Gender Affirming Voice Modification – Patient Journey

Ari Toumpas shares her transitioning journey and how she worked with a speech-language pathologist to train her voice to follow more stereotypically feminine voice patterns.

Ari Toumpas began transitioning as a woman in April of 2020. She began her journey by transitioning medically and socially and throughout the process found other aspects of herself that she wanted to align with her gender identity, particularly her voice. Because feminizing hormones don’t modify the voice, she first sought out online resources to self-adjust her voice. The self-training exercises soon left her voice feeling croaky and fried, even after teaching on Zoom for 10 minutes with her students. Ari knew that the self-training exercises weren’t providing her with the voice changes she was hoping for, so she asked her medical provider for a referral to a speech language pathologist.

Her provider connected her with Anna Lichtenstein, a speech language pathologist at The Ohio State University, and they began working together on therapies to help Ari shape her voice. Ari gave Anna examples of what she wanted her voice to sound like and through those examples Anna was able to direct Ari with specific exercises to shape her voice with those goals in mind. These exercises included everything from breathing exercises, to matching the pitch of certain sounds and internal sound resonation. Ari worked daily to master these vocal exercises. She also began to implement more social vocal aspects with her sessions, to train her voice to follow more stereotypically feminine voice patterns.

Now, much of Anna’s vocal training is muscle memory for Ari. She takes extra precautions to protect her voice, like drinking lots of water before teaching a lecture, but she doesn’t have to think hard or focus on making her voice sound a certain way. The recorded comparison of her old voice to her new voice is very noticeable and it’s even difficult for Ari to speak comfortably now in her old voice.

For Ari, voice therapy has helped her live everyday life as her most authentic self. Because her voice is now aligned with her gender identity, it’s easier to navigate situations where people otherwise may have treated her differently because their perception of her gender didn’t align with her voice. Voice therapy has helped her feel more safe in everyday social interactions and given her more confidence to use her voice in public spaces without fear of discrimination. She recommends Anna as a voice therapist to anyone looking to see a speech language pathologist about voice therapy and encourages other transgender people to seek out this life-changing resource if they want to change their voice.