Mar 1, 2021
Lee Harding
Dundalk Institute of Technology
Second place winner of the 2021 CHMHE Undergraduate Prize
Lee Harding is a first-year postgraduate research student at Dundalk Institute of Technology. He is a classically trained singer with interests in conducting, performance, composing, education and musicology. In 2020, he completed his BA (Hons) in Applied Music degree from Dundalk Institute of Technology with a first class honours. His undergraduate dissertation was focused on The Transgender Voice: How Ireland Can Turn Up the Volume which discussed the training of a transgender person’s voice as one method of inclusion for Irish transgender students in the music classroom. He is the second prize winner of the CHMHE Undergraduate Musicology Competition. His interests in musicology include queer musicology, historical musicology, gender studies, popular musicology and education. His current research project is focused on documenting the history of transgender music-making in Ireland which centres on an interdisciplinary collection of oral history, archival research and mapping of the transgender music-making and consumption in Ireland.
The Transgender Voice: How Ireland Can Turn Up The Volume is an undergraduate dissertation, supervised by the late Dr David Connolly, responding to the relative invisibility that Ireland’s transgender people experience in media, education, politics and everyday society. In TENI’s 2015 National Trans Youth Forum Report, only 25% of Irish transgender youths felt that their gender was acknowledged, 32% answered that their gender identity was not respected and 38% said that they did not even attempt to come out (TENI, 2015). In relation to music education, how can a music teacher of any discipline better accommodate and aid their transgender students?
My personal motivation lies in the new-wave mentality of Ireland’s LGBTQ+ community that follows the term ‘Intra-Queer Allyship’. ‘Intra-Queer Allyship’ means that each identity in the LGBTQ+ community should be working to be allies to the other identities rather than only focusing on their own. The term, as far as I am aware, was coined by Dean O’Reilly at ‘Queer University: The Influence of LGBTQ+ Societies on Ally Ship and their Impact on the Community’; this was an Intervarsity Panel held in Dublin City University on the 9th of February 2018.
For those of you who have made it this far completely confused by what a transgender person is, transgender “describes a person whose self-experienced gender is not the same as the gender/sex they were assigned at birth” (Hearns & Kremer, 2018, p.19). If a person was assigned female at birth and they now identify as male, then they are a trans male person. I am cisgender, which means I was assigned male at birth and I also identify as male. I need not mention derogatory terms, but misconceptions are words and phrases such as ‘transgendered’ or ‘a transgender’. If you were to refer to a person as ‘gayed’ or ‘bisexualed’, you would be confused. ‘Transgendered’ is grammatically incorrect as it’s an adjective. Transgender is the correct way to say it at all times. On the latter side, if I were to point out people and go ‘Oh look, a sad’, ‘Oh look, a happy’, ‘Oh look, an angry’, I would be corrected to say ‘a sad person’, ‘a happy person’, ‘an angry person’; because you are describing the person, the person is not the description. A transgender person, not ‘a transgender’.
In Kennedy and Hellen’s study Transgender children: more than a theoretical challenge (2010) ‘The percentage of transgender people who came to the realisation of their gender variance at age 18 or later was less than 4%, with 76% of participants being aware they were transgender or gender variant before they left primary school’. Countering claims that children are not able for such conversations, much research highlights how, ‘given the right scaffolding, children can productively explore and question systems of privilege and disadvantage’ (Ryan, Patraw & Bednar, 2013). With this in mind, why could they not also discuss gender? There is a need for primary schools to be proactive in creating supportive and informed spaces for all children to talk about gender.
In secondary schools, transgender students exclude themselves from things that other children take for granted. This would be down to several factors such as: names/pronouns, uniforms, admission policies, toilet/changing facilities and sports/extra-curricular activities. These are all obstacles for transgender youth that need to be catered to by secondary schools. In addition, transgender and gender variant young people should be explicitly named in strategies towards secondary schools in Ireland and their needs addressed through training programmes and the development of educational resources for staff. In particular, there is a clear need for increased training through the development of a Trans Training Programme which could be delivered to Education Centres across Ireland (TENI, 2015, p. 3).
Third level education can maintain certain barriers against transgender people, such as identification requirements in the enrolment process, inappropriate facilities such as single-sex residences or gendered bathrooms enforced against them. Depending on the place, it can also have a lack of support services for transgender people entirely. For example, there may not be an LGBTQ+ society, Equality officer or a person in a higher position to be a voice for transgender people working on-site. It is important to push to create a student-led support for transgender students in the forms of societies and student union LGBTQ+ support officers. Issues like mental health or medical issues have been reported to cause a negative impact on 78.15% of participants’ academic performance so there is a problem here that could impact a transgender person’s musical training (Chevallier, Murphy & Buggy, 2019).
Music educators should strive to foster an environment that is inclusive of transgender students. In facilitating this, three educational norms should be rethought. The first of these is regarding pronouns and name changes. ‘As a common practice, all teachers should ask all students for their preferred pronouns on the first day of a new school year or term … students must be able to go by a different name in class than the one printed on the school roster’ (Palkki, 2017, p. 29). Respecting a student’s name and pronouns is a key starting point. It would also be desirable to create gender-neutral concert attire as uniforms are a major issue for choir involvement. Concert black is a popular choice to ensure that outfits are appropriate but do not restrict a student’s clothing preference. Rehearsal language is another major issue, with a suggestion for sections over gender. It is a good idea to retrain language to speak of soprano, alto, tenor and bass and not women and men. These are just a few examples of an ideal environment that music educators should strive to create.
A strong source for warm up strategies is Lessley’s Teaching Transgender Singers (2017). It covers Respiration, Phonation, Registration, Articulation and Resonance with a method that one could find very effective in creating a smooth flow in lessons. One thing to be aware of for transgender men would be that often, their higher register is an area that creates a level of discomfort for the singer and can cause tension in the learning atmosphere. Other things for transgender men include things like chest binders, top surgery, hormone replacement therapy and potential cosmetic surgery that may alter the face. As mentioned in Hearns & Kremer’s The Singing Teacher’s Guide to Transgender Voices (2018), chest binders are a difficult thing to adjust to and so focuses on respiration may be difficult and take longer to train. It is an important step to adjust focuses so that the student gets comfortable with respiration, however long it may take.
The opposite can be taken for transgender women, their lower register is often what creates a level of discomfort. Unlike transgender male voices, hormone replacement therapy will not change a transgender woman’s voice which is why it is essential to create a medium that allows the student to sing comfortably but also with a voice that matches their identity. Falsetto training is a popular method with transgender female singers. Like transgender men, training transgender women will require some things to be aware of. These include things like waist trainers, top surgery and potential cosmetic surgery that alters the face. Do not discuss topics like waist trainers – allow the student to figure out if they need to adjust their waist trainer in order to sing better. Another point worth mentioning for transgender female singers is that while some may want to learn to sing falsetto, others may be perfectly comfortable singing as a bass, baritone or tenor.
Here is an example of a general lesson plan I included in my dissertation. There were 8 of these in total with included sheet music and pages with vocal exercises that would be used in the lesson. I also have a suggested repertoire list which can be used as a starting point for music teachers to go off of:
In relation to music education, how can a music teacher of any discipline better accommodate and aid their transgender students? To start, it is important to look at the studies on transgender youth in general and the obstacles they face globally as well as on a national level to gain a background in how to create a safe learning space. To continue, this background information can then be used to advance into teaching the voice. Regarding transgender male and female voice research, the works mentioned above cover a spectrum of ideas regarding how to work with transgender male and female singers. This research moves into creating lesson plans and repertoire lists that are effective in training transgender singers in a safe and respectful environment.
Bibliography
Chevallier, C., Murphy, S. and Buggy, C. (2019). Understanding The Lived Experiences Of Gender Minority Students In Irish Third-Level Education. Dublin: Trinity College Dublin, TENI, RCSI & National LGBT Federation.
Dunne, P. and Turraoin, C. (2015). “It’s Time To Hear Our Voices”: National Trans Youth Forum Report 2015. Ireland: TENI.
Hearns, L. and Kremer, B. (2018). The singing teacher's guide to transgender voices. 1st ed. San Diego: Plural Publishing.
Kennedy, N., and Hellen, M. (2010). "Transgender children: more than a theoretical challenge." Graduate Journal of Social Science, 7(2).25–43.
Lessley, E. (2017). Teaching transgender singers (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (1943885845). September 4th 2019.
Palkki, J. (2017). "Inclusivity in Action: Transgender Students in the Choral Classroom."
Choral Journal, 57(11).
Ryan, C. L., Patraw, J. M., and Bednar, M. (2013). "Discussing princess boys and pregnant men: Teaching about gender diversity and transgender experiences within an elementary school curriculum." Journal of LGBT Youth, 10(1–2), 83-105.
Sauerland, W. (2018). Legitimate Voices: A Multi-Case Study of Trans and NonBinary Singers in the Applied Voice Studio. Ph.D. Columbia University.