Project POV: A Palette of Voices for Transmasculine Individuals

Abstract

The growing practice of gender-affirming voice in Speech-Language Pathology often overlooks the voices of transmasculine people. Previous research in this topic focuses primarily on obtaining acoustic information that will help trans folks assimilate to cis-sounding voices. We developed a corpus of voices from masculine-identifying people and designed an experiment to gather perceptual data on the voices, followed by a qualitative interview process with a group of transmasculine people local to the Twin Cities. Our findings indicate greater acceptance of voice types from gender expansive participants compared to cisgender, heterosexual participants. Transmasculine participants also indicated vastly varied desirable acoustic qualities in voices. The interview process showed that there is a significant need for qualitative data when conducting research on trans voices – as the vocal needs of the community are diverse – and there is a lack of information regarding voice changes on Hormone Replacement Therapy felt by the community.