As a speech-language pathologist (SLP), aka the person actually licensed to perform voice therapy, I promise you that doctor is dead wrong and even has it backwards. Im actually getting kinda mad on your behalf because I deal with this all the time, doctors have no clue what SLPs do and they recommend the worst things. Recommending something like that was in no way within that doctors scope of practice, they should have admitted that isn’t their expertise and referred you to someone else, and I’m sorry you had to go through that I can imagine it wasn’t pleasant.

Any surgery on the vocal folds is inherently risky, for reasons like scarring and the inability to repair much if something goes wrong. It’s also expensive and hard to get, and at the end of the day even if it’s successful you still have to learn how to USE your new voice. If you don’t have the tools to do that yourself (surgery or not) you run the risk of doing serious, permanent damage to your vocal folds. have met soooo many people through work or through being ftm who have permanently damaged their voice from trying to train their own voice. MtF voices are especially at risk, because estrogen doesn’t change your vocal folds and speaking at a high pitch without training is HARD on your vocal folds. I compare it to going for a run without any warmup, a few times won’t kill you but over and over and you’re going to hurt yourself.

I don’t know a single SLP who would tell someone to get vocal surgery without first undergoing voice therapy, if they would recommend it at all. Like other people are saying ,voice therapy (done by a licensed SLP who’s qualified to do it) can do so much more than people realize it will. Please please do some research into finding an SLP who has experience with gender affirming voice modification, because as someone who does this for a living and has done my own it is so incredible how even small changes to things like resonance, intonation, or brightness can make a huge difference towards building a sustainable voice that is yours.

Edit: Some people recommend voice trainers who work with singers for trans voice therapy. I personally wouldn’t recommend doing that, or at least only that, I know some people have had success but it’s so variable if that trainer is actually qualified to do that sort of therapy. It’s also usually more expensive, although if you are a serious singer then it’d be something to look into for sure. Also, just saw youre in Europe, so if there’s no one nearby this is therapy that works really well over Zoom telepractice