Setting up Melbourne’s Gender-Affirming Voice Clinic

Gender-affirming voice care can include a range of services such as:

1. Voice training to better align an individual’s voice and communication with their gender identity or desired gender presentation, whether it be more masculine, feminine, or gender-neutral;

2. Informational counselling on surgical and hormonal methods to affirm one’s gender (pitch raising or lowering voice surgery; testosterone therapy)

3. Pre and post-operational voice care before and following pitch raising or pitch lowering voice surgery respectively; and

4. Voice therapy to address undesired side effects of gender-affirming testosterone therapy such as vocal hoarseness, reduced vocal range, vocal fatigue, and even the voice sounding too young for the person’s age.

He is currently collaborating with Dr Olga Birchall’s (she/her) team at Melbourne Teaching Health Clinics’ Melbourne Speech Pathology Clinic (MSPC) to set up the University’s very own gender-affirming voice clinic.

The Clinic will be a safe and inclusive space for the University’s trans and gender diverse community and members of the public to access quality gender-affirming voice care. It will also offer Master of Speech Pathology students a unique placement opportunity in this area of practice and be an active hub for ongoing research initiatives within the Department. It will align with the University’s Gender Affirmation Policy, benchmarked against the World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s latest Standards of Care, and be one of the Department’s efforts in realising the University’s LGBTIQA+ Inclusion Action Plan.