Politeness norms seem to keep a lot of folks from discussing or asking their trans friends questions they have, I figured at the very least I could help try to fill the gap. Lemmy has a decent trans population who might be able to provide their perspectives, as well.
Mostly I’m interested in what people are holding back.
The questions I’ve been asked IRL:
- why / how did you pick your name?
- how long have you known?
- how long before you are done transitioning?
- how long do you have to be on HRT?
- is transgender like being transracial?
- what do the surgeries involve?
For the most part, though, I get silence - people don’t want to talk about it, or are afraid to. A lot of times the anxiety is in not knowing how to behave or what would be offensive or not. Some people have been relieved when they learned all they needed to do is see me as my gender, since that became very simple and easy for them.
If there are trans people you know IRL, do you feel you can talk to them about it? Not everyone is as open about it as I am, and questions can be feel rude, so I understand why people would feel hesitant to talk to me, but even when I open the door, people rarely take the opportunity.
This is just a fact I learned along the way, not so much personal experience, but I thought it was super interesting to learn that apparently one of the biggest differences between masc and femme voices isn’t just pitch but more constant variation in pitch.
Afab folks are typically less monotone and use pitch more excessively throughout their speech which I thought was really neat. Unrelatedly, I also heard Hank green explain the physiology of voice recently and how your voice can “break” or what the difference between your “head voice” and “chest voice” is, and the reason amab folks vary pitch less seems almost certainly (edit: I don’t actually know what the fuck I’m talking about, this is just me processing information together, I have no idea if it’s actually correct, take with an ocean of salt) a product of different vocal cord physiology after experiencing puberty (your vocal cords change in a way that makes it harder. Those same changes are what’s responsible for your voice breaking more often, as you struggle to control the now sharper difference between lower and higher pitches you can create. Where afab and prepuberty folks can more easily manage a smooth gradient in pitch), which is also really interesting!
If anyone wants a video on the vocal cords explanation stuff I can link to it, it was from hank’s “ask Hank anything” with Jacob Collier
I think this is a link to the video you are talking about: https://youtu.be/Q0_W4SWHeWY?t=1652
A few distinctions:
“head voice” vs “chest voice” is more of a distinction about resonance and the way the voices sound, mostly related to the “size” quality of a voice, a smaller voice is usually more “in the head” sounding (think Mickey Mouse), and a larger voice is usually more “in the chest” sounding (think of a giant saying “fee fi fo fum”), but in terms of physiology the main difference is not chest vs head, but more that the space the sound travels through is larger or smaller - like if a glass is more or less full.
Falsetto is its own distinction from head vs chest voice, and Hank’s explanation is about pitch rather than resonance. Higher pitches pull the folds tighter, while lower pitches are more loose. This is why vocal fry (a common facet of female voices) is often a problem for transfeminine voices, because it gives an impression of a weighty and lower pitched voice.
Generally with falsetto the pitch is high, but trans women shouldn’t aim to use falsetto because it is usually unsustainably high, sounds unnatural, and could cause injury through straining. Instead, when the goal is a female voice, it is more important for a voice to sound small and light (about size and weight) than high in pitch, which luckily can both be achieved without straining.
Variations in pitch are more common in feminine voices, but this is connected to how expressive women are - a pitch sliding up and down, and being elongated, is often conveying emotions. As I understood it, this difference is mostly cultural, so this is the first time I’ve heard someone say the reasons for monotone voices in men might be physiological - I am immediately skeptical, but intrigued. As a clear counter-example, gay men have the physiology of male vocal folds, but they are commonly found to have pitch variations similar to women. Still, breaks are more common and men can experience physiologically limited pitch ranges, and I certainly struggle with this myself - my desire to be expressive is undermined by the limitations of my voice, I just can’t go as high as my mind thinks my voice should be able to go.
EDIT: finished the video you recommended. So, Future Hank was talking about the break that can happen between vocal registers. In voice training this becomes important because you generally want to pitch up slightly (it’s important for feminine voice training to not fall too far below a particular pitch, namely 180 Hz, or around F3 on a piano), and moving between M1 and M2 can often cause a break in the voice (though it hasn’t been much of an issue for me). Not sure what to make of his claim that voice breaks are more common in boys because of puberty causing a very sudden change in vocal fold length - I wonder if that means it would stabilize and as adults men don’t have breaks as much?
Super interesting, thank you for taking the time to teach me a bunch of things!
To my personal understanding from being amab (though I did transition at 16, but never went through voice training and these days am more masc aligned) and also my understanding from the video- yes men generally stop having voice cracks post puberty with rare exceptions like when intensely emotional or something, not because there isn’t still a sharp transition, but because they learn to control their newly changed vocal cords, developing an intuitive understanding of that transition and avoid it because it’s generally thought of as embarrassing for your voice to break.
Voice breaks are a puberty specific experience that is often thought of as a awkward and embarrassing transition into a new “adult” masculine voice
(Forgive me if I’m explaining the obvious or misunderstanding, I’m super tired and not entirely sure I’m reading your comment correctly at the part you seem to be asking about this. Regardless, I hope you have a lovely day :)