Study suggests that comfort, confidence are main goals in gender-affirming communication care

For transgender and gender-diverse individuals, achieving their personal goals around gender expression is associated with greater psychological and financial well-being and improved quality of life. Communication—through voice, speech mannerisms, language, vocabulary, and nonverbal communication—is a key way that people express their gender identity. A new qualitative study explores transgender participants’ communication experiences in various situations, and may be helpful to health providers, such as otolaryngologists and speech-language pathologists, who wish to support their patients’ communication journeys. For the study, 14 transgender people, of various ages and gender presentations, were interviewed. 

The study found that, regardless of gender identity, participants shared core communication experiences. Three key themes emerged: when it comes to communication, participants prioritize comfort, safety, and authenticity; they use an internal “checklist” to optimize their communication; and their attitudes towards communication change over time. Many participants found that, as they moved further away in time from the period of initial transition, their level of concern over communications issues changed. A key finding is the notion that communication success is influenced by sociocultural contexts and the physical environment beyond a person’s communication presentation. 

For healthcare professions who want to help their transgender clients achieve comfort and satisfaction in communication, this study suggests that it’s important to consider the transgender client’s communication contexts, and incorporate a life-participation approach to gender-affirming voice and communication care.

This is the second, first-author publication for Jingyu Linna Jin, PhD, CCC-SLP, who recently completed her PhD in Rehabilitation Science and is a now a postdoc in the UW SPEAC Lab. Co-authors are Carolyn Baylor, PhD, Associate Professor; Kathryn Yorkston, PhD, Professor Emeritus; as well as Jeffrey Teixeira, MD, from Uniformed Services University; and Michael Nuara, MD, from Virginia Mason Franciscan Health. The study is online now in the International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology. Notably, the poster presentation of this work received a Meritorious Poster Award at the 2022 American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Convention.