Realising that I wanted to transition made sense of so many long-standing personal traits, notably my inability to find clothes that I liked, but above all my hatred of my voice. Striving to 'pass', I had no qualms about wearing clothes designed for women, be they skirts or trousers, quickly finding a style that felt right, but the idea of altering my voice seemed more problematic.

Changing my wardrobe did not drastically alter my appearance or radically change most friends' perceptions of me. However, I worried that striving for a 'feminine' manner of speaking (which would require much more work to achieve and sustain) might lead acquaintances to feel that I was becoming a different person, or that I was conforming to a gender stereotype rather than being the 'real' me (as they saw it, obviously).

I did not believe anyone to have a 'real' voice: rather that people form most of their speech patterns before conscious memory. Indeed, I'd never felt my voice to be 'natural', as I adopted other people's accents and vocal mannerisms after minimal exposure, long after childhood. After beginning transition, I realised that subconsciously, I'd refused to accept my voice because people recognised it as male. I wondered about women with deep voices (and men with high ones). Do they often get misgendered? Do they need vocal coaching to manage it?

My theoretical concerns were soon overtaken by practical ones. People in the street often asked questions, usually about the time; I soon twigged that they wanted to determine my gender. I mouthed "sorry", unconcerned about their conclusion (almost everyone has the time on their mobile phones now anyway) but then worried – what if I found myself in a situation where being demanded to speak, and read as male, had harsher consequences?

I registered for the NHS Speech and Language Therapy service, waiting nine months for an appointment in the Audiology department at Brighton's Royal Sussex County Hospital. Eventually, I met therapist Duncan Brown. He asked how 'authentic' a voice I hoped to achieve. I said 60-80%: enough to 'pass' in situations that demanded limited communication, without yet pressuring myself to remain 'convincing' during extended dialogue (this, I hoped, would come with practice).

First, Duncan asked me to take deep breaths and then make 's'/'z' sounds to measure my lung capacity. My 'z' sound lasted 26 seconds – good, he said, as this meant I'd be able to project my voice at a different pitch without sounding too quiet.

Then he hooked me up to a Laryngograph – a machine that monitors vocal fold activity, using a sensor strapped around my neck, and represents variations in pressure with on-screen graphs. It rigidly meets my question about what constitutes a male voice: 90-130 Hz is the range it defines as male – anyone who falls within this, says Duncan, can expect to be read as such. My voice falls just above, but 133 Hz is well below the 160 Hz designated 'androgynous'. Struggling for a higher pitch, I occasionally hit falsetto, which (as its name implies) lacks authenticity. Finding a happy medium will clearly take time.

Duncan gives me a story called The Tale of Arthur the Rat. Containing all known English phonemes, it tests for "irregularities" (fluctuations in pitch, or difficulties with particular sounds) as I speak for an extended period. These prove few, putting me in a good position for further therapy. This, he says, can be done individually, but as Brighton and Hove has a relatively large male-to-female transsexual community, he is running group sessions. I choose the group, held at Hove Polyclinic.

After introducing ourselves, we are given a hundred adjectives that might describe a voice and asked to label them 'M' or 'F'. We all labelled 'feminine' with 'F' but 'effeminate' with 'M', noting that although we had a word for exaggerated 'femininity' performed by someone presenting as male, there was no pejorative for someone presenting as female doing the same with 'masculinity'. Being satisfied within ourselves that we sounded 'feminine' rather than 'effeminate' was our goal – a tough one to achieve given the slippery feel to the boundaries between them.

We agreed that the first thing we could do was give more musicality to our voices. Pictorially representing our current voices and the ones we wanted, I drew a monochrome image of a faceless office worker as 'male' and a singer, in colour, for 'female'. (Duncan asks my favourite female vocalist: he's not familiar with Laurie Anderson, but the others are.) We try "ha ha" sounds at different pitches before moving onto spontaneous vocal utterances: coughing, sneezing and laughing.

With Karen, born and socialised as female, we raise the idea that the typical difference between the way men and women are taught to express themselves is that restraint is constantly expected and demanded of women, far more than men. We note this when discussing that big gut laugh that comes when laughing at someone: not exclusively male, obviously, but we all associate it primarily with men. Then, inevitably, someone mentions a female friend who loves guffawing at people, and we remind ourselves of the fallibility of generalisations. Which is good: we can cut ourselves some slack.

I might not perfectly define the boundaries between 'female', 'feminine' and 'effeminate' modes of speaking (over to you, commenters!), and I may never 'pass' entirely in conversation. I can, however, continue to work towards a manner of speaking that fits comfortably between a flexible ideal and the limits of physical possibility, until it becomes ingrained. Or natural, if you will.



• Juliet Jacques's column appears fortnightly. You are invited to post comments and questions for Juliet below, and are very welcome to share your own experiences.