Voice is an important means of expressing gender for many transmasculine people. Gender-affirming hormone treatment with testosterone (T) can lead to voice changes, but not for everyone. And not all transmasculine people take T. So we need non-hormonal options for voice care for those who want a more masculine-sounding voice. Could laryngeal manipulation approaches be such an option? For some folks, yes! After a single session, most transmasculine speakers saw changes in their pitch, the position of their larynx, and how masculine their voice sounded to others. 

Here's a short read from Inside Sargent—an interview with BU speech-language pathology alum Felicia François, who completed part of this project for a master's thesis.

Many features of voice and speech contribute to the perception of gender and femininity. Are certain features particularly important in determining how the voices of transgender women are perceived? Seems so! Trans women with higher pitched and louder voices were perceived as more feminine by both unfamiliar listeners and by trans women themselves. Trans women rated their voices as less feminine than did listeners, revealing the importance of self-perceptions in this population.