I went to a LGBT movie night hosted by the local Unitarian Universalist church. Quite a few of the regular members are LGBT so it’s a pretty accepting church. I went for a while but I’m not one for getting up early on my days off when I have Sundays off but I’m still friends with a lot of them and show up to events.
We watched “Do I Sound Gay?” which is about a gay man investigating why some gay men have what most people identify as a gay sounding voice. Also, throughout the movie he is talking to speech therapists to try to change his voice to sound less “gay”. I kind of didn’t like how the movie was framed around him not wanting to sound “gay”. I wish it had just been about what sounding “gay” was and how gay men related to it, instead of framing it as a bad thing from the start. Besides that it was an entertaining film.
As a trans woman I have a complex relationship with my own voice. I’ve gone from not caring to hating it to accepting it. I still have days when I don’t like my voice but I accept that it’s what I sound like. I’m lucky to not have a super deep voice but I do get sired on the phone. It’s too much to really unpack in this post.
I would love to see a film called “Do I Sound Like a Woman?” about trans women and how we relate to our own voices. Not from the point of view of someone trying to change their voice though. Just interviews or round table discussions about how we have or haven’t changed our voices.