Page 1 of 1

Finding my feminine voice

Posted: Sat Jun 09, 2012 4:46 pm
by Ginny Jones
This thread in some ways was generated by my reactions to Anita’s previous thread so I just wanted to acknowledge that up front.

Today I bought a copy of “finding your feminine voice” – a voice training programme. Shortly afterwards, I read Anita’s post and it triggered a whole host of thoughts that seem to have been sitting around waiting for a title! Therefore, here is how I found my feminine voice!

I have written elsewhere about how Cross-dressing became an issue for me and so I won’t repeat too much of that, save to say that the issue was around for me very early! I have an older Sister (8 years older) that moved away with her boyfriend when I was about 10. We had always been close and so she sent me tapes each week that she had made up for me. I had been into music from the word go and so by the age of 10 this was a natural thing to do. At the time, a neighbour was abusing me and so music gave me another world to go to.

I was already in a choir and my voice was high (treble)! I really loved singing in a choir – that sense of being in a family. The little noises we made as individuals adding together and coming out as something that could fill a Cathedral (literally on occasions)! Did we just make that sound!??
Obviously, I would sing along with the songs on the tapes that my sister would send me. At this young age I was into Music that none of my peers had even heard of – Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, Joni Mitchell, the velvet underground, Bob Dylan, to name a few. I can remember singing along to “Summertime” – the Janis Joplin version and being completely blown away by it! Or Joan Armatrading’s “Love and Affection”. Wow – I could really come up with a girly track list at this point!

Anyway – it was a secret language. None of my friends knew about it and I found that I could relate to the sentiment. It tended to be “feeling” songs that got me pumped up; plus – I could really hit the notes! At 11 I could sing Summertime so you wouldn’t know the difference! Or “Old Cape Cod” or ... That’s even allowing for poor Janice working back a bottle of whiskey a day! Bless her!

Anita’s post got me thinking about this and I am realising that this was equivalent to trying on bra’s. Ok I was doing a bit of that as well – but actually, this really was about me stepping into a female psychology! My reading also took this pattern! I can quote Jane Austen ‘til I’m sick - and that includes her letters!

Once puberty hit – I could no longer sing in that way! It felt like a real loss! I worked hard at retaining as much as I could and today I can still do reasonable renditions – but not like I was able to do back then!

I had always played instruments as well. After several years on the clarinet and the recorder, I started playing the guitar and then got drawn off in the direction of guitar playing bands (which had a different language). “Girl – you really got me going! You got me so I can’t sleep at night!” Hell yeah!

By the time I was 18 I was really in demand by the guys because I knew so much about music / was going to gigs / could sing /smoked like a trooper / was completely off my face most of the time. I was also in demand from the girls who basically wanted me to translate for them! That I was different was patently obvious to them even though I wasn't camp or any of that. Long hair, black leather jacket, Motorbikes!

Then Kate Bush’s career took off and I really understood the language, the imagery and the references she used! I can remember her being received by the males around me like marmite – you loved her or you hated her. I loved her – and thought that she was a genius! Strangely – women tended to not be so smitten as men! I think they found that version of femininity to be a bit too much of a caricature.

I continue to connect to this language to this day. The thing that makes me buy dresses, is the same thing that leaves a lump in my throat when I hear Kate Bush, is the same thing that connects me to feminine literature, is the same thing that makes me roar with laughter and delight when watching “Kissing Jessica Stein” or “New Girl”. I can still sing “Summertime” and enjoy it – but when I was a kid, boy could I sing like Janis Joplin!

Sorry for going on...

Incidentally – I’m still in a choir!

Hugs Ginny x

Re: Finding my feminine voice

Posted: Sun Jun 10, 2012 8:29 am
by April Rose
You know, Ginny, sometimes I think, because of the secrecy, we cross dressers fall into a little trap of thinking ourselves somehow afflicted; but really , your post reads to me like the story of a well developed life.

I am a Jane Austen fan as well.

Re: Finding my feminine voice

Posted: Sun Jun 10, 2012 11:02 am
by Ginny Jones
Thank you for your lovely comment April!

What I am learning at the moment is that I am not trying to get anywhere - I am trying to express somewhere I have been all my life! And having been there has been a gift of grace for me.. so your comments really touch a chord!

Hugs Ginny xx

Re: Finding my feminine voice

Posted: Sun Jun 10, 2012 11:56 am
by Anita
Anyway – it was a secret language. None of my friends knew about it and I found that I could relate to the sentiment. It tended to be “feeling” songs that got me pumped up; plus – I could really hit the notes! At 11 I could sing Summertime so you wouldn’t know the difference! Or “Old Cape Cod” or ... That’s even allowing for poor Janice working back a bottle of whiskey a day! Bless her!
Anita’s post got me thinking about this and I am realising that this was equivalent to trying on bra’s.
I would never have thought about it as another part of the "secret world," but it is. I'm sorry you lost the ability when the testosterone hit.

I could not identify with female reading--that's one area that left me cold. I'm a vociferous reader; no cereal box ever went unread--but I couldn't handle romance novels, for instance. And "Little Women" or "Pride and Prejudice" just didn't beckon to me. I did read some of the Little House on the Prairie series--does that count?

Women in music--I didn't really identify with them there, either. I ended up playing the role I would have liked to have seen women do. In all my years of watching bands, there is one woman that stands out for me. Her name is Ruyter (pronounced "Rider"), and she plays for a band with a vulgar name--let's just say it starts with the word, "Nashville," and let it go at that. That gal played hard rock in a way that spoke to me. She has an aggressive stage persona, but she was very easy to talk to after the show. I've seen them two or three times. You can search with just those two terms, and she'll come up on Youtube. As far as I know, she doesn't sing any lead vocals.

All I know about Kate Bush is that she posed with Wilhem Reich's "cloud buster" on the back of one of her albums. They were long tubes that Reich aimed at the sky, to bring rain. Very pseudo-scientific, but he had some success with them. I was into Reichian body therapy for three years, so I picked up on that.

Re: Finding my feminine voice

Posted: Sun Jun 10, 2012 2:11 pm
by Ginny Jones
Anita - thanks for your reply!

I had a wail of a time listening to Nashville "Mary". That girl can play! I've been sat here grinnin like a cheshire Cat! I really get that!

Tuning into musicians like Kate Bush or Joni Mitchell is kinda tough! They don't make it easy for you because they don't seem to care about fitting in with any particular style of music. It takes work to get them - and the narative is a feminine one. No compromise! I hung in there because I enjoyed being able to sing the songs (not Kate Bush - my voice was too low by the time she came on the scene!) - but in letting in the words, they kind of slid down the back of the settee and that spark started a house fire! They paint pictures - tell stories. And now in my work I spend my time listening to these stories.

It's pretty much the same with feminine literature. A chance to inhabit the world from a feminine space.

I keep noticing links you and I have in common! I trained as a gestalt Psychotherapist for 4 years - Reich is someone I have a lot of resepect for!

Again thanks for your post - and thanks for the musical heads up! ..^..

Hugs Ginny x

Re: Finding my feminine voice

Posted: Sun Jun 10, 2012 2:58 pm
by Anita
Tuning into musicians like Kate Bush or Joni Mitchell is kinda tough!
I had forgotten that I had one Joni Mitchell album, Clouds, and I played it a lot. I always liked "Both Sides Now," whether it was the Judy Collins version, or the one Joni does on this album.

I visited San Francisco in 1968, as a teen. My older sisters said I had to hear this local woman vocalist that they liked, so they took me down to the Avalon Ballroom, on Market street. It was a band called Big Brother and the Holding Company...and the woman was Janis. I listened, and I listened...I remember saying, "She likes to scream a lot, doesn't she?" I wasn't moved. However, years later I was watching a movie about her, and the opening song over the credits was "Mercedes Benz." I started sobbing, sitting there in the theater, which embarrassed me and mystified me, all at once. I must have been hearing a lot of pain in that vocal, because something got through my blase attitude about the woman.

The one female vocalist that affected me strongly was Johnette Napolitano, of Concrete Blonde. I did a lip-sync performance of her doing "Heal it up" at Trannyshack, which was then the premier drag show in San Francisco. One veteran performer of that show told a bartender friend of mine years later that my performance of that song was one of the highlights of her time there. It would have been hard to go wrong with such a powerful track; check it out on Youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEvm4yp2vkY" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Re: Finding my feminine voice

Posted: Sun Jun 10, 2012 7:16 pm
by Ginny Jones
WOAH Horsey! Let me get this right! You saw Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the holding company and you thought.... ](*,)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0B41tBTTko" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I've just had a listen to Johnette Napolitano having never heard her before. Good song and she's got a cracking voice! I always thought Grace Slick had a great voice for Rock Music!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIkoSPqjaU4" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Kate Bush is nothing like any of this though - You almost have to defend yourself against how plaintive / feminine she can sound! It produces an emotional reaction (even if it's OMG turn that Off!).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIkoSPqjaU4" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Incidentally - remember in the 70's and 80's when we all did tapes for eachother - that would be a great thread wouldn't it!

Hugs Ginny x