speech

Jordan Gabbitas, right, works with students Timothy Baker and Abbey Lasek at a clinic as she uses computer software at Rocky Mountain University to help the consistency of her voice in Provo, Utah. The speech clinic helps transgender individuals match their voice to their gender.

Jordan Gabbitas held the microphone to her punch-pink lips. Money, she said softly.

The computer in front of her dinged and she repeated, Money.

You were a little higher on that one, said Tim Baker, looking at the screen as it tracked the pitch of Gabbitas voice. She tried a few more words.

Lean.

Neither.

Winner.

Each one charted a jagged line like a heart-rate monitor would. Gabbitas played them back, turning up the volume on the speakers and listening closely. More than a year after coming out as transgender to her friends, the 28-year-old is retraining her voice to match her appearance.

On Tuesday evenings, Gabbitas works with Baker who started in the master s program at Rocky Mountain University in September to slowly raise her pitch without causing strain. She practices pronouncing vowels, inflecting sentences, holding conversations, sustaining volume.

When Gabbitas came in for her first session, her pitch was around 130 hertz. After five months, it s at 175 hertz. The female range is considered anything above 180 hertz.

Gabbitas transition has been gradual but deliberate. In October 2016, she began taking hormones. Six months later, she was wearing makeup in public and had changed her clothing style.

Then she heard about the new speech clinic in Provo, Utah, and signed up for free weekly sessions.

It s really important to me that my voice matches my gender identity, Gabbitas explained. Raising that up to a range where people hear it and think of it as female can help prevent outing myself because my voice is too low.

There s more to talking like a woman than just pitch, though, and the clinic works on that as well.

In her sessions, Gabbitas is learning to resonate her voice through her head rather than her chest so it s lighter and more feminine. She s also gesturing with her hands, using adjectives and making eye contact all metalinguistic things that women tend to do when they communicate.

To practice, she looks at a picture and describes the scene. That way she s not rehearsed and has to balance what she says with the way she says it.

They re not doing a very good job putting on makeup, she notes of a photo of a woman with shimmery blue eyeshadow smudged messily across her face.

The idea is that, over time, the behavior pitch and body language becomes habit and Gabbitas won t have to think about it when she talks. The process can take anywhere from four months to two years. She s done with sessions when she s comfortable with her voice.

Facing fear

Voice often is the first clue a stranger uses to classify someone by gender. And if that person assumes wrongly, it can derail a conversation. The focus shifts away from what is being said to how it is being said. The message is lost in the delivery.

For individuals who transition from female to male, taking testosterone will typically lower their voice by expanding their vocal cords. But pitch doesn t change much for individuals who, like Gabbitas, transition from and take estrogen; instead, they are combatting their male anatomy to try to communicate as a woman, said Wendy Chase, an assistant professor in the speech pathology program at Rocky Mountain University of Health Professions.

Because of that difference, Chase tends to see more transgender women at the clinic than men. But both can gain something from voice therapy.

Sitting on the shelf behind Chase s desk, next to legal pads and pathology textbooks, is a stack of rainbow-colored conversation cubes. Her clients roll a die and land on a topic to discuss.

The side facing up says, Name something you are afraid of.

For some of Chase s transgender clients, the fear is that by not passing as a man or woman, they ll receive unwanted attention or be discriminated against. If she s wearing a dress and sounds like a man, will she get confusing looks? If he s talking in a high pitch and goes into the men s restroom, will he be assaulted?

We have some individuals who are still very afraid and fearful for their safety if they go out into the community, Chase said. (It s) challenging to have the world perceive you one way when you know internally you are something else.

Chase, who also works with stroke victims and children with stutters, started seeing transgender clients in 2010 while at the University of Connecticut s clinic. She got a call from Alice, a faculty member in transition.

Can you help me with my voice? she asked.

Well, by all means, come over and we ll figure it out, Chase said.

She studied textbooks on the subject that are starting to appear and spoke to other speech pathologists. She researched, revised and built a program that has served more than 100 transgender individuals through 2017.

When Chase left Connecticut to start a clinic in Utah, she was afraid she wouldn t get to work with LGBTQ clients anymore particularly in conservative Provo. But since the Rocky Mountain University program started in the fall of last year, six people have signed up for sessions, including two teenagers.

I didn t expect that.

Coming out

Gabbitas grew up in a Mormon family in the Utah County city of Payson. She s known at least since she was 7 that the sex designation assigned to her at birth was wrong. She should ve been born female.

In high school, she d try on dresses in her room and watch videos of people transitioning. She admired them and wished she were them. Her parents thought it was a phase.

Days before her 27th birthday, Gabbitas decided she couldn t take it anymore.

I wanted to be myself in public, she said, rather than hidden away from everyone.

Speech therapy is just another part of her transition. It gives her confidence and a voice that represents who she is. When she comes home from her job as a software engineer, she practices her pitch using an iPad app. Baker jokingly calls her Miss Homework.

I m going to have you say women, he cues her during their session.

Gabbitas smiles. Women.

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