# Different pitch human males vs females **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 10, 2022, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/different-pitch-human-males-vs-females/957523 "2022-01-10T16:12:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2022, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/different-pitch-human-males-vs-females/957523/21 "2022-01-11T20:59:11Z")
That’s outstanding. Some MTF transpeople opt for vocal chord surgery (not many, AFAICT, due to the cost and the fact that other techniques work well enough for most people). From one company that offers it: Most transgender voice surgery performed is feminizing voice surgery. In order to affect pitch, voice surgery is used to modify the physical characteristics of the vocal cords that determine pitch. These are vocal fold tension, length, and mass > **[Voice Surgery for Transgender Individuals](https://www.verywellhealth.com/voice-surgery-for-transgender-individuals-5087580)** > > Voice surgery for transgender individuals is used to adjust the pitch of the voice. It is more often requested by transfeminine individuals. FTM transpeople develop deeper voices just due to taking testosterone, which affects the aforementioned “vocal fold tension, length, and mass.” So basically men have deeper voices because they have a lot more testosterone than women, so deep voices are likely an accidental of evolution rather than something specifically evolved. However, it might have been accelerated by sexual selection once it became obvious that deep voices not only indicate masculinity, but adulthood, and in men it seems that appearing definitely not childlike is strongly selected for. ---
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2022, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/different-pitch-human-males-vs-females/957523/22 "2022-01-11T21:34:29Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Since men had slightly deeper voices, deeper voices came to be regarded as “more masculine”, and so women tended to prefer deep voices, and so men whose voices were disproportionately deep had an advantage. Yeah, just ask Barry White. ---
**Author:** ![gkster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gkster/32/14107_2.png) [@gkster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gkster)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2022, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/different-pitch-human-males-vs-females/957523/23 "2022-01-11T21:42:21Z")
Spelling nitpick: People, please, it’s vocal **cords** and _ **not** _ vocal **chords**. No h. > **[Vocal cords](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vocal_cords)** > > Pages for logged out editors learn more > > In humans, vocal cords, also known as vocal folds or voice reeds, are folds of throat tissues that are key in creating sounds through vocalization. The size of vocal cords affects the pitch of voice. Open when breathing and vibrating for speech or singing, the folds are controlled via the recurrent laryngeal branch of the vagus nerve. They are composed of twin infoldings of mucous membrane stretched horizontally, from back to front, across the lar... ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2022, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/different-pitch-human-males-vs-females/957523/24 "2022-01-11T22:54:46Z")
Apologies. It’s one of the few words I have a blind spot for. ---
**Author:** ![si\_blakely](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d9b06d/32.png) [@si\_blakely](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/si_blakely)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2022, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/different-pitch-human-males-vs-females/957523/25 "2022-01-13T00:39:00Z")
The characteristic pitches of male/female voices are called _formants_ and are caused by resonant filter elements in the vocal tract (as stated by @Francis_Vaughan). These formants are generally associated with vowel sounds, and do not significantly depend of the pitch of the initial vocalisation from the vocal cords. The frequencies of the formants depend primarily on the actual and relative size of the vocal structures, and are impacted during growth and development (as are the vocal cords) by hormones such as testosterone. The “chipmunk” effect produced when singing is pitched-shifted by speeding up playback is due to both the pitch and the formants being shifted up - a higher set of formants is associated with a smaller vocal tract, moving from male to female to child to impossibly small (like a medium-sized rodent). The ability to isolate formant structure from a pitched vocalisation, modify the pitch, and then reapply the previous formant response is a key operation in digital signal processing, and is required to maintain a natural-sounding result when implementing large pitch-shift using a tool such as Autotune. An alternative operation is also possible - shifting the formant structure independent of the original pitched vocalisation to make a voice change gender or age. ---
**Author:** ![Isilder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/cc9497/32.png) [@Isilder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isilder)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2022, 12:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/different-pitch-human-males-vs-females/957523/26 "2022-01-13T12:29:19Z")
High frequencies reflect off objects more, low frequencies penetrate through, the “booming” effect. This may give them authority. Mens ears and brains may be wired to despise the high pitch of children and ladies who are excited, so that they are pushed away and leave them the women and children in peace if they are getting yelled at, and that may be an evolutionary advantage… if it means the women had more children and more children survived to adulthood. ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2022, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/different-pitch-human-males-vs-females/957523/27 "2022-01-13T13:10:05Z")
> [@Isilder](#): > > Mens ears and brains may be wired to despise the high pitch of children and ladies who are excited Are they? I guess that’s why men hate listening to women singing so much. 😀 I think it’s wise to be very, very cautious about the ‘evolutionary fairy tales’ that many people like to make up. ---
**Author:** ![xtenkfarpl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/c2a13f/32.png) [@xtenkfarpl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xtenkfarpl)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2022, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/different-pitch-human-males-vs-females/957523/28 "2022-01-14T17:05:01Z")
Small sample again: the highest voice of any our cats is a male. He has a quite unusual vocal pitch, hence his nickname “Squeak”… ---
**Author:** ![EdelweissPirate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8491ac/32.png) [@EdelweissPirate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EdelweissPirate)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2022, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/different-pitch-human-males-vs-females/957523/29 "2022-01-23T22:31:17Z")
Agreed—another term for those is “just-so stories.” Kipling captures the preciousness of the stories with that term, IMHO. ---
**Author:** ![doubleminus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5daacb/32.png) [@doubleminus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doubleminus)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2022, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/different-pitch-human-males-vs-females/957523/30 "2022-01-23T23:53:29Z")
So, on the balance, you wouldn’t hypothesize that average pitch difference between men and women has evolutionary reasons ? ---
**Author:** ![EdelweissPirate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8491ac/32.png) [@EdelweissPirate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EdelweissPirate)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2022, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/different-pitch-human-males-vs-females/957523/31 "2022-01-24T00:25:30Z")
I don’t think anyone is saying that. But we do need to have more than a hunch when we ascribe things to evolution—falsifiable hypotheses are a good starting point. Otherwise, the speaker is just a fabulist. ---
**Author:** ![doubleminus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5daacb/32.png) [@doubleminus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doubleminus)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2022, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/different-pitch-human-males-vs-females/957523/32 "2022-01-24T01:21:42Z")
Well, theorizing about the evolutionary roots of _any functional_ characteristic seems to me unfalsifiable, however a large part of biology research deals with this. Some explanations seem to be more reasonable, some not. It now looks to me that making assumptions about _humans_ is more, how should I put it, culturally suspect. However, If we just see ourselves as another species, I can’t find a convincing reason on why it should be so. Maybe it ain’t, though. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2022, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/different-pitch-human-males-vs-females/957523/33 "2022-01-24T01:30:43Z")
Some hypotheses are much less reasonable than others, though. Like, men despising the voices of women and children is something that would be strongly selected against, not for. ---
**Author:** ![doubleminus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5daacb/32.png) [@doubleminus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doubleminus)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2022, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/different-pitch-human-males-vs-females/957523/34 "2022-01-24T01:46:44Z")
This makes no sense to me as well. Why should men despise voices of women & children? But, [Feynman explained best](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dp4dpeJVDxs) why _why_ questions are problematic. ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2022, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/different-pitch-human-males-vs-females/957523/35 "2022-01-24T04:55:26Z")
Ad hoc biological adaptation hypotheses: > **[Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - 2013-01-12](https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2853)** > > Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - 2013-01-12 This comic was the inspiration for a real Festival of Bad Ad Hoc Hypotheses > **[BAHFest](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9v7v79mAlvKCrjrJvj-Fww/videos)** > > The official YouTube channel of BAH! The Festival of Bad Ad Hoc Hypotheses! > > The first ever Festival of Bad Ad Hoc Hypotheses (BAH!) was held on October 6th at MIT's Kresge Auditorium. It was the first of what we hope will be many celebrations of... ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2022, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/different-pitch-human-males-vs-females/957523/36 "2022-01-24T05:10:12Z")
A theory from BAHFest about the irritating sound of babies crying: [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/Zm-sQnazFAQ/maxresdefault.jpg "BAHFest 2013 - Tomer Ullman: The Crying Game") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zm-sQnazFAQ) ---
**Author:** ![CC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f1d935/32.png) [@CC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CC)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2022, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/different-pitch-human-males-vs-females/957523/37 "2022-02-04T23:03:35Z")
Which is one reason that the castrati had higher voices as they were usually surgically altered prior to puberty, hence the lack of hormone generating glands. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/different-pitch-human-males-vs-females/957523.md?page=1)