Sometimes I feel like I’m taking two steps forward and one step back.

A few weeks ago I started taking lessons on how to feminize my voice from another trans woman. Because unlike with taking testosterone which lowers your voice, taking estrogen doesn’t bring it back up. Once your voice has dropped, it takes a lot of conscious effort to retrain your muscles not to use that lower range and resonance. Eventually it becomes a subconscious thing but it takes months of hard work.

I’ve been avoiding doing this for a long time, partly because I’m not interested in passing, but mostly because I knew that focusing on my voice would trigger a lot of dysphoria. The reason I finally started is because I’ve realized that a big part of my fear of using the women’s restroom is the fact that I don’t feel like I can safely talk without creating a ruckus. Having a more feminine voice would open up more doors and make it easier to move through the world.

Trans femmes in particular also face a lot of subtle transmisogynistic messages, even in trans community, about how “scary” or “aggressive” we are, often based on our size or voice. And we can often be targeted and excluded because of it.

I definitely right about it being triggering. Paying attention to my voice and having to listen to recordings of it is really hard for me. When I’m in choir, somehow it feels okay to hit the very bottom notes. It’s really fun actually to be all rumbly and resonant. But that’s partly because I’m blending with other voices and it feels like I’m intentionally putting on a vocal costume and performing my voice in a particular way.

But when I try to consciously listen to my voice outside of that context, it is just a painful reminder of that choice that most trans people face. Do I put a lot of work into trying to pass, knowing it will only ever be semi-successful, in order to be safer or more accepted? Or do I “just be myself” knowing that I will forever be experiencing transphobia everywhere I go?

For my voice lessons, I was asked to pay attention to the voices around me and how they use their resonance in their body and sinuses. And then I was supposed to imitate various extreme examples of those such as cartoon voices to learn how to move and use those vocal centers. Which is great in theory but it also means a lot of practice time where I have to sit with a lot of discomfort.

Today I made the hard decision to put those lessons on hold. I’ve realized that I don’t have the emotional capacity right now to push through that intense dysphoria to do the practice necessary to make it worth my teacher’s time. My work has been stressful and demanding now that I am doing 2 and a half people’s jobs during a hiring freeze. And I already have to fight so much dysphoria with my preparations for jaw surgery and bottom surgery. I feel like I just have so much work to put in to transition at the moment (and so many appointment) and something had to give. So for now the voice lessons go on hold.

Luckily my voice has subconsciously raised a little bit from where it used to be. I still use a more masculine resonance but I speak more in a tenor range with an effeminate touch than my singing voice as a second bass would suggest. I guess I’ll take the little wins for now and try to go back to ignoring my voice until I am past some of this other transition work.