SLPs, please stop lying about laryngeal position

Hi everyone. I want to talk about some things I've seen in recent posts, where many people claiming to be SLPs have argued against using a raised laryngeal position in voice feminization. In this post, I'm hoping to accomplish two things: identify the variables of voice feminization and make an argument in favor of laryngeal height modification, as well as basically call out people (both SLPs and non-professionals alike) who are opposed to the idea of changing larynx height for voice feminization. (For the record, I am specifying laryngeal height modifications as relates to voice feminization because I've literally never heard anyone criticize larynx lowering techniques for masc voice.)

• Pitch is not the god of feminization. We fixate on pitch because it's an obvious cue that we are used to associating with vocal femininity. However, if pitch were a primary determinant of how we get gendered, this sub wouldn't exist. Pitch is trivial to correct, and all but the most profundi of bassi can hit our goal of A3 (220Hz).My voice is here, and you can see that I have a fairly high speaking voice for an AMAB person (in that clip I'd estimate between F3 and Bb3). When my voice leans andro, it is not because of the pitch -- example (Ab3 pitch floor, with excursions to F#4). Don't believe me -- check out u/IamZhea's intro to voice feminization, where she articulates that pitch is "not that big of a deal."
• What affects our perception of a speaker's gender is the brightness or darkness of the voice. These terms can sound nebulous but they directly correspond to the size of the filter in the power-source-filter model of vocal production. What this means is that your vocal folds on their own produce kind of an unpleasant buzzing sound -- think of a trombone mouthpiece without a trombone attached. When that sound propagates through your vocal tract, the shape and dimensions of the vocal tract alter which overtones are most prominent.
• What are overtones? Every periodic sound -- from singing, to speech, to violin playing, etc. -- produces not just one pitch, but infinite pitches in a series called the overtone series. The fundamental pitch and all of its multiples are produced at the same time, at varying degrees of strength. The upper harmonics provide a sense of brightness to the sound, while lower harmonics provide a sense of darkness. Which harmonics are being emphasized directly scales with the size of the resonating chamber (in the case of the voice, the vocal tract), and as the resonating chamber increases in size, lower harmonics (the fundamental pitch, the 2nd harmonic) are emphasized, and as the size of the resonator decreases, the upper harmonics are boosted. These upper harmonics are what provide a sense of brightness to the sound.
• Those brighter sounds are key to vocal feminization. AFAB people have a vocal tract that is, on average, 3cm shorter than that of AMAB people, and that 3cm-difference changes which overtones are perceived most noticeably in AFAB voices. To make up for this difference in VTL, we have to make some adjustments, and the most easily accessible adjustment is larynx height. For example.
• This is maybe a longer rant for another day, but "resonance" doesn't mean what you think it does. It's a fundamental acoustic property, and no matter what your SLP says it doesn't have anything to do with "where you feel the buzz" when you talk. That's called sympathetic vibration, and it's why a table or desk will buzz when you get a text message. Is the table vibrating? No, but the mobile phone on top of it is, and the table is vibrating sympathetically with it. Similarly, is your chest vibrating when you're in "chest resonance"? No. It can, for some people, vibrate sympathetically, but that's based on your own physiology, pitch level, and a lot of other things. It cannot be universalized to a wide range of bodies. This is why we see so many of our sisters on here struggling and angry because they've been trying to find "femme resonance" when they're really out chasing chimeras. No two people are going to feel the same kind of sympathetic vibrations when they nail femme voice, and telling people to "feel the buzz" in their teeth, or their nose, or their lips, or wherever, is not going to help them achieve a passing voice. If you want to feel a buzz, invest in a magic wand.
• I highly recommend watching u/IamZhea's video The Art of Voice Feminization, which goes into greater depth on this subject (and many more).
• Other adjustments to vocal tract volume are possible! When we raise the larynx, we're also going to raise the root of the tongue, and that's going to displace some of the pharyngeal space -- this is a good thing. There are other tongue adjustments we can do to limit the amount of space -- arching the tongue like we're speaking every vowel from an /i/ position (like "beat") will limit the space inside the oral cavity, and will brighten the sound.
• Glottal quotient is a measure of how much vocal fold mass is involved in producing sounds at the source. The more mass is involved, the higher the Closed Quotient (CQ). The lower the mass involved, the higher the Open Quotient (OQ). Testosterone causes the vocal folds to grow, like every other muscle. So one of the things we can do to compensate for that is to actively increase OQ, so that we're actively approximating a smaller vocal fold mass. Here's a clip.
• Other factors include: AES constriction (twang, not to be confused with nasality), shifting vowels brighter, changing consonant placement so they're crisper and brighter. I've been bloviating for a while so I'm gonna call it quits real soon. But first:
• If you are a (cis) SLP and you have strong opinions about vocal feminization, I'm going to need y'all to come through with receipts. If there are studies that show that increasing laryngeal height leads to vocal damage, I want to know -- we all want to know. But I've searched pretty thoroughly, and I don't think any such studies exist. If you're going to claim that people are hurting themselves by achieving their best voice, then you need to submit evidence. "Changing resonance" isn't good enough; people need actionable steps to achieve their voice, and the scare-mongering is actively getting in the way.

Submitted February 06, 2019 at 09:49AM by demivierge http://bit.ly/2TDp5la