this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2026
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Transfem
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This is what I did as well. My psychologist was of the view that I need to do a real life experience, and I was heavily opposed to that. I wanted to do estrogen before I'd consider dressing more femme. The reason? I'm good with self defence, but I don't want unnecessary gatekeeping and so protested against it. I feel like social transition would be easier for everyone if we could do the hormonal one at the same time, or even before.
So I just dressed femme at home, especially when I videocalled with them, and then back to hoodieing when outdoors. I eventually got what I wanted though. About a year in now, I dress mainly neutrally (or fem, but no skirts), no longer stereotypically masculinely.
I pass according to most people, even strangers. But for myself I don't quite feel it that way yet. Maybe because I hyperfixate on my own looks, because of course, I'm trapped in this uterusless body.
Either way, transphobes don't want "freaks", we want to look like we want to, so the clear answer is, transition at our own pace. And if the phobes are gonna scream, then I'm gonna ask them for a louder megaphone so I can hear them and put on headphones to block them out. Their screams give me energy.
That said, ... out of curiosity, how do you do voice training? I can get my pitch high easily, but femme resonance is hard - in audio recordings I hear a lot of creak even though when I listen to myself irl, I almost don't hear it.
Yeah, I never had any gatekeeping for my HRT. I called up my PCP and told them I have gender dysphoria and I wanted a referral to a particular endo. The endo was in the Trans in the South guide and was a gay man, and I think he operated on informed consent. But I also had 3 months of "real life experience" by the time I had my first appointment with the endo. That said, "real-life experience" is just hazing, there is no real benefit to exposing yourself to the risks from going out in public looking like a man in a dress.
Also, I dressed as a woman at home in private anyway - you would think behavior like that would be taken seriously or as substitute for RLE.
That describes my situation as well. I stopped being perceived as male around 8 months on HRT (that's also incidentally around when I started to pass with my voice as well).
I don't see a woman in the mirror, but other people see a woman so 🤷♀️
I went to a speech language pathologist who exclusively worked with trans patients. I had weekly sessions with her for about a year, and around that 8 months mark I saw major breakthroughs and established a passing voice.
Here's a voice clip I uploaded 10 months ago for Lemmy. I still hear a male voice. :-/ I had to learn that what passes with cis people still sounds male to me. So voice training for me was more about passing than about addressing vocal dysphoria. I'd like to work on vocal dysphoria more, because it's one of the most impactful distressing elements of dysphoria I still experience.
I would have to hear your voice to help better know what's going wrong, but "creaky" could be a lot of things and may or may not be a resonance issue.
Here's a voice training guide from the /r/transvoice discord:
Broadly the two main gendering qualities to a voice are weight and size. With voice training the general idea is to:
For exploring weight:
For size:
For more about the balance of weight and size:
Videos to help guide expectations for beginners:
For beginners it can also be helpful to explore more achievable lower-pitch feminine voices:
To ear train, it's commonly recommended to listen to and "play along" with Selene's clips:
Note: as you experiment or do any voice training exercise, make sure to pay close attention to:
Experiments to try:
Damn, jealous. Informed consent only VERY recently became/is going to become a thing here.
I still had to go through 3.5 years of gatekeeping... between 2020 (realisation), 2022 (deciding to actually go for it) and 2025.
I listened to your voice and for me it just passes. I can see why you feel like it is masculine - due to a sort of lower timbre, but to me it sounds 'crispier', femme.
Thank you so much for the tips on voice, I will use them tonight :3
that said, I recently went to a new endo, and at first he told me he wasn't going to prescribe me estrogen until I have established care with a therapist because "you doubled your risk of suicide by choosing to transition" (which ... is factually false, besides being problematic for other reasons)
this was someone explicitly listed as an informed consent provider, but he pretended like he wouldn't give me estrogen ... despite the fact that I fully pass as a woman and I'm post-op ... my body doesn't produce sex hormones, I rely on this for my literal physical health - my bones and joints will deteriorate without sex hormones.
Anyway, awful man - there are a lot of awful providers who prey on their vulnerable trans patients. Now I have to travel a few hours to a clinic in the hopes it might be more affirming. I'm in a blue state now and while doctors here are quicker to identify as an ally, they seem even more unwilling to help you with trans healthcare. There's no real reason my PCP who provides women's health services to cis women couldn't provide them for me, but she turned me down anyway - I think they don't realize that trans women really are biological women and she doesn't need some kind of special education to provide me with the same care she provides cis women :-/
So yeah, the transphobia is just articulated differently here.
Re voice, thanks for the feedback - my pitch tends to stay pretty low (that's one of the things I'm trying to work on - habituating a slightly higher pitch) and I think gives that impression of a lower timber (and also makes it too easy to slip into a heavier weight, too). I think this is why my voice sometimes is interpreted as older or more "mature". I don't necessarily mind sounding older - but I just don't hear it that way, it just sounds like a gay man to me.
If you ever want feedback on your voice, feel free to send me voice clips (my DMs on Lemmy are open, or if you're on Matrix, I'm there too if you want)!
I def can send some voice to you, will send them in DM!
I guess I can see why he thinks he's informed consent if the reason he wants patients to have therapy isn't to prove they are trans but instead to ensure they are getting help with all of the stresses on being trans in a transphobic society? And just using E as the carrot to motivate people to get care they probably should get regardless.
Regardless, glad where I went was truly a IC clinic and didn't do any sort of gatekeeping. Still haven't seen therapist. I don't think such gatekeeping would have gotten me to see one either.
Wild that you had that happen despite the obvious need of it. Wonder if he'd have given you T without therapy....
it's gatekeeping whether he rationalizes it as therapy to prove authenticity vs therapy to reduce risk - the point is that it's not informed consent, and it doesn't matter because I had already been through thorough gatekeeping already - I had over a year of therapy just for gender dysphoria, I had two psychiatric evaluations to get access to gender-affirming surgery (an insurance requirement) ... it would obviously be horrible to withhold necessary medical care to try to motivate a patient to get unnecessary but helpful care. We wouldn't deny a diabetic insulin because we think they would benefit from therapy, and we might think a doctor who does that should have their license revoked.
The irony is that I took myself to a therapist before I socially transitioned, basically as soon as my egg cracked I scheduled a therapy appointment with a gender-informed therapist.
I didn't end up getting a therapist, at the end of the session he revealed that I had "earned" my estrogen prescription ... He was also really creepy and spent a lot of time touching his stethoscope to my breasts, but at an angle where it wouldn't help him actually listen to anything - really bizarre (no doctor has ever done this or "used" a stethoscope that way), and after he seemed to finish the exam, he then he went back to my breasts again.
There was a lot that happened in that session. I wouldn't be surprised if he sexually preyed on his patients, and it seemed like some of his behavior was similar to sexual grooming I have witnessed in the past (like guilting me into sitting closer to him, and telling me he was treating me nice because I was being nice to him, etc.).
Yeah. Was thinking medical malpractice already describes people who try to deny people access to HRT because reading:
WTF? I don't think I've had a doctor touch my breasts with a stethoscope (granted, I've only had one visit since having them where that would have been a concern). I wonder how often doctors take advantage of their positions to be able to do things like this...
He's been doing this since the 1990s, imagine being one of his first patients, how few alternatives there were then ... he also mentioned he doesn't let his patients administer their own HRT, he requires they come into the office and pull down their pants for him to inject the shots into their butt ... I'm just thinking he's already so creepy and there are so many red flags - how likely is it that he isn't exploiting that? I left that office literally shaking, and I was emotionally wrecked for days after that. It's like I had stepped several decades into the past.
And I've always had doctors place their stethoscope on my chest, and it wasn't the location that was weird per se, he placed the stethoscope between the breasts like normal, but obviously it still touches them and what was weird was the way he did it multiple times and without seeming to actually use the stethoscope in a way that would imply he was using it to listen - i.e. it was cocked at an angle where it wasn't flush against my clothes or skin, just open to the air.
Before he started the exam, he announced that there is a physical exam but he won't require me to remove clothes - I've never had a doctor say it that way, and it felt like another "groomer" moment where I felt like he was trying to make me more comfortable so he could slowly introduce more and more inappropriate behavior without protest.