Transfem
A community for transfeminine people and experiences.
This is a supportive community for all transfeminine or questioning people. Anyone is welcome to participate in this community but disrupting the safety of this space for trans feminine people is unacceptable and will result in moderator action.
Debate surrounding transgender rights or acceptance will result in an immediate ban.
- Please follow the rules of the lemmy.blahaj.zone instance.
- Bigotry of any kind will not be tolerated.
- Gatekeeping will not be tolerated.
- Please be kind and respectful to all.
- Please tag NSFW topics.
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- Please provide content warnings where appropriate.
- Please do not repost bigoted content here.
This community is supportive of DIY HRT. Unsolicited medical advice or caution being given to people on DIY will result in moderator action.
Posters may express that they are looking for responses and support from groups with certain experiences (eg. trans people, trans people with supportive parents, trans parents.). Please respect those requests and be mindful that your experience may differ from others here.
Some helpful links:
- The Gender Dysphoria Bible // In depth explanation of the different types of gender dysphoria.
- Trans Voice Help // A community here on blahaj.zone for voice training.
- LGBTQ+ Healthcare Directory // A directory of LGBTQ+ accepting Healthcare providers.
- Trans Resistance Network // A US-based mutual aid organization to help trans people facing state violence and legal discrimination.
- TLDEF's Trans Health Project // Advice about insurance claims for gender affirming healthcare and procedures.
- TransLifeLine's ID change Library // A comprehensive guide to changing your name on any US legal document.
Support Hotlines:
- The Trevor Project // Web chat, phone call, and text message LGBTQ+ support hotline.
- TransLifeLine // A US/Canada LGBTQ+ phone support hotline service. The US line has Spanish support.
- LGBT Youthline.ca // A Canadian LGBT hotline support service with phone call and web chat support. (4pm - 9:30pm EST)
- 988lifeline // A US only Crisis hotline with phone call, text and web chat support. Dedicated staff for LGBTQIA+ youth 24/7 on phone service, 3pm to 2am EST for text and web chat.
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So for speech there's two main components that people use to determine gender: weight and resonance. To sound feminine you want to get your weight low and your resonance high. Neither of these are pitch.
Pitch variation is a style of speaking commonly associated with women but isn't exclusive to them. It's also relative, you aren't aiming for specific pitches, but just to have a lot of change in pitch.
Singing is an additional challenge because absolute pitch does matter here. Going through testosterone puberty does lower the pitch of your voice. How much varies person to person.
When I started voice training, I used https://www.youtube.com/@TransVoiceLessons videos a lot to guide me. I still think her approach of keeping your voice relaxed, recording and listening to yourself a lot, and learning to hear the various components of your voice is the best way to do it. I know other teachers focus on specific techniques or drills but the free form method is what worked for me.
For singing, well, you need to know more or less how to sing. That's something I learned from my mom and from being in university choir a few semesters. Singing training and vocal feminization both require learning how to make specific sounds with your voice and complement each other but they are different. For me, I learned to sing, then later trans'ed my gender and feminized my voice. It's taken a while and a fair bit of focused practice to build up the skill to hold my resonance and weight while also keeping pitch steady and hitting the right vowel sounds most of the time. There's still some problem areas but it's enough that I can sing around the house without the dysphoria forcing me into silence. I don't have aims of being a musician, and I'll never be a soprano but I like singing again and that was my goal.
Thanks, I'm pretty good at mimicking other people's accents and stuff, and my singing is pretty good, but my pitch needs a lot of work. I started being able to sing basso profundo, bass or baritone in my 20's and have since extended that to tenor and counter tenor/contralto and can sing most alto parts at this point. But I've stalled in the last couple of years because of repeated throat infections. That are taking my voice entirely for several weeks at a time.