I'm sorry if this sounds rude, or ignorant. I'm just curious. I have met quite a few trans women now and something that puzzles me is the variation of their voices. I understand that unlike ftms, mtfs undergo voice training in order to help them pass yet I have met trans women post transition with a male sounding voice, female sounding voice and androgynous tone. Does hrt affect the voice for mts as it does for ftms or is the voice change achieved purely through voice training? If so, does this permanently alter the voice or is it still possible for them to speak in their male voice as well?
Hormones do not effect the voice, for MtFs. I myself still have a pretty male voice to be honest because I can't be bothered to practice so much and honestly I just don't really care anymore. I am much happier than I was before and that is what matters. I've heard some people who've really trained their voice well can have trouble finding the male voice but it is possible for sure.
It's like a muscle you train. At first you fumble around, you try a bunch of free advice on the internet with mixed results, some of us are able to afford some professional training right around this point and some aren't. Even those of us that are not, though, usually end up with a working understanding of what works and what does not. If you ever want to hear what you sound like to other people or on the phone by the way, just block the fronts of your ears with paper or your hands while you talk. There are surgeries that some of us get, and those surgeries are getting better, but because the surgeries were not good for a very long time and a lot of us figured out how to train our voices without surgery, it's something almost no one does. However you come about it though, the big obstacle all of us face is a little instinctual tick that causes us to naturally lower our voices around other people. I would say out of everything involved with a male-to-female transition, this is by far the most work, even more than hair removal. Using your female voice, eventually, is something you have to practice doing in front of other people. And this fact I feel is why we have so many varied voices. A lot of us wait 'till we can present reasonably female before we even start practicing. It is a lot easier to use your female voice when everyone is treating you like a woman already. Even without that added visceral "lower your voice" switch our brains to have, you draw attention when you suddenly use a different voice to talk to people. Often people just read you as a gay male, which is difficult for people that don't want to be read as any kind of male, and for people that are not very "out". Being openly queer is something that some of us are capable of being comfortable with, and some of us are not. So hormones don't really affect things directly, but indirectly - especially as we start becoming more and more physically female in general - it gets easier and more natural to practice your voice in front of other people. And once you are using it all the time, that same instinctive kick that was working against you before, works with you when you know you are a woman, and prevents you from using a deeper male sounding voice if you are not used to using one.
Thanks for the info. So say a woman transitions and she gets to a point of being happy and comfortable with who she is, she may not bother with the voice training?
I've met a few ladies that were absolutely perfect until they spoke. Voice of a usual dude, you know? I admired how strongly they carried themselves. Doing voice training sounds tricky.
remember that many ladies have "huskier" voices. Lauren Bacall had a throater voice than many but still a woman's voice. im told that intonation is a big factor between sounding like a lady or a dude. i still dont have it worked out yet though.
I worry about the voice thing a lot. I'm a singer as well as rapper, and have also done the occasional hardcore scream vocals--but in the future, if I'm able to transition, I worry about stepping out as a woman--whether I'm recording music or on stage--and then still doing vocals with too much of a man's voice. I also tend to do all sorts of crazy voices just for fun, and can already do feminine voices, but I would want to do something that really just became my real voice, and not a fake one I'm doing to freak out my straight friends. I mean, at some point, I wonder where the line is between my funny weird voices and a real feminine voice that I basically would use for everything? Or does it matter?
