New techniques help male-to-females speak like women.

"I'm applying for sex reassignment surgery," Cameron Diaz announces to her stunned spouse halfway through the new film "Being John Malkovich."

That's easy for her to say: She's a woman. Transsexuals typically want to change their voices as well as their bodies, and long medical experience shows it's far easier for a female-to-male transsexual to acquire a masculine-sounding voice than for a male-to-female transsexual to acquire a feminine-sounding voice.

But now, new therapeutic techniques are helping male-to-females to sound convincingly feminine - and without necessarily undergoing surgery on their vocal cords, a University of Washington speech therapist said at a San Francisco conference Friday.

For decades doctors have successfully lowered the pitch or frequency of female-to-male transsexuals' voices by giving them injections of male hormones. By contrast, female hormones do not raise the voice pitch of male-to-female transsexuals, or "transgendered persons" as many call themselves.

Consequently, many male-to-females have chosen to have their vocal cords surgically altered. Surgeons stretch the vocal cords in hopes of raising their frequency to a more female-like pitch.

Unfortunately, the results are sometimes terribly unconvincing, as if the surgeons had tried to make Barry White sound like Minnie Mouse.

Alternative, non-surgical techniques should also be considered, speech therapist Michelle Mordaunt, of the University of Washington, said Friday at the annual convention of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association at Moscone Center.

To successfully "pass" as women, male-to-female transsexuals can exploit the differences between male and female speaking styles, explained Mordaunt, who over the last three years has given speech therapy lessons to 10 transsexuals, nine of them male-to-females.

She cited numerous ways in which even a male-to-female transsexual cursed with low pitch could sound remarkably feminine. They include:

Speaking over a wider range of frequencies than do men. Mordaunt explained that when a woman talks, her voice tends to range across a wider frequency band, from high to low, than do men's voices, which are usually more monotone. "Pitch variability is greater for women," said Mordaunt.

Speaking at varying rates. Female speech tends to vary in speed, with slow patches followed by "short rushes of speech," Mordaunt said.

Talking more "from the head" than "from the chest." When men speak, a higher percentage of air comes from their larger chest cavities, giving their voices more of a foghorn quality.

By contrast, Mordaunt said, women's speech tends to have a "lighter" sound because they generate more sounds using smaller body cavities, namely the upper portion of their "voice boxes" around the throat and head.

So she trains her male-to-female clients how to rely more on talking "from the head." "It's one of the best things for my clients, and it takes stress off their vocal cords," she said.

Women also tend to use characteristic gestures while speaking, Mordaunt noted. She advises her male-to-female clients how to deploy similar gestures, such as brushing one's hair backward or using her hands in an "animated but subtle" way.

Such gestures shouldn't be overdone, she cautions. "You shouldn't flip your hair backward 100 times a minute," she said with a laugh.

One of Mordaunt's success stories also spoke at the hour-and-a-half session titled "Voice Treatment for Transgender Clients: Clinical and Consumer Perspectives." Judy Osborne, a male-to-female transsexual in Seattle, gave a witty speech about her experiences as a man who became a woman -in voice as well as body.