Having never gone out "en femme" as yet and having never met another CDer, I am still trying to figure out what is considered appropriate.
When dressed en femme, do you use your own voice, raise it an octave or so or try for a falsetto.
I sing in a choir so I know my vice pretty well. I can sing bass up to tenor in my natural voice and can get inot soprano range as a falsetto. You should hear me belt out "The Lion Sleeps Tonight".
Anyway, my natural voice is a baritone so it is quite deep. If I raise it an octave I could probably carry on a conversation in tenor range, but it would still be pretty seep for a GG.
What do most of you do about this aspect if you choose to speak in public?
What is considered good form when surrounded by other CDers?
I've also had voice training and thought falsetto would be the way to go too, but if you listen to voices, you soon recgonize you would be noticably different sounding using it.
Thre are several people out there with CDs or DVDs on how to develop a feminine voice. Several years ago when I determined that I was going to try and go out enfemme, I ordered a DVD from Melanie Anne Phillips (google her, she's still out there). Shes a transgendered person who went the whole route. Her discussions about how to train you voice and why it works made a lot of sense to me, and I think my voice training helped a lot in getting the hang of it.. I watched it twice and practiced for a couple weeks (I still practice periodically), but it works, I have had numerous conversations in this voice in person and on the phone and never had a questioning look or reaction. My wife tells me its very normal sounding, although I have to work on varying my pitch more through a converation (ita a female thing -- kind of like using your hands when you talk)
One thing that s interesting to me is that the longer I'm in my femme voice, the better it gets -- and if I use it several days in a row, it takes me several hours to lose it.
Like you and most peope (London), I have not had voice training, so rely on a mixture of falsetto and gestures to get me by. Often, a smile and a nod get you through most questions, such as do you need help. It is more difficult at a bar, since you have to respond. I pick the female bartenders and they are usually accomodating.
The bottom line is who really cares?. If they know you are a CDer, they will just have a story to tell that evening, but most will just politely serve. Afterall, you are a legal patron and they have no right to refuse, or mock you.
I have just started seeing a vocal therapist who specializes in working with the transgender community and am curious to see where that leads. It's certainly far too soon to say for certain what it will mean for me, but I can offer a few thoughts ...
The most important thing I've learned is that I need to be comfortable speaking. I don't worry about "giving myself away" but focus instead on being able to engage with people meaningfully so I can enjoy myself. There are very few among us who are so passable that it's the voice that is the sole giveaway, but the honest truth is that most of the people you interact with don't care and are going to react more strongly to the vibes you put out. If you're uncomfortable, avoid making eye contact, and don't speak they'll be wary of you whereas if you're friendly and engaging but a little unusual they'll know you have nothing to hide and will often open up and connect with you.
As far as voice goes? Pitch is only one of the many cues people use to distinguish gender, and it may not even be the most important one. There are lots of women out there with deep voices. Raising your pitch a little is probably reasonable but getting into the falsetto range sounds unnatural, because tone is at least as important as pitch, probably more so. Resonance in your throat and chest cavity contribute to having a "boomy" masculine voice, so working on brightening your tone is important. I think we tend to assume that this equals breathiness, but that's really easy to overdo and isn't really the same at all. Not many women have a really breathy speaking voice.
There are a lot of other verbal cues I'm starting to learn about. in addition to pitch there tends to be more range to a woman's speaking voice, using greater variation in pitch as part of their inflection. There's also a more flowing nature to the feminine voice, less of a start/stop staccato character than a man's voice. Non-verbal communication is also important, ranging from posture to more transparency in facial expressions. Women don't worry as much about hiding their feelings and show them openly in their words, expressions, and actions.
... but back to my first point. Be comfortable. Learning to relax, open up, and find your inner woman is far more important than trying to create an image that feels artificial. I mention everything above because they're things I work on when I'm not interacting with other people in an effort to change my unconscious habits.
Good luck with your experience out! There's no right or wrong way to go about it and you'll find CDers who cover an entire spectrum of approaches to this and every other topic you can think of. In some ways it's what I cherish about this community - the spectrum of different experiences is incredibly broad.
~ Kimberly
“To escape criticism do nothing, say nothing, be nothing." - Elbert Hubbard
