By Jordanne Erichsen, Founder & CEO, EXPRESS Voice Studio
I'm an opera singer. In classical training, one of the first things that happens is you're given a voice type: soprano, mezzo, tenor, baritone. It's practical. Your voice type tells you which repertoire to focus on, and from there it shapes the roles you learn and the music you spend years with.
For many singers, that label is simply a starting point. But for people exploring their gender, the voice can carry a very different weight.
Think about how often your voice speaks for you before you've had a chance to. On a phone call, the person on the other end forms an impression of who you are from your voice alone. In a meeting or at a coffee counter, people often hear you before they know anything else about you. For someone whose gender doesn't match what others expect to hear, each of those everyday moments can carry the risk of being misread.
So by the time many trans, nonbinary and gender diverse people walk into a voice lesson, their voice is already something they've thought about a lot. A lesson should be the one place where they can explore it freely. But if the first thing that happens is being assigned a category like "soprano" or "baritone," that label can stop feeling like a neutral description of range and start to feel like one more person deciding who they are. And for people whose voices are changing, through hormones or through deliberate practice, the instrument they've used their whole life can suddenly feel unfamiliar, which makes a supportive teacher matter even more.
That’s why voice exploration matters. It gives people the chance to understand their voice, shape it, and use it in a way that feels like their own. In this article, I’ll look at what the research says about the connection between voice, gender and wellbeing, why singing in particular can be a powerful part of that exploration, and how that awareness is why offering our gender diverse voice classes at EXPRESS Voice Studio matters so much to us.
Why voice matters
The everyday moments I described above aren't just a feeling. Researchers have studied how listeners hear gender in a voice, and the answer is clear: we use voice to judge gender, often without realizing it. A 2025 review in Royal Society Open Science, by Victor Rosi and Carolyn McGettigan of University College London, looked at 45 recent studies and described the voice as "a key marker of gender identity." Pitch and resonance are among the main cues listeners rely on. The review also found that the voices of gender diverse people are often perceived as falling between binary categories, or as not matching the person's affirmed gender.
In practice, that means a person can be misgendered by someone who has only heard them speak. A 2025 study presented at Interspeech, a leading speech science conference, interviewed seven trans men about how they use their voices. When asked when they felt most self-conscious about being misgendered, participants named talking to a stranger on the phone, which is exactly the kind of moment where voice is all the other person has to go on. Most described lowering their pitch or flattening their intonation in those situations. Several said that "passing" was mainly a strategy for safety, not a reflection of who they are. It's a small study, but it shows how much everyday effort can go into managing a voice.
Being misgendered, whether because of your voice or anything else, has real consequences. A 2023 study in the International Journal of Transgender Health used Trans PULSE Canada data from 1,091 nonbinary people. It found that 59% were misgendered daily and 58% were very or quite upset when it happened. Less frequent misgendering was linked to lower anxiety. That study looked at misgendering in general, not voice specifically, but as the research above shows, voice is one of the ways people are read. Earlier research by psychologist Kevin McLemore found that being misgendered was associated with more negative mood and with feeling less authentic.
The research above looks at what goes wrong when a voice is misread. Other research looks at the flip side: what happens when a voice is heard the way the person intends. A 2018 study in Archives of Sexual Behavior worked with 77 trans men. Each man recorded his voice and filled out questionnaires about his wellbeing. Then a group of 32 listeners, who knew nothing about the speakers, rated how masculine each voice sounded. When the researchers compared the two, a clear pattern emerged: the men whose voices strangers heard as more masculine, in other words, more in line with who they are, tended to report higher life satisfaction, quality of life and self-esteem, and lower anxiety and depression.
This is a correlation, not proof of cause and effect, and it doesn't mean anyone has to sound a particular way. What it does suggest is that the gap between who you are and how your voice is heard isn't a small thing. When that gap narrows, people tend to feel better day to day. Voice work, including singing, is one of the ways people can close that gap on their own terms, whether that means changing how their voice sounds or simply feeling more at home in it.
Put together, these studies explain why voice support is now recognized as part of gender-affirming care. The World Professional Association for Transgender Health's Standards of Care (Version 8, 2022) include a chapter on voice and communication. It recommends that trans and gender diverse people who want support have access to voice and communication specialists, and notes that this work is "no longer limited only to voice feminization and masculinization." In other words, voice work isn't only about reaching a target pitch. It's about helping people communicate and express themselves comfortably. A 2025 systematic review in the Journal of Voice backs this up: gender-affirming voice and communication therapy appears to improve quality of life, vocal function and social participation, though the authors stress that larger studies are still needed.
Access, however, remains a challenge. In 2020, UBC Language Sciences reported that BC's publicly funded Changing Keys voice program, offered through Trans Care BC, had a waiting list of six months to a year. The article also noted there was no funded voice-masculinizing program in BC at the time, and one participant suggested that a singing-focused program would be valuable. That's the gap where singing lessons can play a role.
Why singing?
To be clear, clinical voice therapy is provided by speech-language pathologists, and singing lessons are not a substitute for it. But singing offers something different, and it can sit alongside clinical care. The research points to four reasons it's worth exploring.
First, singing can be a source of joy, not just a skill to master. Researchers Beischel, Gauvin and van Anders describe gender euphoria as a joyful feeling of rightness in one's gender. It's the opposite side of the coin from the distress of being misread. In a 2025 study of trans+ singers in 2SLGBTQ+ choirs in Ontario, Ren Challacombe of Queen's University found that affirming environments created the conditions for exactly that feeling. Singers connected their euphoria to their vocal growth, to singing in a new register, or to finding their place in a section. As one participant put it: "It felt like I was coming home to my body." The same study found that what got in the way was the environment, such as being misgendered by a director. That's a reminder that how a lesson is run matters as much as what's taught.
Second, the environment matters because traditional singing settings can be gendered in ways that cause harm. A 2024 review in the International Journal of Research in Choral Singing, by researchers at Griffith University, looked at a decade of literature on transgender singers. It found the same issues coming up again and again: gendered language, voice-part labels, concert attire and gender dysphoria. Voice-part labels are the soprano-or-baritone problem I described at the start. Because they show up in the research as a recurring barrier, our coaches don't start lessons by assigning a voice type. We only use those labels if a student wants them.
Third, singing builds the voice. It brings in breath, resonance and posture, and a melody gives you somewhere to go: you can slide into a new register, hold a note a beat longer, and try a phrase five different ways in five minutes. That kind of playful exploration builds real technique, including strength, a smooth mix between registers, and range at the top and bottom. Those are the same skills that help a voice feel more comfortable and more like your own, in speech as well as song.
Fourth, singing supports people through physical change, and that change can take a long time. The Griffith review cites research suggesting that, for singers on testosterone, the singing voice can take between two and six years to stabilize. A patient guide from NHS Lothian in Scotland advises singers in that period to keep singing gently through their whole range, to expect some weakness around the "break" between registers, and to work with a voice teacher. A voice that's changing over several years needs steady, patient support, not a one-time fix.
And singing is good for us more broadly. A 2018 systematic review in the European Journal of Public Health found group singing to be a promising way to support mental health and wellbeing, with participants reporting better mood, belonging and self-confidence.
That sense of community is something Ocean Antin, one of our gender-affirming voice coaches, builds into their work. As Ocean puts it:
"Your voice does not need to become someone else's. It needs a space to become more fully your own."
-Ocean Antin
Ocean offers gender-affirming and queer-inclusive voice programming via private vocal lessons through EXPRESS and group programming through Out There Singing. They focus on building community partnerships and performance opportunities for the LGBTQ+ community.
What students tell us
The concerns we hear from trans, nonbinary and gender diverse people who reach out to EXPRESS echo the research closely. Some have stopped singing altogether, not because they lost their love for it, but because lessons felt built around someone else's idea of their voice. Some worry about being labelled soprano or bass in the first ten minutes, or being steered toward a range that doesn't feel like theirs, the same voice-part labels the Griffith review identified. Some are in the middle of transition and want to keep singing as their voice changes over months and years. Others want to build strength in a register that's new to them, or simply want a space to experiment without being judged.
What a lesson can feel like
Every coach at EXPRESS brings their own approach, but the experience we hope every student has is the same: feeling heard, before anything else.
For many people, a trans singing lesson is the first time someone has listened to their voice without trying to sort it into a category. There's no pressure to be a soprano or a baritone, and no expectation of sounding a certain way. That can be a relief in itself. Instead of bracing for a judgment, you get to be curious.
And curiosity tends to lead to discovery. Students may find notes they didn't know they had, or a resonance that suddenly feels like theirs. They may realize their voice is more flexible than they were ever told. For someone whose voice is changing, it can mean getting to know a new instrument with support, rather than feeling like something is slipping away. These are the moments the research describes as gender euphoria: that feeling of rightness, of coming home to your body.
Those discoveries don't stay in the studio. The confidence people build by singing often carries into everyday life: into the phone call that used to cause dread, the meeting where you finally speak up, the coffee order you no longer rehearse in your head. Feeling more at home in your voice can mean feeling more at home in the world. It's not about sounding "right" for anyone else. It's about sounding like yourself, and enjoying it.
Our gender-affirming coaches are trans and nonbinary working artists who understand this from the inside. Lessons are private and one-on-one, offered online and in person, for complete beginners through to professionals. We charge per lesson, with no subscriptions and no contracts, so you can explore at your own pace.
Why this matters to us
EXPRESS was founded on the idea of Artists Who Teach. Working artists teach on their own terms and can earn up to five times what a traditional teaching position pays, so they have the time and freedom to keep creating. I believe everyone, artist or student, deserves to be seen as who they are and celebrated for their passion and skill. A voice lesson should start from who you are, and where you want to go, and finding the right person to work with to support you in that can sometimes feel overwhelming. We want to bring the artists who we are excited about to the student, matching them personally to achieve the best fit in mentorship.
If your voice and your sense of self have felt like they're having two different conversations, we'd love to help you explore. No audition, no category, no box.
We're growing: EXPRESS is currently expanding our services and welcomes applications from musicians, actors and voice actors looking to build their teaching studio. Learn more at expressvoicestudio.com.
Sources
1. Rosi V. & McGettigan C. (2025). Voice gender diversity: expression, perception and acoustics. Royal Society Open Science, 12(10). https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.251193
2. Ross A., Hughes C., Ungless E. L. & Lai C. (2025). Conveying gender through speech: insights from trans men. Proceedings of Interspeech 2025. https://doi.org/10.21437/Interspeech.2025-86
3. Jacobsen K. et al. (2023). Misgendering and the health and wellbeing of nonbinary people in Canada. International Journal of Transgender Health. https://doi.org/10.1080/26895269.2023.2278064
4. McLemore K. A. (2015). Experiences with misgendering: identity misclassification of transgender spectrum individuals. Self and Identity, 14(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/15298868.2014.950691
5. Watt S. O., Tskhay K. O. & Rule N. O. (2018). Masculine voices predict well-being in female-to-male transgender individuals. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 47(4). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-017-1095-1
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7. Lorimer G. & Rutter B. (2025). The efficacy of gender-affirming voice and communication therapy: a systematic review. Journal of Voice. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvoice.2025.01.014
8. UBC Language Sciences (2020). Finding your voice: gender affirming voice training in BC helps people find their true voice. https://languagesciences.ubc.ca/news-events/announcement-research-news-story/jul-30-2020-finding-your-voice-gender-affirming-voice
9. Beischel W. J., Gauvin S. E. M. & van Anders S. M. (2022). "A little shiny gender breakthrough": community understandings of gender euphoria. International Journal of Transgender Health, 23(3). https://doi.org/10.1080/26895269.2021.1915223
10. Challacombe R. (2025). Fostering trans+ experiences of gender euphoria in choir. Action, Criticism, and Theory for Music Education, 24(1). https://doi.org/10.22176/act24.1.83
11. Cooper N., Manion N. & Harrison S. (2024). Scoping the literature of transgender singing: experiences and pedagogical insights in choral contexts. International Journal of Research in Choral Singing, 12. https://acda.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/IJRCSVol12Cooperetal.pdf
12. NHS Lothian (2026). Testosterone and voice (patient information). https://policyonline.nhslothian.scot/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Testosterone-and-voice.pdf
13. Williams E., Dingle G. A. & Clift S. (2018). A systematic review of mental health and wellbeing outcomes of group singing for adults with a mental health condition. European Journal of Public Health, 28(6). https://doi.org/10.1093/eurpub/cky115