Sure, I can talk extensively about that - what are you most curious about?

I should also say, it's different for men vs women, because testosterone will thicken vocal chords and make the voice more masculine naturally, so trans men on HRT have an advantage this way, though trans men still often have to voice train, learning to pitch lower and trying to open the vocal tract more to have a larger, deeper voice both have to be learned.

(This all assumes puberty blockers were not provided and the transition is happening as an adult, which with the healthcare bans for minors in the U.S. is an unfortunately common reality.)

On the flip side, trans women don't see any improvement from estrogen to their voice - the vocal chords remain thickened, and their vocal tracts remain larger.

When I socially transitioned I tried to teach myself and voice train by myself, but after months of little progress, I decided to go to a local speech language pathologist (SLP). I continued to teach myself and train on my own, but the speech language pathologist was able to help direct me, and crucially, to demonstrate principles to help me learn.

I learned some of the basics of vocal training in general - how to sustain pitches and strengthen the voice, practicing SOVTEs, and other exercises singers or actors might do.

Voice training is grueling, one of the worst parts of transition. Vocal dysphoria is a nightmare, and in my experience even once my voice passed all the time (i.e. on the phone people hear a woman and I get "miss" and "ma'am", as well as in person), the voice still sounds wrong to me, and I can't hear it as a woman's voice. In that way it's similar to other kinds of dysphoria - I am much more sensitive, so even once I look like a woman to other people, I still see a man or boy in the mirror.

But with vocal dysphoria, you are constantly exposing yourself to your voice. With other forms of dysphoria, you can get breaks by not looking in the mirror, not having sex, and generally checking out of life - escapism and dissociation can be really effective, but vocal training demands regularly paying attention to your voice, and persistently altering it. It's psychological torture, and a lot of us struggle to make progress because of it. Some even use it as a form of self-harm.

It took 8 months of weekly visits to a SLP and daily, full-time training (i.e. every day I had exercises and I was intentional with my voice, and basically was voice training 24/7, always paying attention and changing my voice) before I saw a shift. The progress for me felt like a major shift all at once, a lot more of the work was cognitive than I expected, more about the ability for my mind to recognize what I'm supposed to be doing. In a way it felt like I suddenly just realized I always knew how to sound like a woman and it just clicked. The time it takes varies, generally voice training is a life-long effort and it never ends. My vocal dysphoria is some of the worst dysphoria I suffer on a daily basis, and some day it would be nice for me to train with the goal of helping alleviate my dysphoria, but up to now I have been more pragmatic and focused on having a voice that other people hear as natural and female. Here is a voice clip I uploaded 4 months ago - to me this voice reminds me of a gay man's voice, I can't hear a woman. :-/

Anyway, let me know what further details you might be interested in 😊

This is just a fact I learned along the way, not so much personal experience, but I thought it was super interesting to learn that apparently one of the biggest differences between masc and femme voices isn't just pitch but more constant variation in pitch.

Afab folks are typically less monotone and use pitch more excessively throughout their speech which I thought was really neat. Unrelatedly, I also heard Hank green explain the physiology of voice recently and how your voice can "break" or what the difference between your "head voice" and "chest voice" is, and the reason amab folks vary pitch less seems almost certainly (edit: I don't actually know what the fuck I'm talking about, this is just me processing information together, I have no idea if it's actually correct, take with an ocean of salt) a product of different vocal cord physiology after experiencing puberty (your vocal cords change in a way that makes it harder. Those same changes are what's responsible for your voice breaking more often, as you struggle to control the now sharper difference between lower and higher pitches you can create. Where afab and prepuberty folks can more easily manage a smooth gradient in pitch), which is also really interesting!

If anyone wants a video on the vocal cords explanation stuff I can link to it, it was from hank's "ask Hank anything" with Jacob Collier

Yes, without gender norms or social expectations, I would still transition, at least medically.

Testosterone made me depressed, anxious, suicidal, anhedonic, and gave me night terrors. That was true for me even when I socially transitioned and lived as a woman full-time in every part of my life. Estrogen's impact on my mood is hard to overstate, and those benefits happened well before there were changes to my body. This has been called "biochemical dysphoria", and not every trans person experiences it, though it is common.

When I transitioned, it was mostly for my health and well-being. I had little hope of ever passing because I transitioned so late in life, so my goals were fairly minimal - basically I just realized I was a burden to the people in my life who cared about me (like getting those phone calls that I was in the ER again), and I realized being a repressed trans person might be causing problems for me and making me this way. I felt an obligation to do what was right by me, so I could be a better person for those around me. I underestimated the effect hormones had on mood and well-being. If I knew what I know now, I would have transitioned much earlier. I have no idea how I survived so long (looking back, I really almost didn't).

So yes, I transitioned without the social aspects ever being the main goal, because I never was motivated by that primarily. I felt dismissive of gender (I even hated gender) and whatever gendered desires came up were a low priority to me. I would never be so selfish as to prioritize those needs over practicalities like holding down a job, or not being a hate crime statistic. It turned out my closeted cross-dressing wasn't just about a silly desire to wear dresses and skirts, I didn't know that.

There being no gender norms would actually be even more liberating. It means we're not pressured into only wearing femme clothing (when going the estrogen route) or masculine ones (when doing testosterone).

It'd open up a ton of possibilities for cis and queer people alike; wearing skirts on warm days for men also, or wearing pretty nail polish, or short hair for women...

Ultimately, the ideal is indeed the removal of repressive gender norms. When these are gone, we can fully express ourselves; taking hormones would be perfectly okay, not taking them as well, and so on. People certainly still would, but they'd feel happier not being bound anymore.

Yes, HRT both improved my mood, and I also feel far more comfortable in the body it's giving me. Fuck gender stereotypes, though.

I'm a trans woman. I've never been feminine. No one picked on me because I was "girly". No one secretly thought I was gay. My interests were geeky, but they were "boy" geeky.

I don't believe in gendered personalities. People have genders. Personalites don't.

it does seem like those with body dysphoria actually feel uncomfortable in their bodies, and want a different body

That's often a part of it, but it's not universal. There are many trans and gender diverse folk who don't experience things through this lens.

if there were no gender norms or societal expectations, would you still want to transition?

Yes, but it would look different. The social part of my transition was important to me, because it influences how people see me. It shapes whether they see me accurately, or see me as someone I am not. My appearance can cause them to stick me in the wrong gender box, and that is something that I needed to change.

But if we existed in a world where there were no gender boxes, where gender was as diverse as people themselves are, then my transition would have looked different. I'd still needed to have addressed the physical aspects of my body. But socially? If my birth name didn't automatically carry a gender with it, if my clothes and my presentation didn't automatically carry gender with them, then my social transition would have looked very different.

Because that body was so unpleasant I was considering suicide. There was a wrongness pervading every aspect of my life. And I've long liked the term "hormonal dysphoria" to describe how in some trans people such as myself the mere act of having the wrong sex hormone dominance essentially has very similar symptoms to major depression.

I tried plenty else first. I attempted to man up, I grew a beard and got somewhat strong. I tried being an effeminate man and cross dressing for a bit. I tried religion. When I transitioned there were still old trans people giving the old advice, to wait to transition until the only alternative was suicide. I hit that point at 19 and began hormones at 20, but in a more accepting world I'd've probably accepted myself at 16.

It can be really hard to understand why trans people transition - the answers are complicated and involve explanations of the neurobiology of sex and gender.

One way to help you understand is to imagine or even try out being in the wrong sex yourself - if you are male, imagine you were born a woman, they named you Sue and expect you to date boys, play with dolls, dress in frilly skirts and dresses, and so on. Why can't you just be Sue authentically? Why bother with horomones and social transition?

When it feels wrong to be in the wrong sex, it is due to how your brain developed as a fetus, and you can't help that the wrong sex hormones make you depressed and anxious, you can't help that your body feels completely wrong, you can't help that the only known solutions to the suffering is to take the right hormones, to fix the body and to live as your actual gender. Cis people don't have to go through that struggle, so it's harder for them to understand what it's like to be trans. It makes complete sense you would have difficulty understanding, even as a trans person I struggled to recognize I experienced gender dysphoria or that I needed to transition - it was not obvious at the time.

Many people go out of their way to transform their bodies, from diet and exercise to drugs and surgery. My question is why not? It's your flesh puppet; decorate it how you like.

dysmorphia

Dysphoria

At what age do you think it’s appropriate for someone with gender dysmorphia to make a decision to go through the medically assisted chemically induced transition process?

This is another one of those questions that exist as a wedge tactic designed to make trans people sound dangerous.

The reality is, the only medical option offered to young trans kids is the option to pause their puberty until they're old enough to be responsible for their own decisions, at which time they can choose which puberty they want to experience.

And what time is the right age for that? Whenever they need to do it, because going through the wrong puberty is a traumatic experience.

As soon as puberty starts, they should at least have the option to delay their choice with puberty blockers, and probably soon after to start HRT, if it's clear it's a permanent thing.

Ada already covered this.

"chemically induced transition process" is not the right language - you would do for a trans person the same thing you would do for a cis person undergoing problems with puberty, something that children have been safely doing for decades, and which cis children with precocious puberty continue to do even as trans children are banned from having access to the same care.

The answer to your question is determined through a discussion with a doctor, mostly with the aim of reducing the harm for a trans child of going through the wrong puberty, and that's just whenever puberty starts in their body.

This pausing of puberty is the only care minors usually receive, it does not "induce [a] transition process", it pauses a transition process until they are of legal age and can decide to undergo the puberty of their choice.

Here is a decent article written by a bioethicist covering how trans affirming care for minors came about, and why it is endorsed by every major medical association: https://www.openmindmag.org/articles/care-not-controversy

When ever a doctor thinks is suitable

I basically believed this most of my life, and it was a big part of why I never transitioned. I felt it was offensive to women for me to claim to be one. Even once I transitioned, I had a really hard time using makeup because I felt like a traitor.

Ultimately, I found reading Julia Serano really helpful. I learned that my fear of embodying feminine stereotypes was more about not wanting to appear feminine (even as a woman), and that ultimately this was more about an entrenched anti-femininity perspective than anything like feminism. I learned that makeup is pragmatic and useful, a way for me to alleviate dysphoria, to help me cope, and that I am not a "traitor" for using it. Being pretty and feminine is important to me, as a woman, and it's not surprising other women want to be pretty and feminine too. They shouldn't feel bad for wanting to be that way, even if women should not feel obligated to only be one kind of hyper-feminine woman.

Regarding being an effeminate man: I have had conservatives tell me this, that I need to just live as a really effeminate man. I just don't know what to tell you, being a man is not right. When I first transitioned, I didn't care as much about the social elements. It turned out testosterone was ruining my mental health - I had severe depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation - all of which cleared up quickly after blocking the production of testosterone and getting on estrogen. Estrogen consistently makes me feel high, it's better than opiates. Not every trans person is this way, but a lot of us are. It's called "biochemical dysphoria". In a way, I would have been willing to settle for having an orchi and living as a eunuch with estrogen supplementation - it would be a lie to say I was a man, and I would know that, but if I could have estrogen and live without testosterone in my body, that is most important to me. Living as a woman has always been important to me, but I never thought I could - that was a dream too far, in a sense. It felt like how I should have been born, but since I wasn't, I resigned myself to living as a man. That estrogen will make me look like a woman and i am able to live and be a woman now is like going to heaven, it's a dream I never thought I would live.

So, tl;dr I have to take hormones because I was born with a condition where my brain can't handle testosterone, and I would have probably killed myself, and generally I lived a very low quality of life before HRT. I was a burden to those around me, and I transitioned for my health and to be a functioning person in society.

I think we all live within the language of gender, and trans women who have lived as men and are insecure in their womanhood often lean heavily into feminine roles as a compensation. I did this even before I transitioned, but it didn't feel like I was contributing to a stereotype of women as a man - I was "gender non-conforming" then. But as a woman the very same behaviors become stereotypical. I like to cook, sew, bake, etc. and those were comforts to me before I transitioned, but are also important to me now. If anything, once I transitioned I felt more freedom to stop clinging to more stereotypical roles, and the more I can validate my womanhood, the more freedom I feel within my womanhood. Either way, I tend to make an exception for myself when it comes to being stereotypical - I figured being trans is rough enough, I can't solve patriarchy all by myself, and it's not up to me as an individual to overcome such huge social and structural problems. I like being feminine, and I am lucky enough to enjoy it now, so I will. If anything, I've learned to stop judging other women for when they are feminine, as a whole I have become more embracing of women as a result of transition.

Since middle school and throughout high school and college I got progressively more and more depressed due to repressed gender dysphoria, and starting HRT has almost immediately started reversing that. I had always been outspoken about how gender roles were stupid and never cared about using "women's" things (like I shared my mom's hair products and stuff), but none of that changed the fact that I was extremely uncomfortable in my body, and being perceived as a man was something to avoid as much as possible. If people made jokes like "that's how you know you aren't a woman haha" I would always fight back against that, but being compared to women felt like more of a compliment.

Plus imo anything a trans person does that could "reaffirm stereotypes" wouldn't do that more than any cis person doing it. I've heard similar things from some cis feminists, where they felt that if they did something stereotypically "girly" it would be hypocritical of them, until realizing that the entire point was that you should be able to do those things if it makes you happy. Avoiding stereotypes can reinforce them just as much as doing them, since then it makes the people claiming the stereotypes as universally true seem like they have a view worth changing yourself for.

Yes, they is a good default for anyone you don't know the pronouns of, in general. And it's great that you care about doing what's right already!

The way to approach this is to make it absolutely clear that you're supportive. Use "they/them". Tell your neigbour about your friends kid and how happy you are for them etc. And then just follow their lead. They'll tell you what they need when they're comfortable doing so, but you've just made it a lot easier for them to get to that point

love for my peers and allies, and spite for my enemies. i am made of iron. i will persevere. i will prevail.

Are there cis people that are angry and emotional all the time for reasons you don't understand?

Well, it's the same thing when you see it from trans folk...

For me it was the opposite, I became way calmer and happier once I started HRT.