For many trans people, being identified as their true gender from their voice alone, with no visual cues, is the ultimate goal of their transition. As we know, a feminine voice is made up of many components – pitch, resonance, tone quality, breathiness, etc. As a very general rule, clear articulation is considered to be a characteristic of feminine speech.

It seems there may be some historical reason for this perception. According to Livia Gershon, when the telephone became widely used, the low fidelity made it difficult for people to understand regional dialects, particularly in men. She quotes an encyclopedia’s explanation for this as a difference in the degree of articulation between men and women:

If you listen to an average woman speaking and compare her voice with that of an average man of her own class, you will notice, among other things, that her enunciation of words is better; also that there is less tendency to cut the ends of words or to drop the voice and mumble the terminations…

Gershon goes on to write that education may have contributed to the development of this distinction between genders.

…in the late nineteenth century educational institutions from elementary schools to universities began offering voice instruction to female students. They learned to speak clearly and precisely without straining their vocal cords…All this meant that men who spoke clearly over the phone might come across as feminized.

Fast forward to 2007 and 2012, research by Free & Ducakis and Ducakis et al. (respectively) supports the notion that “more precise” articulation of consonants signals more feminine speech.

So, for voice feminisation, slow down and articulate!