A received a great question on tiktok the other day:

“Genuine question as someone who detransition after taking T, then learnt voice and went on to teach others. How can you teach this when you’ve never been exposed to male T levels?”

I think this is a fabulous question, so let's get into it!

In full transparency, I have never had a testosterone-dominant puberty, whether exogenous or endogenous. A lot of people think that I’m a trans woman so I think that needs to be said. I’m transing in the other direction lol

So how can I help those who have experienced a testosterone-dominant puberty create a speaking voice with techniques that compensate for the effects of testosterone on the voice if I’ve never experienced those effects first-hand?

So, before I was a gender-affirming voice teacher, I was a singing teacher for over ten years, from about 2008 until 2019, and in singing pedagogy, we have similar issues. There are voice teachers who are afraid of teaching singers of a different sex, but you learn about what exercises work for which singers and with which issues, and over time, you build your confidence and grow your empathy.

As a singing teacher, I taught lots of singers who had different anatomy, different techniques, and different vocal issues than me, and my ability to empathize with their issues and create a learning space for them without centering my own abilities in the voice studio is what makes me a strong teacher.

Now, in the gender-affirming voice space, there is a lot more demand for voice training resources from people seeking to feminize their voice than people seeking to masculinize their voice, and as a result, I’ve taught, like, hundreds of trans women and trans feminine people.

My voice pedagogy centres their experiences. I continue to add to the human library of cases I’ve seen, some of which are contradictory by the way! Trans women come in all shapes and sizes and their voices do too.

As a teacher who didn’t go through the voice feminization process after a testosterone puberty, I never presume that I have all the answers. But I have seen enough stuff to know what usually works and the common pitfalls. If I meet a student for whom the usual stuff works, I’m not afraid of cracking open a book or phoning a colleague to figure out what could help this person.

All this said I understand that some people prefer to take these lessons from someone with a similar experience. Just like some people prefer a queer therapist if they're queer, for example. But some people just want a qualified therapist, and I am a qualified voice teacher.

Again, thank you for this question! I would be happy to answer more. And I hope this helps.