Alex Iantaffi: Hello and welcome to another episode of gender stories. I know that I'm always excited, but I can't help it just I have the most wonderful guests, and I feel so fortunate that I got to talk with them, and today, I have the very good fortune and delight to be speaking to Renée Yoxon, who's a queer, non binary and disabled, gender affirming voice teacher with the passion for voice education, creativity and vocal curiosity, since 2010 they have taught 1000s of students how to love their voice and their strength as a teacher is really explaining and complicated, explaining complicated concepts in plain language that anyone can understand, as well as anticipating student problems before they occur. They're the creator of a suite of online courses that provide concise and easy to follow trans voice education to trans and non binary people all over the world. Renée is a creative thinker and a deep listener, and their favorite thing in the world is helping people just like you to reach their voice goals. And you can find reneeyoxon.com but also, don't worry, as usual, I will have all the links to all the things, including their social media platforms, because they're very active on social media, including Tiktok in the episode description. So welcome Renée.
Alex Iantaffi: Thank you so much for making time to for speaking with me today.
Renée Yoxon: Well, thank you so much for having me on, Alex. I'm really happy to be here.
Alex Iantaffi: I'm so excited. I feel like I could talk with you about 1000 things. And I'm really excited because one of the very early episodes of gender stories actually was about voice because it was trans voices festival in Minneapolis at that time, all the way back in 2018 when I just started the podcast, I know it's been a minute that was so fun and and I think voice is just so important for everybody, such a part of who we are, but especially for trans and binary and or gender expansive people. So maybe we can start from just a really simple question, what is a gender affirming voice teacher, like, well, what does that role mean? What does it look like?
Alex Iantaffi: Yeah, yeah.
Renée Yoxon: What I tell people, like, at a party or something, that I'm a gender affirming voice teacher, everyone always says, Wow, I've never heard of that job before. Basically, my role is to help trans and non binary and gender expansive people to create speaking voices that bring them safety and comfort, and I do that primarily now through my online courses, but I have in the past done that through in person workshops and private lessons. Yeah,
Alex Iantaffi: well, I do have more questions about what has led you to go in this direction, but before I go and lose myself in the little Rabbit Hole. What is the difference between a voice teacher and a speech and language therapist? Because, for example, I think for a long time a lot of trans folks, the only option we were offered was like speech and language therapy. So what's the difference between a voice teacher and a speech and language therapist? For folks who are listening and might not know the difference,
Renée Yoxon: yeah, yeah, absolutely. So speech language pathology is, as you say, like the traditional place that you would get this information. The difference is that I am not like a medical professional. So my background is in singing teaching or voice pedagogy. So I'm like a voice professional. I have a background in singing. I have jazz degree and a songwriting degree, and I have like, a decade's worth of singing teaching experience and speech language pathologists can be voice experts, but they the field is much larger than that.
Renée Yoxon: They also tackle things like swallowing and voice disorders and cancer screening and feeding for babies, like there's a whole whole bunch of things. So gender affirming voice is just like one tiny specialization within speech language pathology, whereas a gender affirming voice teacher only does gender affirming voice so we work really closely with SLPs, and like, for instance, I'm going to be speaking at on a panel for the American Speech and Hearing Association alongside a bunch of trans SLPs. So we're not strangers, but it's like a Venn diagram, you know, really cousins, absolutely. And I just wanted to make it clear for folks listening, because they're like, Oh, is it the same? Is it different? I'm like, always like to get those definitions out the way early on, it's like, hard to say how they're different now, especially because, like, a lot of so I run a teacher training program every year, and I originally created it for people like me who are trying to pivot into gender affirming voice from the singing side of things, but actually, like, fully half of my students are speech language pathologists who didn't get enough information about this through their continuing education or from their university program. So they've come to me, and so now it's like, I'm teaching them. They're teaching me, you know, like we're helping each other. The big difference, though, is that they can take insurance and I can't.
Alex Iantaffi: Yes, that that's a wonderful cross pollination though, yes, but it's also really great to see that there is an increasing number of voice affirming, you know, gender affirming, voice teachers, because. You know, sometimes the field of gender affirming care is so medicalized, and so it's really wonderful to also have that support not come from within the medical industrial complex in some ways. And I don't know if you ever get clients or, like, yeah, I really want to work with my voice, but I'm just, you know, I don't want to work with a medical provider actually. Just want to work on my voice with like a voice teacher, and not feel like every aspect of my identity and transition is like medicalized.
Alex Iantaffi: Does that make sense? I don't know.
Renée Yoxon: Totally 100% that's a big part of, like, my approach to gender affirming voice. You know, I love that people have the option to do it through the medical care system because of the insurance system set up in place. But like you say, like being consistently medicalized and having to have a problem to be solved is not always a positive way to approach your transition. Then, just to be clear, there's lots of SLPs who don't see it as a problem to be solved, but my approach is fully exploratory, like, I will help you explore the bounds of your voice and create something. Like it's creation, it's exploration.
Renée Yoxon: It's not like you have problem.
Renée Yoxon: I solve problem, you know? So I yeah, I really like that approach to the to the practice, absolutely.
Alex Iantaffi: And I love that you talk about. I help people explore kind of the range.
Alex Iantaffi: Because, you know, as somebody who is older and has also worked with older trans folks, we didn't have a lot of options.
Alex Iantaffi: And I think that, you know, historically, there's been this expectation that you just go from one end of the gender spectrum to the other, right, and so you either are masculinizing your voice or you're feminizing your voice, right? And I feel now we have so much more of an expansive view of what we can do with our voice and and also just so many more examples of like trans book list and singers in every area you know, from Opera singers to pop singers, which is so exciting, even in terms of representation.
Alex Iantaffi: But I remember, like 20 years ago, it was hardly it was almost impossible to find any information actually about voice and gender affirming care, and even less so, coming from a trans and or non binary perspective. So yeah, can you say a little bit more about that expansiveness, that not everybody wants to masculinize or feminize them? I want more creativity in their approach to voice.
Renée Yoxon: I can say a lot about that. In fact, because, as I told you before we jumped on the call, I'm speaking at the Philadelphia trans wellness conference on Friday, or I'm speaking on Saturday, but that's what I'm speaking about. I'm speaking about this new course that I created in April, I released in April, called mix and match, designing your non binary voice. And the whole thought process behind making that was that there were many use cases in gender affirming voice that are not covered by, strictly speaking, masculinizing and feminizing. There's, of course, like the neutral case, like lots of non binary people want something neutral, and that might involve masculinizing and feminizing, like to a degree, but you might also want to be like a gender confusion. So if you're being read as masculine, maybe you want to hyper feminize your voice, to, like, throw people off, or vice versa, or maybe you want to combine qualities of the voice in a way that is less usual. And I've called this use case gender alien. So, like, there's those three cases where, how I started to conceive of mix and match, and what I really wanted to do was create a course that, like anyone from any starting point could create any kind of finishing point. So it's a very like open, choose your own adventure type. Of course.
Alex Iantaffi: I love that, because even in terms of when you know, and if trans and non binary folks want to do any kind of transition, whether it's social or medical, like, I think that there it is much more Choose Your Own Adventure nowadays. I mean, I know there are still a lot of restrictions in terms of where you live, you know, whether it's in the US, Canada, other countries, what the system allows, right? But I think there is just so much more interest in actually that expensive and non binary piece, and that's very exciting to me as also a non binary person, yes, but I also think binary trans people benefit from this as well, right? Like, at the end of the day, we all get to choose our own adventure, even if you're a cisgender exactly, which actually was a question I was thinking about asking, is like, what if cis people want to take their courses? Because, you know, also like, where is the line where cis stops and non binary begins and then trends right? But what if somebody who maybe still identifies a cis or is not sure, still wants to explore voice, from this perspective, would that be welcome to take your courses?
Alex Iantaffi: I'm with you. I'm always like, you know when
Renée Yoxon: Oh, yeah, this is something that I haven't like made a policy around necessarily, because, like, I don't get to decide who's trans and who's cis at the end of the day. So cis people are welcome to take my course, because in my people are like, well, you know, I'm cisgender. And you know, heart, I think everyone should be able to explore their gender on their own terms, even if they do so and then decide that they're fine with where they started. You know, absolutely I I'm not sure. How that translates into, like, the community aspect of my course, like, do I allow cis people into my office hours with trans people? Not explicitly, but, like, it's a trans space at the end of the day, right? Exactly?
Renée Yoxon: Now, that makes a lot of sense, because you want to keep that kind of safer, or at least more shared space that we sometimes keep in community, right? But I can totally imagine that some cis folks would want to kind of play with their voice in some ways. And also, you know, all of us have started from somewhere in our gender. I think if you're cis and you're taking my course, maybe you're maybe you're not bad, like, maybe ask yourself some questions.
Renée Yoxon: then there's all the stuff about gender. It comes up. I mean, sometimes Absolutely, and sometimes I'm like, here, friend, I wrote a book How to Understand Your Gender about this, which is for anyone. And I mean, at the end of the day, like the cis and trans binary is just another unhelpful binary.
Renée Yoxon: Like, I think I was just listening to the gender reveal podcast just now and someone identified as cis plus, but also, like before, I was doing courses and teaching privately, I would regularly get emails from cisgender people who had, like, very reasonable requests, you know, like I got an email from a gay man who lived somewhere where it was not legal to be Gay and wanted to masculinize his voice to for safety and comfort. Like, the same reasons that trans people change their voice. And I would get emails from like women wanting to either feminize or masculinize, depending on the context. Like, you know, there's, there are cis people out there who want to modify their voice as well.
Renée Yoxon: Oh, 100% I mean, at the end of the day, I think that gender affirming care is for everybody, you know, like, and you know, that's so much of the premise of my work is that really the gender binary also impacts everybody, regardless of how we identify, right? But, and also the voice is so cultural. It's so fascinating. I'm on my, like, third adventure with tea, as I call the testosterone. You know, now I'm not like, on and off every year, but, you know, like, 14, 1314, years ago, I had my first, like, here on tea, and then I stopped. I think a lot of non binary people have interesting relationships with hormones, right? And now I'm kind of ending another round.
Renée Yoxon: And, you know, one of my partners was like, Oh, your voice now sounds in English like it sounds in Italian. Because in challenges like so much like deeper, you know. And I even remember when I moved to the UK, I was like, why I was still fan presenting and identifying. And I was like, Why do all the women like, Tom tap here, like this.
Renée Yoxon: This is not something that I've experienced in my culture, right? It was just everybody's in my so much more I teach. This is documented. This is a well documented, right? Yeah, because it's like, you know, and, and I think that's something that not everybody thinks about that culturally, you know, like, yes, there is, like, Anglo culture, really, that binaries push to the limit and pushes people to, sometimes not use their voices in comfortable ways. I don't know if you have any thoughts about that.
Renée Yoxon: But did you say Anglo culture? Is that Anglo?
Renée Yoxon: Yeah, I think it's interesting, because, like, even within English, there are so many different, Oh, true cases of this. So if you look at like New Zealand English, yes, they tend to differentiate gender way less than Californian English, for example.
Alex Iantaffi: That's true, interesting. That is fascinating. But yeah, I wonder if you have any thoughts about that interaction, about voice culture and gender, or if you've had clients who've been wanting to explore that, or, yeah,
Renée Yoxon: absolutely. I mean, I have lots of thoughts. You're brilliant. Let me look even before I was doing online courses I was teaching here in Montreal, yes, famously, like, very multicultural. So I would have, I think every student I taught spoke at least two languages, usually three, and different languages tend to have different average pitches, different resonances, as you're saying. So we would have to, like work on multiple languages with every individual student.
Renée Yoxon: But Further to that, like now in 2024 we're interconnected globally in a way we never have been before. So it's way more likely that I, as a gender affirming voice teacher, will teach someone outside of my region, outside of my culture, outside of my language. And I fully have taught like people in Brussels or maybe in Dutch, or I don't know, like, you know, all things that I would not run into necessarily on the street. And because of that, we have to be even more mindful not to impose our biases around gender expression vocally. So that was another thing that I thought about a lot when I was making mix and match, like I had made a few courses before that with the information I knew about course making. But this time, I really was like, Who am I not considering when I'm thinking about the typical. In taking this course, and I really had to, like, open my mind, like, I don't know anything really about anyone I have, I can't assume anything about gender, and even what we, like, you would kind of think broadly, like, feminine voices are like this, and, you know, physically and masculine voices are like this.
Renée Yoxon: Physically, it doesn't hold up.
Renée Yoxon: There's no Universalist expression of gender, like a really good case I love, is that we tend to think of like a wide contour, so a wide range of pitches as being a feminine trait, and a more shallow or monotonous range of pitches as being a masculine trait. But there's a study that showed that German speakers men have wider contours. Yes, have shallower contours, you know. And I know lots of people who speak German, I just never noticed that. So I think, yeah, you really cannot assume anything about what someone's goals are unless you live in that community with them.
Alex Iantaffi: I love that. And at the same time, I feel like voice is something that culturally, people really rely on in terms of us, one of the gender markers, right? Like I often, you know, it's so fascinating to me to see how people gender me, and the older I get, the more fascinated and less battered again. Now it's almost like just some social experiment. Let's see how much gender is spread in different contexts. You know, if I'm by myself or with other people, depending on who I'm with in the you know, especially I'm still masking everywhere in public.
Alex Iantaffi: And so, you know, sometimes if I'm masking, and depending on how I'm dressed, I guess third, and then I'll say something, and they're like, oh, sorry, ma'am.
Alex Iantaffi: I mean, sir, I mean, ma'am. I'm like, so good, so good. I'm not upset, you know, like, you can just be like, Hey, friend, or whatever works. But it's so fascinating to me how we're still relying on voice so much.
Alex Iantaffi: And depending on who I'm talking to, they may also read the voice as more masculine or more feminine in different places.
Alex Iantaffi: And so it's, yeah, it's just this really interesting thing that it's so
Renée Yoxon: context specific, too. I mean, I live in Montreal, but I just spent six months living in Mexico City, and I found that my, like, I transgressed gender harder there, you know, like, here I'm, like, average height. I dress like we're all, you know, it's all a bunch of, like, hip weirdos. Here in Montreal, they dress every kind of way that's real. But in Mexico City, I found that, like, I leaned more masculine, just I didn't change anything about me, but I got stirred a lot more than I do here. It was really wild to experience I came home, kind of like, did I like that? Maybe I should go on tea?
Alex Iantaffi: Yeah, it's fascinating to me when I go to it Italy, it's like, it's a real mixture. You know, sometimes if I'm by myself, I get scared more, but if I'm with my kids, then it's like, ma'am more. It's like, wow. Like you said, it's context. People are reading all these different clues. They're totally out of our control.
Alex Iantaffi: Also, 100% you
Renée Yoxon: can't, like, you can't hang your expectations on other people. Like, if you know passing is such a nefarious goal, because it totally depends on 100 factors, as you just said, and
Alex Iantaffi: it depends on other people's perceptions, which are really, I mean, we can do things to ourselves as trans people, but it's really outside of our control, how people perceive us in so many ways.
Alex Iantaffi: Well, in talking about things out of our control, I think that when people take hormones. I know for me, and I know for other folks I've worked with and friends as well. One of the things that's out of the control, of your control, for folks to go from estrogen dominant to testosterone dominant bodies, it's really the voice changes, right? It's like, I think there can be so much anxiety. I know I enjoy singing, not professionally, but just really love singing. And one of the things I'm like, Oh, how SSO, when I impact pitch, I feel like I don't know how to sing anymore. And, and you are a singer as well. So I wonder if people ever come to you with concerns around, like, I want to keep singing, or also no trans feminine folks who are like, who are singers and have a really complex relationship with their voices, because, you know, they might feel some sort of way around having a more masculine and airport voice, whatever it means. While, you know, having a feminine like identity and expression, does that make sense?
Renée Yoxon: It totally does.
Renée Yoxon: And like, despite the fact that I was a vocal teacher for like, a singing teacher. Rather, for many years, I haven't really tackled this too much in my business. Currently, not for any reason. I just, I have been making courses that I haven't gotten there. You've been busy, but I definitely, I have, like, done a bunch of private lessons where this has been the key issue. And I mean, well, okay, let's talk about one thing at a time, like taking tea. There's a whole like, process of adapting to your new voice on tea, and it takes longer than most people would like. To put it mildly, people really want to be good now. And yeah, it does change your relationship to tea, I mean, to singing so but, like, I don't know. I think there are risks with. Taking any medication, and your voice is going to change anyway, like, whether you take tea or not, your relationship to singing will change. Like, if I listen to recordings of myself from 2010 which is when I released my first album, I sound nothing like I like I do now. I mean, it's been 15 years, and my voice is deepened, which is just what happens. Or, of course, you know you could become disabled, or you could acquire any number of things that could change your voice, like by not making the decision, you're not not changing your voice. Time is changing your voice. You're just making an active choice in that.
Alex Iantaffi: I love that you made that point. Because I think that people often when we think about gender, we think about as this fixed entity, almost. And I think it does change for anybody, cis or trans or gender, expensive or non binary, right?
Alex Iantaffi: Our gender expression and presentation changes. Our voice definitely. It changes with aging. It just does, right?
Alex Iantaffi: Total voices change. And as you get older, voice change. I know as a disabled person, it's like boy, vocal cords are a muscle, right? And so, like, when I'm having play wraps, or I'm tired, like, you know that those vocal cords get really tired, or I can feel it, right? And I'm like, Oh, why is my voice like this?
Alex Iantaffi: And I'm like, or
Renée Yoxon: even if you have back pain, like, it impacts your ability, which impacts your voice? Your voice is a really good, like, barometer for your general health. Also, which is super interesting, exactly,
Alex Iantaffi: which also creates some really interesting ideas about what we consider acceptable, about voice or not.
Alex Iantaffi: I've been thinking about this a lot as a disabled person who's aging with Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, which then also, you know, because my spine is unstable, my voice could be different any day. And I absolutely for a living, you know, as a therapist, as a speaker, as a you know. And I'm always like, wow, what happens, you know? And I'm like, oh, but what if part of disability justice is also kind of challenging these ideas about about professional in airports, voices, right? Like, what does it mean to be like a speaker?
Alex Iantaffi: Maybe that struggle a little bit more with breath some days than others, right? And I don't know if folks are really, I love that you're coming from this more intersectional perspective where you're looking at gender, but I think you also have some experience, you know, in working with disabled folks and kind of in affirming ways, and also neurodivergent folks also might have feelings about their voice for lots of different oh my goodness, exactly. I don't know just if you have thoughts, go for it.
Renée Yoxon: I have had chronic pain since I was 20, and I'm 36 now, so I'm certainly not at like, the height of my chronic pain now, like, Thank you universe. It's very well managed. But there were years where it was, like, really unmanageable. And I was also at that time, like a professional singer, like I was weddings at restaurants and, you know, like, jobbing gigs, we used to call them. And, like, I remember thinking to myself, like, I can't take a big breath in, like, and I was trying to come up with, like, a new way to phonate that involved less intercostal muscle, because it was so painful for me. I don't know if I succeeded, but, like, I was a jazz singer, so there's a lot more, like forgiveness in terms of vocal technique. You can, like, do things a little differently than, you know, it's a little bit more stringent in terms of classical, but I do think there's, like, a lot more room for different types of voices, especially as we move forward in time, than there ever were, you know. And then on top of that, I work for the disabled women's network of of Canada.
Renée Yoxon: And yes, that job really helped me to, like, broaden my understanding of what accessibility means, what you know, the cross disability sphere, and I have, like, a very radical definition of disability. I'm like, you wear glasses. Welcome to the club.
Renée Yoxon: Absolutely
Alex Iantaffi: yes. We're all just temporarily abled, if that's who you are. But really, like, yes, most of the world is disabled or disabled at some point exactly.
Renée Yoxon: I mean, I'm sure you this is a little bit off topic, but, like, I can't I cannot understand people aren't, like, fully ready to jump on the Disability Justice bandwagon.
Renée Yoxon: I'm like, it's in your future, my friend or somebody you love, right? Like, this is for you.
Alex Iantaffi: I often joke that, finally, my age is catching up with my disability, so people are also shocked that I can't do things like the way of my 20s when I was a child, exactly. Anyway, we can go on all the tangents we want. I feel like the notorious for going on tangents with actually, my guess, don't worry about it.
Alex Iantaffi: But, yeah, I have so many thoughts on this, but let's look back on like, the hormones piece, right? The masculinizing not happening as fast as people would wish. And of course, for folks who are going from testosterone dominant to estrogen dominant bodies, right, hormones don't do really anything to voice, yeah, which sometimes the hard news. To break to some of the younger clients I've worked with, but,
Renée Yoxon: but you know what?
Renée Yoxon: It's so funny, like, having talked to many people on both sides of this, it's like the trans masculine people are like, who can't take tea, are like mad that they can't train and then the trans women are mad that they can't take drugs to fix their voice, like everybody wants what the other person has.
Renée Yoxon: I know I
Alex Iantaffi: often joke. I was like, I wish that we could just all mix and match with each other. I know that would be so great, wouldn't it? Yeah, absolutely, a little take a titty, leave a titty program.
Alex Iantaffi: Absolutely, exactly, well, and all of those things are just so wild to me as well, because, like you said, there's also, like, you know, queer voices, right? And like, gay men are, like, more effeminate, again, in air quotes. So kind of where you can't really hide, kind of who you are, because your voice has a certain quality, right? And voice is a big piece of that as well. So it's just, it's this old gender thing. It's always so fascinating to me. I'm like,
Renée Yoxon: It's thorny. It's very thorny.
Alex Iantaffi: It's Tony. And also it's just, so what's the word I'm looking for? Fragile.
Alex Iantaffi: You know, I remember, even as a child, thinking, Okay, if just me wearing different pants and wearing short hair can means that people think I'm a boy. How solid is this gender thing?
Unknown: Really? So Real? Alex, oh my goodness, totally. Yeah.
Unknown: And
Alex Iantaffi: so thinking about all of this ray I'm just really curious about the role of like, playfulness and creativity, right? You talk about vocal curiosity in your bio. I think one of the things I love about your work, it is that quality of playfulness and creativity, I think sometimes, especially for trans and non binary folks or gender expansive folks, it can feel so heavy to do gender affirming things, right? I'm doing this thing, I have complicated feelings around it, right? And so anything that can bring, like levy joy or levity, that's a great word, yeah. So tell me a little bit more how you bring that into your work, that playfulness, that curiosity for listeners, or maybe not as familiar with your work, sure, so
Renée Yoxon: when people ask, like, what is that? Where should I start with this work? I think they're always expecting me to be like, Okay, do 10 resonance push ups. But I always say to start with a warm up. Because one of the like, the thing that brings the levity down in this practice, is this need to perform gender adequately? Like, am I a woman enough? Am I man enough? Am I whatever enough in this work? So I always say, Look, if you've never done a voice practice before, just start with a warm up. And I'm gonna take this opportunity to plug my free warm up that I have on my website. If people want it, go get it right now. Do it.
Renée Yoxon: I was gonna say we can even
Alex Iantaffi: try it out if
Renée Yoxon: you want. Oh, sure, we can talk about it. Yeah. So, I mean, all a warm up is, is, like a stretch and a face stretch, maybe it's a little neck massage, and then, like, some generalized exercises to just to get your voice warm. And what that does, it does a bunch of things. One, it like, sets you up for success, so you're way more likely to be able to achieve the exercises if your voice is a little stretched and warmed up, just like you wouldn't just take off in a sprint, you do a little bit of walking, a little stretching, then you go for a jog, and maybe you do some fast running, right?
Renée Yoxon: So it's just like you don't want to work on cold muscles. Then it also helps you to develop proprioception, so body awareness you might not know, like what you're able to do, or what's challenging or what's easy, you might not know, but through a warm up, you can develop that without any of the baggage of is this woman enough or man enough, right? And then the third thing it does really well is it like builds up your tolerance to silliness, because sometimes I forget, because I've been in this game a long time, but it's so silly to, like, make a bunch of weird sounds, and I can just see the like blushing happening on people's faces.
Renée Yoxon: When they do it, like they get beat red. They're like, Oh God, it's horrible. The sounds I'm making, I will out silly you any day of the week, because I've just been doing it longer. I have absolutely no shame anymore, and that's what I want my students to develop, like, just the ability to, like, squeak and squawk and have your voice break and just do what needs to happen in order to really get into like, what am I capable of, and what do I even want from my voice?
Alex Iantaffi: Yeah, because otherwise, you're not even kind of familiar with that. And I love that. I think that lavity and silliness and playfulness are so useful in every area of life. You know, I used to work with teenagers a lot as a therapist, and sometimes I'd be like, Oh my god, Alex, you're so weird. I'm like, you haven't even touched the like edges of my weird. Honestly, we can
Renée Yoxon: get so much weird with absolutely no tolerance for weirdness, right? Because it's like when you first start to develop the realization that people are aware of you as a person, and it's totally mortifying. Right to be known as you get older, like my older students are, have very high, silly tolerance, right? Yeah, if you try absolutely
Alex Iantaffi: and I really nurture and I'm like, Look, none of your peers are in this room.
Alex Iantaffi: We can get silly. You know, I'm bound by confidentiality as your therapist, so we can make weird sounds exactly. We can like, do all the somatic therapy exercises you want, and nobody will know like, but it can be really hard to bring out that silliness. And I know there's also like, on a more serious note, I know that for a lot of neurodivergent folks, especially autistic folks, that can be a lot of shame around sound and voice even, you know, although I'm a family therapist, I'm also Somatic Experiencing practitioner, so I like to bring the body into the healing process. And even like steaming through sound. I know I do a lot of steaming through sound. I've used that a lot as a parent, especially when my oldest was really young, steaming through sound, steaming through vocalizing, toning, but like making, like weird eye pitch, T Rex noises, as we call them in our family. But if you're not in a neuro divergent, affirming environment, family or educational context, that can be so much shame because people have been told off or about really, you know, why are you making that sound? Or that sound is annoying, right? Or so that can be like an, I don't know if you'll ever come across that, that there's also an extra, like push away from that levity, that playfulness, that, because there is so much kind of trauma that maybe people are mad around being told off for making certain noises. Does that make sense? Definitely,
Renée Yoxon: definitely. And on top of that, there's some documentation that shows that autistic people like process sound differently, obviously this, but their own voice as well, right? So I've definitely had a student that was like, I can't speak any lower than this, because I cannot hear my voice if I you know, and like, the trope of, like, autistic people who speak a little at a higher volume, it's like, there's a physiological reason for that.
Alex Iantaffi: I was so relieved, actually, when I found out about this, because I was like, oh my god, more and more of my life makes sense, yeah?
Alex Iantaffi: Because often I'm like, I'm speaking too low, or I'm speaking too loud, because, or, you know, I listen to my podcast, sometimes I'm like, Oh, my accent sounds like this. In my head. It doesn't sound anything like this. Or, sometimes, you know, when I'm learning, especially when I say a word in English, and then somebody who's an English speaker is like, that's how you pronounce him. Like, that's what I'm saying.
Renée Yoxon: Like, that makes me I hate, I mean,
Alex Iantaffi: yeah,
Renée Yoxon: I think English is the one language that you can say it any way you Okay, other languages, yes, we should attempt to, like, imitate English, go for
Alex Iantaffi: it. It's the most bizarre language we've been watching chaos. And it's like, is it Minotaur? Is it Minotaur?
Renée Yoxon: There's no rules for pronunciation. How's anyone supposed to learn this exactly?
Renée Yoxon: But because, going back to what we were saying, if you've been told all your life over and over, like, hey, lower your voice. You're speaking kind of loud, like you're a nuisance, then you're obviously gonna have hang ups about about engaging with your voice. So I mean, there you really have to go to therapy. That's like you're much advice on that front, besides work on healing that trauma, because if you can break through that barrier, it's a more enjoyable process, absolutely.
Alex Iantaffi: And I think it's a both end. Sometimes people might be more willing to actually be playful with sound in kind of a learning how to use their voice context than in a therapeutic context, right? So sometimes it really goes hand in hand. I'm like, Okay, there's some voice stuff. And I might even say it'd be really great for you to work with a voice teacher or a speech and language therapist to really, like, have the space where all you're doing is voice exploration, and then here we can talk about all the feelings that come up while you're doing the work there, which I really love, kind of being able to do that work hand in hand. This
Renée Yoxon: is why we need each other, and why there's like, a lot of like, a beautiful opportunity for cross discipline growth, absolutely.
Alex Iantaffi: But I love the vocal curiosity piece. Is there, like, Are there exercises that you might be willing to share that kind of you recommend at the beginning. So if somebody is listening or watching the episode on YouTube and it's like, oh, I'm really intrigued by the thing that Renée has mentioned about warming up your voice. And like I said, I'm always willing to be silly, so I'm happy to be your guinea pig at the exercise.
Renée Yoxon: Okay, well, so warming up is pretty basic, so I don't know if we need to cover that today, but I will give you an exercise that isn't in all of my courses, and that is the sound journal. And this is the exercise that is probably people are the most resistant to it.
Renée Yoxon: And it's not, strictly speaking, like required. It's something that I picked up throughvising.
Renée Yoxon: Improvising singing. So I like have a background in jazz, and improvising music is like improvised music is a part of that. And I went to this the California jazz conservatory to take a workshop with Theo bleckman about jazz for a week, like a long time ago. This is like in 2017 but we this is why.
Renée Yoxon: I learned the sound journal exercise. And basically, when you're like an improvising musician, one of the things a serious improviser will do is develop a language on the instrument of improvising sounds. And you can really tell, like, if you've never listened to improvised music, you might not know this the difference between someone who has developed that that alphabet of sound, and someone who has not so. So basically, it's pretty simple exercise. You just start by writing down all the sounds that you can make, and you'll be like, that sounds really open ended, but you'll be shocked at how fast you run out of ideas, and you have to dig a little bit. So I always say, like, let's start with the natural world. Okay, so could you imitate a cat sound?
Alex Iantaffi: I mean, maybe from here. [makes cat sounds]
Renée Yoxon: Great. So I would, I would maybe write that as, like, really hard. It's like, we started with the hard one for, okay, okay, we'll go to another we'll go to another animal. How
Alex Iantaffi: [makes dog sounds] Much better with that about a dog?
Alex Iantaffi: one. Okay, all right, much more comfortable with dogs, for some reason.
Renée Yoxon: So then you could, like, you know, write as many animals as you could think of that you know the sound of you I don't know the sound of a Yak, for instance, but I know a snake, and I know goat and I know a sheep, and you know, I can write all that down, then you might go into the unnatural world. So, could you imitate your microwave? If you have a microwave,
Alex Iantaffi: microwaves, how does a microwave sound? Now I have the blank moment. So mine sounds like, [makes microwave sound]
Renée Yoxon: yes, that's a good microwave, excellent. Yeah.
Renée Yoxon: Thank you very much, you know.
Renée Yoxon: So you can look around your space and imitate your fridge, and you could imitate the sound, like the sound that YouTube makes when you turn it on the TV, or the cars outside, like we're imitating sounds Oh yeah, tracks like oh, yeah, yeah, excellent. And then, you know, you don't have to imitate things. You could also just, like, use choose really basic sounds. Like, could you do an ascending tone,
Alex Iantaffi: Oh, like, like, a[makes a tone that goes from low to high]
Renée Yoxon: let's make it even just go up on ah, ah, beautiful.
Renée Yoxon: So the next step of that is to take all the things you've written down and diversify them.
Renée Yoxon: So try to find variations of each one. So let's just take that ascending on Ah, could you do that as quietly as possible?
Alex Iantaffi: [Makes a quiet ahh sound]
Renée Yoxon: I didn't even hear that.
Unknown: It was so quiet. I can get pretty quiet. I know it's hard to believe, but
Renée Yoxon: Great. Okay, so now I want you to identify, how did that feel different from the normal volume? Ah, for Yeah,
Alex Iantaffi: it felt like I almost wanted to be like, smaller, okay. Just wanted to, like, just be smaller and finer.
Renée Yoxon: Yeah. So for me, I felt when I do that, let me try it, ah. I feel like, Hmm, that's interesting. Normally I feel less pressure. But today, I kind of feel like I had to control it more. So I felt more pressure.
Renée Yoxon: Actually, I didn't warm up today. So you can do all these variations, and then you start to make observations about how they feel. Now, that wasn't part of the original exercise. That was my that's my addition, because I want to help students develop this like proprioception, like when I when I'm quieter, this happens when I'm louder. This happens now, let's do another variation. Can you do that same ascending sound, but on E instead of ah, try it. E, yeah. E, go ahead one more time. Good. Now do ah again, just to see if you can feel a difference.
Alex Iantaffi: Ah, I want to do a like I did E. So I was like, Oh, that is fascinating. I tried to do a but I'm still doing it like the E. I was like, well, that's fascinating. Okay,
Renée Yoxon: yeah, nice. Okay.
Renée Yoxon: And did, could you do them back to back and see if they if they make a difference physically.
Alex Iantaffi: That's like, this is not pre prepared. We did not try this area. Yeah, I want to do the almost the same thing. My body doesn't want to differentiate the sounds.
Alex Iantaffi: But you were able to right, like I can hear you, so something is physically happening, yes, right? So I would, you know, maybe take, how do you say? Go ahead and drive it and try all the different vowels. Now, I'm fascinated by this exercise.
Alex Iantaffi: Yeah, Italian probably has some vowels that English doesn't have, you know, and you can add those into the mix. And so that's just. One. We just picked one sound, and we had like 10 variations, you know. And there's really no limit to like the web that you can create, but it's supposed to be like a fun, silly, engaging exercise. Yeah, that is the sound journal.
Alex Iantaffi: That is really cool. That's a very cool exercise. Thank you.
Alex Iantaffi: And you talked about your courses. So what courses do you have out there at the moment that people want to learn more from you? And you know, if they're like this sounds great.
Alex Iantaffi: How? What kind of classes can people take with you?
Renée Yoxon: Sure, so there's one we've already mentioned, which is mix and match designing your non binary voice. And that's the latest course that I I just released. I think anyone could take this course, because, as I said, it's designed for, like, anyone of any starting point to reach any goal. And it's a little bit more like student led, I would say, and culturally responsive, like there's less of my ideas of gender in that course than any other course. My bestseller is mindful voice feminization. So this is for the girlies, and specifically it addresses, like, the the psychological hurdles that come up in the feminization process. Because it's as you know, there's a lot of baggage there, yes. So it comes with, like, a journal, prompts workbook. There's a lot of like, reflexive exercises to do. And then the third student course that I have is masculinize your voice without testosterone. So this is about imitating the effects of testosterone without taking it. And a lot of people will take this if they're too young to take tea, or if they're planning to, but they're way on the wait list, or if they just don't want to, because they don't want such specific effects of tea, but they want that. And I do have some people who message me to ask if they can take it if they're on T and definitely it can help. And I'm hoping someday to make a course like specifically for adapting to your voice on testosterone.
Renée Yoxon: But there will be a lot of crossover with the masculinized, because there's a lot of similar exercises,
Alex Iantaffi: yeah, and I think that's really great as well, because some people cannot go on hormones also for health reasons. Absolutely. I've had clients both with testosterone dominant or estrogen dominant bodies that for various reasons, cannot go on hormones for health reasons. Yeah, and so even just to have a resource where you're like, look, you can still work on your expression, including your boys, without kind of hormonal changes, necessarily, if that's not something that's accessible to you for all the reasons listed, or kind of for health reasons, right?
Renée Yoxon: And if you took to, like, prepare if you're planning to take tea someday, like, so a lot of people who take tea, people don't know this, but lots of people who take tea then go on to do voice training after, yeah, it's very normal. So it's nothing to be ashamed of.
Renée Yoxon: There's just like no one path to your ultimate gender expression.
Renée Yoxon: And I just ventured to say, we never get there. There's no ultimate.
Alex Iantaffi: No, I really honestly, over the years, my favorite metaphor of gender that started using a few years back is like gender as a landscape. I think I started using it, I don't know, sometimes in 2010 something, when I did my Ignite talk, I was like, Oh, actually, gender is the landscape, which means we can even revisit the same places, but in a different way. Like I feel like, as I get older and I get less worried about how people read me, I'm really revisiting femininity for this masculine queer lens, and really embracing, like, oh, actually, maybe I do want to wear earrings again. You know, I actually do want to express, you know, my gender in a different way. And I just love the idea that we can kind of come back, revisit places we've been going to dip through different lens, go to different places. I don't know that we're ever done. You know, I don't know. That's just,
Renée Yoxon: I think we're never done. No, I was, how can we be done? Like, it's with this, whatever gender is really, especially as the goal post keeps moving, I don't know if you've, if you're, you're not on Tiktok, so you don't know. But like, the things they're expecting of women nowadays.
Renée Yoxon: Whoo, it's even worse than we
Alex Iantaffi: I'm not on Tiktok, but I am really passionate. I love reality TV, and especially as a as a marriage and family therapist, I do love dating shows and relationship shows, and sometimes I'm so confounded. And luckily, one of my nesting partners is on tick tock. And I'm like, what is happening right now? Why are they talking like this or saying this, or presenting in this way? And they're like, let me tell you what's happening. Like I was, I thought there was pressure in the 80s and 90s, but now the pressure is, like, I know off the chart. I always used to say, like, being a teenager in the in the 2000s was brutal, like yes, but I don't know if I want to be one. Now, I was a teenager in the 80s. I thought that was bad enough in the love the 80s. And now I just, I feel like there's so much input as well the teenagers have about what's right, what's wrong, how they should dress, how they should look, how that should. Sound exactly. It's exhausting.
Renée Yoxon: There's a name for everything now, which we didn't, which we didn't.
Alex Iantaffi: There's a name, whether it's accurate or not sometimes, or whether we're using, I'm like, do we need to use all this very medicalized terms, too? And I was like, I don't know. Yeah, it's interesting this.
Renée Yoxon: You know, people will, like, just sort of tangentially, often ask me to characterize voices on Tiktok, like I respond to people's comments and something, some people always ask me, like, what's the gay voice? Yes, and it's like, you can call something the gay voice, but it's like, impossible to pin down. It's this weird, nebulous thing. And like, just like you're saying, there's lots of friends vocally and otherwise that have a name, but you can't ever really pin them down very well, and that just makes the goalpost impossible, and it makes people perpetually dissatisfied, you know,
Alex Iantaffi: absolutely well.
Alex Iantaffi: And also just the influence of, like, media, right? I remember, you know, growing up, yeah, there was TV, of course, like, but it hadn't quite, didn't have quite the pervasive impact that it has now even, you know, growing up in Italy, think about how many more people in Sicily, young people would speak Sicilian, and older people would only speak Sicilian. But, you know, now, with decades and decades and decades of television, that has changed things, and now there's a lot more preservation of language, right? This kind of uniformity that happens, and even here, it's just like younger people pick up accents from areas that don't even live in. Because fascinating, that what's represented, right? Fascinating.
Alex Iantaffi: I'm really fascinated. But just like the impact of media and social media as well. On just
Renée Yoxon: I noticed that Mexico actually, because I spoke English with a lot of my friends, I speak Spanish as well. So it was a mix of both, yeah, but a lot of people had, like, British accents in English, because you don't, I mean, you get to choose your English accent when you're learning a second totally, right?
Alex Iantaffi: Yes. How did you choose yours when you when you learn English?
Alex Iantaffi: It was the teacher, right?
Alex Iantaffi: Because people were like, Oh, why do you have this accent? And it's like, of course, you mimic whatever exactly teacher or the tape you listen to, right? Or whatever TV shows you're watching, or like, yeah, it's fascinating. Love it, yeah? And that, that casual piece, is so much harder to pinpoint. But you know, and I know that you're kind of kind of going off a little bit in a different direction. I know that speech and language therapists, or pathologists, as they're called in Canada and other places, are more on the medical side, but there's also very real aspect of like hearing for our voice, right? That like, beyond all the other variations, I think that, traditionally, a lot of folks kind of strain their voices, maybe in ways that don't need to be strained or used. And so I don't know if that's something that's part of the work that you do, or that's something that it's really separate from the work that you do, or just curious about that.
Renée Yoxon: Yeah, certainly, I always include, like, a section on vocal health. With every course that I do, I think that people are, like, afraid of affecting their voice, of hurting their voice, more than is like, it's an outsized fear.
Renée Yoxon: It's not really reflected by the reality. Certainly it's possible, but to have, like, permanently, to permanently damage your vocal folds. You need to be like you have to have chronic laryngitis. You know, you have to be like ripping those chords every single night.
Renée Yoxon: You know, like people in musical theater are like, at risk of getting vocal nodes. None of my students use their voice enough to physically hurt their voice.
Renée Yoxon: The only exception, of course, is people on tea who are constantly straining super hard because they have, like, an old pattern that they need to break.
Renée Yoxon: Right? That makes sense? Yeah?
Renée Yoxon: So of course, I like tell people, you know, warm up, hydrate appropriately. Little sips throughout the day is best.
Renée Yoxon: Don't smoke if you can, or vape, that's just like, straight bad for your whole body, yeah? But harm reduction, if it keeps you from killing yourself, then great, go ahead. Absolutely, like, you know, I have a very harm reductive approach.
Alex Iantaffi: I'm a harm reduction therapist. I'm right there with you. Whatever gets you for the night.
Renée Yoxon: You know, I'd rather you didn't for your vocal help, but exactly, you can if you need to. And then, like, yeah, just if it starts to hurt, or if it's consistently hurting, you do need to see a professional at some point.
Renée Yoxon: Because also I am, like I said earlier, I'm not a medical professional, and every so often there is somebody with a pathology who does need to have it looked at, of course, and that's why, like, I keep relationships with these people and with with speech language pathologists, with laryngologists, and I always just say, if your voice is consistently hurting, like acute pain, a little bit of soreness maybe is okay, like with any muscle, but acute pain, that's when you need to see your primary care physician, absolutely.
Alex Iantaffi: But I love what you said as well, that actually it's really hard to hurt your voice unless you're, like, harder than you. Harder than people think, right? Because even that is kind of reassuring, I think, to folks you know, to the end of really hearing that piece that actually, like, we can be playful, we can be curious, we can, like, exercise, you know, like, you can definitely sprain your ankle running, but, like, watch out, yeah.
Alex Iantaffi: But that's that piece of like being in tune with your body as well, right? And totally and so do you find that sometimes this is also helping people be more present with themselves and more in tune with their bodies in other ways?
Renée Yoxon: Yes, good point, actually. So I do like an office hour every month, a live office hour so people who are in any course can come and ask their questions, and occasionally I will see someone who, like demonstrates an exercise to me, and they're not sure why. It feels bad, and I'm like, Oh, you are not noticing that you're breathing in this particular way, or that your postures in this particular way. And that's why I have the office hour, because every so often there's going to be someone who's not noticing something that I, as a teacher will immediately notice.
Renée Yoxon: And that's normal. That's like, that's, if it wasn't normal, I wouldn't need to the office hour, you know? So it's, yeah, I always encourage people like, bring your questions to the class, or, if you're just curious, if you want to get feedback on an exercise, come to my office hour. I'm hoping, in the future, to increase the number of office hours I'm giving and create, like, a more robust community for my for my students, but it's like, on the horizon, it's a 2025, project.
Renée Yoxon: You know,
Alex Iantaffi: the sound is so many hours in a day, and you already do the most. I'm always so impressed with I subscribe on your channel, on Instagram, or whatever they're called now the Instagram channels. And I was like, wow, Renée is posting something new. Again. It's like, you're just creating that content. And it takes time to create content for social media.
Alex Iantaffi: So
Renée Yoxon: I'm very lucky. I have an editor, so I work with editor, Tegan. I just wanted to shout her out. She is I wouldn't be able to do this without her.
Alex Iantaffi: Well, thank you, Tegan. But also you do produce a lot of, like, really good content. And actually, that leads me to a question that I wanted to ask you earlier about we kind of went on other really interesting quest is, how did you come to this work? Right?
Alex Iantaffi: You were like a trained singer and songwriter. Why choose kind of this path for yourself? If that's okay,
Renée Yoxon: yeah. So this path kind of chose me in a lot of ways, because when I was in my songwriting degree, I did like a business course, like an art, business arts course, and we had to make a plan for the next five years. And I it was in that moment that I, like decided I wanted to settle on teaching singing, because I was still what my focus teaching singing to trans and disabled people, primarily because there are a lot of great singing teachers in the world, but very few with the empathy and expertise that I have to teach these populations.
Renée Yoxon: But they they're they don't have a lot of disposable income for singing lessons, traditionally.
Renée Yoxon: So I created a scholarship program that I launched like while I was in my songwriting degree. It's called the right to sing award, and I think I raised like $80,000 and it just basically paid my salary so that I could give free lessons away.
Renée Yoxon: So I like, advertise, yeah, it was amazing. I advertised for donations through the community, and I advertised for applicants as well. And fun fact, everybody who received a scholarship was both trans and disabled, which in our community. But so through that, the advertising, I think, I took out a couple Instagram ads an organization here in Montreal called Project 10, which services trans youth. So under 25 they reached out to me and said, Hey, we see that you teach trans people voice stuff.
Renée Yoxon: Would you come and do a workshop called Trans vocal exploration?
Renée Yoxon: Because they had had a speech language pathologist come in and like, again, no shade to my brothers and sisters and siblings, and it's just different. It's just sometimes it's different. And they just weren't happy with this particular SLP, because I think he had, like, some more prescriptive ideas about what the process would look like, and they wanted somebody non binary, someone with a more expansive idea of what it could look like.
Renée Yoxon: And I was like, I've never done this before, but it sounds like everything I love, nerding out about the voice and solving interesting pedagogical problems. And trans people like, Sign me up. Yeah, right. I did that workshop for them, and then I did it again in French, and I think I did it like, a couple more times. And then whenever they had somebody who was looking for private lessons, they would send them to me, because I was, like, the one person they had on file, yeah.
Renée Yoxon: And then I did a bunch of the same workshop for another organization and another organization, you know, it just kind of grew from there until, like, I turned around, and everything I was doing was gender affirming voice, and I wasn't doing singing anymore.
Renée Yoxon: And so that was when I made the decision, like, Okay, I'm i, this is what I do now. I better start a tick tock, because that's where all the young trans people are at. That is where they're so this was in 2021 I launched my tick tock, and I, like, put out my first tick tock. I didn't really think anything of it. I literally recorded it, like, off the.
Renée Yoxon: Cuff, like, blah, blah, blah, you know. And it went viral because it was during tiktoks, like warming period. There was, like a moment in time when they were growing the platform that they would warm new creators. So push your content out really far. And it was very easy to grow and go viral on the platform if you were new at that time. So I think I got like 10,000 followers in one weekend, like, something I had never seen before in my life.
Alex Iantaffi: Was that overwhelming. Yes, as well.
Alex Iantaffi: Like, I hardly have, like, not even 2000 followers on Instagram already.
Renée Yoxon: They're worth different Tiktok followers, different Yes, but still a lot.
Renée Yoxon: It was shocking. It was so shocking. I was overwhelmed. I like, called my friend who had already gone viral on Tiktok, and I was like, Please help me.
Renée Yoxon: What's happening? It was so that was the moment I decided to pivot into online courses. And I even told my friend, like, I can't do a course. My value as a teacher is what I bring to the individual. She was like, okay, like, you don't have to. But then my wait list filled up, and I couldn't. And I thought, like, trans people are on wait lists for everything, and I don't want to be that. And where's the end, right? Like, if I have this wait list, do I raise my prices and raise my prices? No. So I thought if I made a course, then I could put all the like, 101, information in there. It could be at a price that was, like, very reasonable for how much information, yes. And then my idea was people would take that, and if they still had problems or still had questions, they could come to me after for private lessons. Well, it didn't really work out exactly that way. But there was just it was so popular that it like, was like, Oh, this is what I do now, I guess. And so I actually just retired that first course, like, three days I saw that, yeah, I was kind of like, I don't know.
Renée Yoxon: I was sad about it. You know, it was like, the start of my new life, and now it's over that part,
Alex Iantaffi: yeah, but you have all this other new courses that are really exciting, and I'm assuming that you retired that course because you feel like you really wanted to update your content. Yes, yes.
Renée Yoxon: So mix and match, in my heart, kind of replaced trans vocal exploration, because TV was like a mixed course, so anybody could take it, but it was essentially the workshop I gave for project 10, like in a course, and there were no slides like I had never heard of Canva when I made that course, and I'm just a stronger communicator in that medium now than I was when I made the course, and it was just causing like problems people to know which course to take. So it made sense to retire it, but it was like, Thank you for your service. Transmittal exploration. And
Alex Iantaffi: makes sense to me, because it's like, the more we do something, the more comfortable we get with it, and the more we learn. And absolutely, I'm a better speaker now than I was 20 years ago, for sure, you know, and thankful to all the people gave evaluations.
Alex Iantaffi: How do you because, right, that's how at least I was. Like, I always say to my people, I do read those valuations. Please send me feedback. I have to listen and change accordingly.
Alex Iantaffi: How do you feel that this chose you right? Because for a lot of us, trans, non binary, gender, expensive folks, in a way, I know people are the same. How did you choose, like, your career? I was like, I don't know that I really chose it like, just by virtue of who I am, like, I had a lot of queer people and then trans people, even before I transitioned, that neurodivergent people, I was, like, I don't know, maybe we just all attract each other. But even professionally, like, how do you feel about the fact that, in a way, because of your identity and who you are, this work chose you.
Alex Iantaffi: Yeah. I have complicated feelings. Because, on the one hand, I love my job. I think I have the best job in the world.
Alex Iantaffi: I forget cisgender people exist.
Alex Iantaffi: Frankly, I don't ever have to talk to I understand that feeling, yes, yeah. I love like I love running a business. I love that I get to quickly respond to the needs of the community, that there's no one, like, there's no it's not it runs at my pace, you know? Yes.
Alex Iantaffi: So that's really wonderful. I do again. I was listening to gender reveal, and they were talking about how beautiful it is to like be trans and not have to monetize it. And so part of me is like, what would that be like? I really wonder I don't love, like being in the public eye all the time, not that I'm like, so popular or famous or anything, but, you know, I still get some hate comments, which is not so fun. I just wish trolls would like get hobbies, like, let's bring hobbies back. 2025 you know, yes, go be outside instead of, like, harassing people on social media, especially harassing trans people on social media for existing, yeah, really feel bad for trolls, because you must live such an impoverished life if you don't have other things to do with your precious life on this earth. You know, like, learn to macrame, come on that that is like, yeah, pick like. That is surreal. Whenever somebody leaves a high to a comment, I'm like, I can just, like, delete and block and just wish you well on your journey. Because, like, I don't think about them, but they're obviously thinking about me. It's so strange.
Alex Iantaffi: Yeah, I know this obsession with trans folks and arresting trans folks online, really, really, not great, but yes and, but it's tricky, right? Because when you exist as a trans person, especially in any pedagogical, educational context, it just happens, in my experience, that you kind of get pushed a little bit. And it's been really interesting now that there is more interest in disability. I mean, I've been writing about disability and sexuality for 20 years, but now that disability piece, especially with the sexuality piece, gets asked more and more, because finally, people are like, waking up a little bit more, tad more to disability justice issues. And the sad part is that there's still very little, very few folks that talk about that intersection of disability and sexuality. But yeah, I don't know that it can be avoided.
Alex Iantaffi: Kind of,
Renée Yoxon: yeah, it's tough. I mean, and I had already been in the public eye for years like, I think that's one of the reasons why, like, the combination of not only being a teacher but being a content creator came quite naturally to me, because I had released four albums before I did this.
Alex Iantaffi: So along with a marketing career, and you are a performer.
Renée Yoxon: Exactly. I've been marketing. I've been writing newsletters. I'd been blogging before. I used to, like, run a blog with ads on it, you know, like that related to music before. So, like, everything in my life kind of prepared me for this career. And when I look back at all the different things I did and I've done in all the degrees that I, yeah, like everything kind of was leading me towards this. So it really, I really feel like I'm in my vocation now, you know, like I've done my life's work, and it's, it's beautiful. That is beautiful.
Alex Iantaffi: I love that.
Alex Iantaffi: Well, you know, one question I don't wear I want to be respectful of your time, even though I feel like I could talk with you for like, another two hours. I want Don't worry much, as I would like to. But one of the things I've been asking other trends, the minor gender, expensive folks and guests on the show, is like, how do you find joy at the moment, because, you know, we are seeing kind of another wave of really intense anti transphobic sentiments everywhere. I think so, how do you find like joy or comfort or pleasure in your life nowadays, even just one small thing that you feel comfortable sharing with listening?
Renée Yoxon: Yeah, absolutely.
Renée Yoxon: So I find joy in my goals and hobbies, and this is why I always say, bring back hobbies for the trolls, because I would be nothing without the things that make my life well rounded.
Renée Yoxon: So I'm a runner. I run like, three times a week, and that's very challenging for me as a person with chronic pain. Yeah, do it real slow and carefully, and I did, in fact, learn to macrame in the pandemic, and I go to my little movie once a week like, that's the other great thing about running this business is that I get to set my own hours. So what brings me joy is having, like, a beautiful work life balance and creating a job that, like it, lives with my values, you know. So I stopped working at like 334, o'clock, usually with exceptions for wonderful interviews. Of course, I don't work on Fridays usually, so it's a four day work week, which I want for everybody, and that allows me to do things like play the piano in the evenings and cook beautiful food for myself, and see my friends and help my friends and and go to Spanish class, and I, you know, I have a lot, like, a rich life outside of my work. So that's what keeps me sort of grounded at the moment.
Alex Iantaffi: I love that I feel inspired. I always joke that I have a terrible boss, and that terrible boss is me. Don't do that, I know, but it's so hard to, like, unlearn, like in academia, you just leave and breathe academia and so it's so hard to learn. Just ask yourself, the next time you want to work late, what would Renée do in this moment?
Alex Iantaffi: I am totally going to ask myself that, okay, I'm just gonna be totally inspired by Rene's approach to like, being entrepreneur.
Renée Yoxon: You know what I've been doing lately? Actually, at
3:00-3: 30 I turned my computer all the way off, which I didn't used to do. I used to let it run, and I would feel guilty I hadn't turned my computer off in two weeks. Now it is off every night from the time I finished work until the next day
Alex Iantaffi: that that and the sound journal like I'm taking just a little nuggets with me.
Alex Iantaffi: Thanks, Renee, you're so welcome, Alex. Oh, well. And then the question to ask, Oh, my guess at the end, is there anything we haven't talked about that you were hoping we would talk about in this interview today?
Renée Yoxon: You know, I think we covered it all actually,
Alex Iantaffi: that's amazing.
Alex Iantaffi: Well, I don't know about you listeners, but I'm taking so many wonderful nuggets, like it's okay to be. Playful with my voice. I'm looking forward to experiment with the sound journal. Also, one of my intentions for 2025 is to take one of your classes. Because I'm like, Oh my gosh, I've been wanting to, and I almost got the class that you were retiring, and I was like, I will have zero time to do this, because I'm a terrible boss. 2025 it will happen. I love you so dear listeners, or if you're watching on YouTube, viewers, I hope that you take away some nuggets of wisdom from all the beautiful insights that Renée has given us today. And thank you, Renée, for spending time with gender stories today. I appreciate you so much.
Renée Yoxon: Thank you so much for having you on. It's been a genuine pleasure.
Alex Iantaffi: Oh, my God, this has been so fun. All right, dear listeners and viewers, take care of your voice and play with it and see if you can find joy in your beautiful vocal expression, and until next time you.