and people will have different opinions on voice training.

For me I hid my true self for 60 years and I feel that voice training is just another way of hiding.

I also don’t think it works and if effective.

I think that it also reinforces the binary; it strengthens the stereotypes that all women use the same hand gestures and talk the same way.

I find that after eleven years since I transitioned my voice doesn’t matter most people just don’t care and I am more concerned about how people treat me. I know of several trans people who have had voice training and I realize that for some trans people  it is a matter of survival.

So would you go to a voice therapist?




As I mentioned I know of serval people who have had voice training and they went to the therapist at UConn…

2 comments:

  1. I voted "thinking about it," because I'm more curious than anything else. I do not have a high voice, but not all women do. I, too, feel that trying too hard to sound feminine goes against being the genuine person (woman) I see myself to be. I think that I speak now more the way I fought so hard to suppress for over a half-century, and that being free to be myself now has given me a voice that matches my appearance. I don't have any problems when I talk to people, either.

    Something I've noticed is that it's often easy to tell who has been through voice therapy. Just as plastic surgery techniques seem to give all patients the same look (especially in the eyes), voice techniques can make one sound a lot like the others who have undergone it - and not so very natural-sounding, I might add.

    ReplyDelete
  2. My experience will probably not be of interest to you. I never had voice training. I underwent my surgical correction nearly 50 years ago when I was 22. I have lived, loved and prospered as my own woman w/o any problem or fear of misgendering.
    How did I do that? I picked a voice I thought I could emulate and the did my best to sound exactly like that person. I did not think about pitch or tone or any particular position in my throat. I just worked to sound exactly like the person l was trying to sound like.

    ReplyDelete