eli5 How come testosterone will change a trans man’s voice, but estrogen won’t change a trans women’s?
In: Chemistry
My understanding is that the change is structural, that is the testosterone causes a physical change in the larynx and the vocal folds which are not undone when you remove the testosterone or increase estrogens
You can stretch a short rubber band longer, but you can’t “unstretch” one that’s already long.
It’s just like how someone who went through female puberty doesn’t lose their breasts when on testosterone — they don’t un-grow. Same with the vocal folds.
Because estrogen does not make a voice higher pitch…testosterone just makes a voice deeper…actually when women go through puberty, the voice deepens as well….just not as much as a guy, so it is not as noticeable.
Also, if you castrate (chop off the balls) a male before puberty, his voice will never get deeper, but if you castrate a man after he gone through puberty, he will keep his deeper voice (unlike how it is portrayed on movies and bad jokes)…even though he is not longer making as much testosterone as before
Also, if a girl takes testosterone, the girls breast do not fall off and if a guy takes estrogen, his penis doesn’t fall off either.
Testosterone and oestrogen are both things called growth hormones. They signal to various kinds of cells that they should do something (typically just grow, but something other growth-related things). Growth hormones can’t usually make the body *reduce* something, unless it’s a thing that the body is constantly adjusting for the sake of energy conservation (muscle mass is the most relevant here, as the muscles shed anything they don’t need and use hormone levels as a cue for how much they need).
Voice is determined by structures in the throat. Once those get built, they can’t be un-built, and generally speaking the larger those structures are, the more masculine your voice will sound.
A trans friend explained it thusly: “Hormones can add, they generally can’t take away”
The voice deepening hardware is an add.
I’m no expert, but I’m guessing it does to the point of what’s possible.
A trans woman has “her/his” physical limitations.
Testosterone will not transform a pushy to a penis.
So with the vocal chords..
Latest Answers