Barriers to Passing

Being “passable” means that a transsexual can pass for the opposite sex (i.e., their true gender) amongst people that aren’t aware. If I go out shopping and get called “ma’am,” mission accomplished. If I get called “sir,” then I’m not passable enough.

Major barriers to passing for an MTF:

• Adam’s apple
• Facial hair
• Voice
• Lack of hips
• Lack of breasts
• Wide shoulders
• Height
• Facial structure (particularly eyebrows, nose, jawline)

Of these, I can usually get around facial hair (by shaving often), lack of breasts (by stuffing), facial structure (by being relatively androgynous, luckily), and lack of hips (by being so skinny that it looks like I have hips).

Wide shoulders and height aren’t major tip-offs. There are plenty of tall women, and most people don’t notice shoulders. However, having a larger-than-average Adam’s apple and a deep voice are major problems for me.

My Adam’s apple wouldn’t bother me so much if it didn’t stop so abruptly. I practically have a little ledge at the top. This means that it catches the light, which draws attention to it. See the problem? Girls don’t have those. They are definitively masculine.

As a temporary solution, I wear lots of scarves when I’m trying to pass. They look reasonably fashionable—and practical, too, since it’s getting cold—and cover up my Adam’s apple as long as I ruffle them up every now and then.

More permanently, I can get a surgery called a tracheal shave. It’s exactly what it sounds like—the doctors open up your throat area and cut off some of the cartilage of your Adam’s apple. This is relatively safe procedure, though of course there are some risks. In rare cases, it leads to a loss of speech, but that only happens when the doctor goes too far and takes too much. The less you get shaved, the less risk. I want to get a trach shave eventually.

Now, my voice is a much more difficult challenge. There’s no kind of clothing that I can wear to cover up the way I sound. I can make my voice higher, of course, but that sounds very fake at this point.

There are two ways to overcome the vocal gap: surgery or voice training. I’ll talk about surgery first.

Voice surgery is much riskier than a tracheal shave. It involves opening up the voice box and—if I remember correctly—tweaking the tautness of the vocal cords themselves. There’s a very real risk of losing one’s voice during this surgery, which is why I wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole.

Now, the other option is vocal training. This is nonsurgical, risk-free, but more difficult for the transwoman. Basically, you talk to a vocal coach and they help you develop a more feminine voice through a long series of exercises and lots and lots and lots of practice. This is the option that I will be taking whenever I get the chance.

Luckily for MTFs, there is no anatomical limit on how high a voice can go, but there is one on how low it can go. In other words, an anatomical male can raise his voice to the sky, but an anatomical female can only lower it so far. It’s all a matter of training and endless practice.

I’ll get there, eventually.

Incidentally, I’m leaning more and more towards naming myself “Liana,” not “Alexandria.” Alexandria was my default, as it is the feminine version of my birth name, but I don’t want to keep “Alex” so much anymore. I’ve been Alex for 16 years—I’m going into the world as someone new, and I think my new name should reflect that.

Life is good.