Renée's Blog

Voice training can feel like a very solitary hobby. Sometimes it's just you, your phone, and a closed car door, trying to work out whether today's practice did anything at all. If you've felt that, you're in good company, and it's a big part of why I've spent most of this year reb...

Let me guess a few things about you. You may be trans, or nonbinary, or questioning your gender, and somewhere near the top of your list of transition goals is changing how your speaking voice sounds. You are not afraid of a little research. That is probably how you ended up here...

Last Friday, I had the honour and the privilege of attending the 14th annual INSPIRE Awards in Toronto, Ontario. It was a magical night of celebration and inspiration, where I got to be surrounded by amazing queer and trans people working extremely hard to make the world a bette...

If money or waiting lists have been standing between you and your transition—including your trans voice training—I have good news: applications for Point of Pride's Thrive Fund open this Saturday, August 1st, 2026. What Is the Thrive Fund? The Thrive Fund is designed to give trans people access...

Vocal fry is one of the most talked-about vocal qualities of the last decade and a half. Some people want it. Some people hate it. Some people have been told it's ruining their careers. As a gender-affirming voice teacher, I've watched this conversation swirl around my students f...

I met Floralis after she sent me a completely unsolicited email, and I am so glad she did. I've been following her on Instagram ever since, loving every bit of what she's building. Floralis is a transfeminist, anti-imperialist musician and community organizer based in Brighton, U...

It seems like every video on YouTube right now is about looksmaxxing, AI, or GLP-1s. And then I learned about voicemaxxing and so now I'm making it your problem too. I'm Renée, a gender-affirming voice teacher, and I invited my friend and colleague Rory Jack (he/they), a speech-l...

Have you ever heard someone speak and immediately thought, they sound gay... without being able to explain exactly why? You're not imagining it. And you're not being reductive. You're picking up on something that linguists have been quietly investigating for decades. It's somethi...

You're working on raising your pitch as part of your voice feminization journey. Things are going well... until you get to the end of a sentence, and something just drops! If you've experienced that sinking feeling, you're in very good company. The end-of-sentence pitch drop is o...

Every June, I get asked some version of the same question: How do I actually build a voice practice habit? And for a long time, my answer was just: practice a little every day. Which is true! But it's not very helpful on its own. So this year, I made something to help with that....