Hearing Gender: Voice-Based Gender Classification Processes and Transgender Health Inequality

Abstract

This study examines the link between self-rated health and two aspects of gender: an individual’s gender identity, and whether strangers classify that person’s voice as male or female. In a phone-based general health survey, interviewers classified the sex of transgender women ( n = 722) and transgender men ( n = 446) based on assumptions they made after hearing respondents’ voices. The flawed design of the original survey produced inconsistent sex classification among transgender men and transgender women respondents; this study repurposes these discrepancies to look more closely at the implications of voice-based gender classification for the health of transgender men and women. Average marginal effects from logistic regression models show transgender men who are classified as women based on their voices are more likely to report poor self-rated health compared to transgender men who are classified as men. Conversely, transgender women who are classified as men are less likely to report poor self-rated health than are transgender women who are classified as women. Additionally, Black transgender men are more likely than any other group to be classified inconsistently with their gender identity, suggesting a link between race/ethnicity and gender perception.

Diagnosing Gender Bias in Image Recognition Systems

“…We test this with gender. Although observer-ascribed gender is a poor measure of gender identity (Hamidi, Scheuerman, and Branham 2018; Lagos 2019), it can be a good measure of the gendered stereotypes about appearance that may influence GCV.…”

Gender Identity, the Sexed Body, and the Medical Making of Transgender

“…Whereas sociomedical feminists examine the ways that medical scientists sex bodies (Fausto-Sterling 2000; Jordan-Young 2010), embodied gender scholars are interested in the ways that the sexed body is perceived by others. Being read as masculine or feminine does not depend solely or primarily on what one does but also on the material body (David 2015; Friedman 2013; Lagos 2019; Plemons 2017). Furthermore, the sexed body itself may be in the midst of a transformation.…”

“…Furthermore, the sexed body itself may be in the midst of a transformation. The locus of sex has expanded to include more visible and noticeable features such as the jaw and brow line, facial hair, and voice (Lagos 2019; Plemons 2017). Thus, attributions of sex depend on both visible and audible (facial features and vocal pitch) and less visible (external genitalia) parts of the body.…”

“…I argue that a “new regime of truth” (Foucault [1979] 2008) has shifted the medical locus of gender identity from external genitalia and psychopathology to genes and neurology as well as surgical interventions. The sexed body itself has also undergone a transformation: Sex no longer resides solely in genitalia but has traveled to more visible and noticeable parts of the body (David 2015; Lagos 2019; Plemons 2017), implicating racialized aesthetic ideals in its new formulation. In this new regime of truth, the re-imagining of gender identity as genetically and neurologically inscribed and the expanding locus of sex correspond to an inversion in the relationship between gender identity and the sexed body.…”

“…Rapid shifts in the medicalization of gender-variant identities over the past several decades and the increasing visibility and efficacy of depathologization movements-what Chris hanssmann (2017, 1) has referred to as a "deluge after a drought"-calls for a closer look at the implications of these shifts for changing understandings of the relationship between gender identity and the sexed body. Building on "embodied gender" approaches that highlight the ways that bodies shape and limit possibilities for accomplishing gender (David 2015;Friedman 2013;Lagos 2019;Plemons 2017;Schrock, Reid, and Boyd 2005;Stone [1987Stone [ ] 2006, in this article I trace the shifts in medical etiologies and definitions of gender identity and the sexed body over the past half-century. I also consider the relationship of these shifts to professional jurisdictional struggles between psychiatrists, surgeons, and other medical authorities.…”