The Maddening Inauthenticity of Trans Voice Training

Distorting your natural voice is a sign of deep psychological disturbance

Photo by Jason Rosewell on Unsplash

"Voice training" for trans identified males is philosophically, psychologically, spiritually abhorrent to me because it takes someone's perfectly natural and unconscious voice, your personal fingerprint developed naturally organically, and then consciously, artificially restricts that natural range of expression into the limited box of a stereotype of the opposite sex.

The trans ideology preaches authenticity but "voice training" is the exact antithesis of authenticity. How is it authentic when you can't yell, project, sing, cough, etc., without systematically training yourself to go against what comes naturally to you? How can the trans community preach love and acceptance when fundamentally transness as a phenomenon involves the totally dysfunctional hatred of what comes naturally and authentically to you?

And yet, paradoxically, society judges trans identifies males who don't tediously practice the mental contortions of consciously manipulating their natural voices as being "more cringe" because the natural male voice creates a sharp, dissonant cognitive contrast between reality and appearances and is the most “clocky” feature of trans women trying to pass.

The fundamental inauthenticity of voice training and yet its paradoxical necessity for the specified goal of "passing yourself off as the opposite sex" indicates a clear normative distinction between two life pathways:

1) A life that finds contentment in not attempting to pass yourself off as a member of the opposite sex

2) A life that can only find contentment in attempting to pass yourself off as a member of the opposite sex

Julia Serano has spent decades talking about "cis normativity," which Serano describes as "a societal mindset wherein cis/cisgender/cissexual are presumed to be the norm, while trans/transgender/transsexual people and experiences are deemed “abnormal” by comparison (if they are even considered at all)."

In my opinion, it seems perfectly reasonable to say life (1) is "normal" and life (2) is "abnormal."

Indeed, the mental states underlying life (2) are precisely "abnormal" insofar they constitute a deviation from the typical, normal, healthy case wherein it’s possible to lead a content life while not attempting to pass yourself off as a member of the opposite sex.

Given the massive medical, surgical, psychological, social, financial, legal, etc., issues associated with trying to pass yourself off as a member of the opposite sex, all things considered, it seems perfectly reasonable to say that not having this desire is normal and healthy and having the desire is an indication of a mental health disorder.

What Serano is doing, however, is purely philosophical. Taking a diseased or disordered state of functioning, like that of gender dysphoria, which is intrinsic to the trans experience, and saying "this is actually perfectly normal and saying otherwise is transphobic," is ultimately just a matter of philosophical intuition pumping, and cannot be empirically proved.

But if we're just pumping intuitions, to me it seems obvious that "cis identities" are indeed properly "normal" and "trans identities" are "abnormal" precisely because of how inauthentic and psychologically destructive things like "voice training” are. To me, if we are talking norms and values and health, if a “trans identity” leads you to think that the artificial contortions of voice training are necessary for contentment that is a good sign there is something fundamentally diseased intrinsic to trans identity.