Talk:Transgender voice therapy

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Ajtrainor, D3ini, Kp23, Oozav. Peer reviewers: Nancy Zee.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 11:38, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Probably more of a problem with SLP than with this article, but..

There is a lot of misinformation. I mean, I believe that most of what is said in this article is actually what SLPs believe, but much of it is inaccurate or incomplete. I don't know whether there are really many sources that would be considered reputable out there yet to back these things up, but pitch (fundamental frequency) is not only not the most important factor (at least particularly in femme voice), but is also NOT generally even a necessary factor, unlike the article says (though it can be a helpful factor to a degree, but only if used in conjunction with timbral modifications).

(I am going to mostly speak about femme voice as that's what I mainly know.)

This article does not make a single mention of larynx raising (used to decrease vocal tract length, basically the most important part of femme voice and generally an absolute must), makes not a single mention of "open quotient" (nor even of "tone" or "timbre"), and focuses heavily on pitch raising, which as I mentioned is actually (and perhaps counter intuitively) one of the LEAST important aspects, all things considered. Focusing on raising pitch can lead to poor results and frustration, and opting to do vocal surgery which can be risky and is generally also unnecessary with proper voice training.

I realize this is what SLPs actually believe, but it might be nice if there was some way (that fits with Wikipedia's standards/rules) of making it apparent to the reader at the very least that there is some serious controversy surrounding this. And at least some mention of timbral modifications (shortening of VTL, increasing of open quotient, etc.). SLPs and therefore also this article rely too much on the concept of "vocal resonance" which is borderline unscientific.

I'll try to dig up some sources on some of this stuff if I can, though such endeavors are not necessarily my forte (and neither is Wikipedia editing in general). But I wanted to mention some of this stuff in the talk page and see if we can get some discussion of these issues happening. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.171.179.71 (talk) 16:16, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

Agreed. It is good to see that this comment was made back in 2018, which was in terms of transgender resources a very different time (though nowhere nearly as much as, say, 2012). Laryngeal raising, oropharyngeal closure, slight decompression of the voice’s phonation, and slight addition of twang as well as use of thin folds for chest voice (m1) with a cherry on top of practicing higher pitches are all very important aspects of voice feminization, and they are all understated or ignored here still. Non-hormonal voice masculinization has also not been noted as physically more limited due to fundamental frequency and maximal size of the larynx. There has been a transvoice revolution taking place since the late 2010s and this article is in many ways obsolesced by it. CPGACoast (talk) 14:30, 4 April 2021 (UTC)