The somatechnics of the voice:
Testosterone and pitch change among female-to-male transgender speakers
Lal Zimman, University of Colorado, Boulder
As one of the most salient indices of gender, variation in fundamental frequency between women and
men is often explained in terms of sex-based differences in the larynx. Yet sociolinguists have long
recognized that such biological differentiation is mediated by sociocultural factors (e.g. Yuasa 2008,
Simpson 2009). In this paper, I draw on the burgeoning field of somatechnics, which is focused on the
recursive relationship between bodies (soma) and the techniques and technologies (techné) through which
bodies are formed into socially intelligible constructs (Sullivan & Murray 2009). I show how a
somatechnical view of the gendered voice allows us to consider both biological and cultural forces as well
as the porous relationship between them.
To exemplify this approach, I present results from a multi-year sociophonetic ethnography among
femaleto- male transgender people in the San Francisco Bay Area. In the larger project, I track changes in
several acoustic measures, including F0, formant frequencies, and the spectrum of [s]. In this paper, I
focus on F0 among 10 individuals during their first year(s) of testosterone therapy, which is known to
dramatically lower F0 for transgender speakers much as it does during typical male puberty (van Borsel et
al. 2000, Papp 2011). Testosterone brings almost all of my speakers’ F0 values well into the normative
range for men during the first year of hormones with most showing means between 110 and 125 Hz in
read speech. However, even in this highly self-conscious speech genre, there is considerable variation in
speakers’ starting and ending pitch range, the amount of acoustic change observed, and the speed at which
those changes take place.
I discuss several factors that help explain the variation among these speakers including age,
sociolinguistic style, and the desire for different kinds of embodiment. When it comes to age, older trans
people are thought by community members and clinicians to experience less dramatic changes from
testosterone than younger individuals, which could be partially explained in terms of laryngeal
ossification. However, I present evidence from one speaker who believes his pitch change has been
inhibited by his age that suggests articulatory habit, not simply anatomical restriction, is what constrains
some older speakers’ pitch range. Sociolinguistic style is important because of the way that traits
influenced by biology, like F0, are always interpreted with respect to other sociolinguistic variables,
meaning that some speakers need to reach a lower F0 than others to achieve a male-sounding voice.
Finally, trans people demonstrate better than most how the body is literally and directly shaped by
identity. In this case, whether an individual wants a more androgynous body or whether they prefer to be
unambiguously male shapes decisions about how much testosterone they take and for how long; the
biological product thus reflects the individual’s social desires.
Together, these variables highlight the complex interaction between body and society. Importantly,
however, this complexity is not unique to transgender speakers. As they so often do, transgender
individuals simply make visible the somatechnical construction of the voice in which all gendered
subjects are engaged.