Do You Dislike Your Voice?

This is a genuine call for people who suffer some form of voice dysphoria or distress at their own voice who exist in online spaces.

One of my assignments for my Journalism class is to:

Compile a brief audio report (60 to 120 seconds) that illustrates at least ONE of the six primary emotions [Anger, Disgust, Fear, Happiness, Sadness, Surprise.]. The report must contain excerpts from an interview which canvasses that emotion and ambient/atmospheric sound recorded by you to illustrate /reflect the emotion, or to enhance narrative impact.

My classmates have all spoken about the people around them, the people they consider to typical, who have their own interesting stories, but who crucially, are all capable of using their own voices in ways that they accept as expressing their identity.

There are people I know, people I care about, who can’t. Speaking aloud, using their voices, that audio that my teachers hold so high as expressing emotion, is hard, painful, and sometimes deeply emotionally distressing. I’d like to make my piece about putting those peoples’ words in this report. I want to share the voices of those who cannot speak easily.

The theme of this piece is voiceless people finding a voice online. I’ve heard from numerous people I care about that dysphoria and communication issues are both eased through online text communication. The emotion I most want to share is happiness.

What I want to do is take text thoughts and expression from you, and people like you, about the happiness, the joy you can experience when you’re able to communicate clearly and distinctly online, without being prejudged or misgendered. Taking those texts, I would compose them together using a digital voice synthesiser program (there are tons of these). Then, I’d add ambient sound, and the voices of other people over key words (probably the voices of classmates) to demonstrate that I can layer sound/manage timing.

Do you think you’d like to contribute some words to this? Please let me know!