(Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov, Headline USA) The National Institutes of Health approved a research grant in November of last year for over $200,000 to create an app that would help men who think that they are women to sound more like them.
According to the College Fix, the grant was approved in November 2023 by the NIH’s Deafness and Other Communication Disorders department. The grant will be run by Vesna Dominika Novak, a “transgender” associate professor at the University of Cincinnati.
From December 2023 to November 2024, the NIH approved $213,878 in funding, which would allow Novak’s team to create a smartphone app that would train men who “identify” as “transgender women” to speak like women, the project details revealed.
“Transgender and gender diverse people exhibit a significantly lower quality of life than the general public. One reason for this is voice dysphoria: distress because a person’s voice does not match their gender identity… Reducing this voice-gender incongruence can improve quality of life, but is difficult to achieve,” the abstract of the grant said.
It also explained that creating software would be one way of “helping” these people to live in their made-up realities.
“One way to provide more accessible GAVT [gender-affirming voice and communication training] would be through a smartphone- or computer-based software that delivers voice information, suggests exercises and provides feedback on exercise performance.”
Going to speech therapists is “time-consuming [and] costly” and that there aren’t enough who specialize in GAVT, the abstract also said, adding that, once the app is completed, it will include “visual-acoustic biofeedback” to tell the user how their voice sounds and then suggest on how to make it more feminine.
Forty men who think that they are “transgender” will use the researchers’ “prototype” app and meet online every week for the study, the grant said. In addition to using the “prototype” app, these men will also be prescribed “homework” by the researchers during the week with ranging levels of difficulty.
“Self-reported amount of daily practice (primary outcome) as well as self-reported self-efficacy and intrinsic motivation scores will be compared between groups. Upon completion, the project will result in the first GAVT software that combines visual-acoustic biofeedback of pitch and resonance with structured exercises – highly requested but currently unavailable features of such software,” the abstract said.
