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Buy The Testosterone Files: My Hormonal and Social Transformation from Female to Male by Max Wolf Valerio available and for sale on Brightsurf
| View Larger Image | The Testosterone Files: My Hormonal and Social Transformation from Female to Male
by Max Wolf Valerio
| | List Price: | $10.00 |  | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours | | | | | Sales Rank: | 384957 | | Studio: | Seal Press | | | Binding: | Paperback | | Number Of Pages: | 280 | | Publication Date: | April 13, 2006 | | Publisher: | Seal Press |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
Max Wolf Valerio crafts a raw, gripping, and poetic account of life before, during, and after injecting testosterone. Valerio's detailed observations about a lesbian transitioning from female to a heterosexual male highlights the physical and emotional differences between women and men, and alternately challenges and confirms readers' assumptions about gender.
The Testosterone Files addresses the most fundamental issues of transitioning, from buying men's underwear to choosing a male name, as well as the profound subjects of male privilege, physical power, and existing as a male who was once distrustful and critical of men's intentions. Valerio's honest and forthcoming opinions on gender, identity, and self-perception comprise the core of this intensely personal and absorbing narrative which grapples with the tough and complex issues that emerge in a world whose assumptions about gender binaries are being increasingly challenged as more people openly self-define across the gender spectrum. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 10 reviews)
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Fascinating 
I barely made it through the prologue of this book because of the writing style. The author is a poet and it really shows in that section. Unfortunately I'm not too keen on poetry and, while slogging through it, kept mumbling Mark Twain's Rule 14: Eschew Surplusage!
Nevertheless, this book is a fascinating read, and well worth pursuing to the end. Valerio throws amazing revelation after amazing revelation (ok, a little surplusage of my own) at you. I was surprised, for instance, that there are so many things about the effects of testosterone on men that I never knew or suspected.
Valerio does an excellent job sharing his experience, providing insight into the (to me) mysterious feeling that one has been born into a body that does not fit his sexual identity.
Our society would benefit from a greater understanding of LGBT issues, and this book is well-suited to that purpose. Read it and pass it on.
April 17, 2008 | |
Best FTM information and experiences I have read.
Max Wolf Valerio has a terrific way of providing knowledge and insight into the world of a FTM. Great read. You can even jump from chapter to chapter out of sequence for the information you need and not get lost in this book. The Author has been in many documentaries as well, including the film "Gendernauts". If you want information about being Ftm this is the book for you. Also A great read for anyone that wants to see inside the wonderful world of an amazing transition. It doesn't get much better than this. Don't let this one get away. Get this book and "Becoming Alec" written by Darwin S. Ward together and you have the foundation of the best works on FTM available to date. You'll be glad you did.
April 06, 2008 | |
herkullinen!
Like a fool, I avoided this book for too long thanks to some bad reviews by some angry feminists! Fortunately, I was able to catch a live reading by the author and my interest was again piqued. The book is less than a day old now and I haven't been able to put it down. Max has a delicious command of the language and this book is a fantastic adventure to experience and read. (I may be biased, as a 30-something FTM currently going through hormonal transition as well.) He is completely honest and his descriptions of the various phases of transition are spot on. Yes, it's a great piece of "trans literature," but more importantly an awesome piece of human history.
September 16, 2007 | |
interesting reflections on hormones 
Overall, I thought is book was good, but not great. I like more nitty gritty gender theory, and I would've liked more of that sort of introspection. For a more general audience, it's probably a very good book. Esp. interesting are the author's reflections on the emotional/ mental effects of hormone therapy.
July 31, 2007 | |
Challenges my understanding of myself
Before I even opened the book to start reading it, I was already coming to it filled with particular expectations. I actually think that we often/always approach books, among other things, in this manner. In this case, though, I was fortunate enough to be aware of what those expectations were from the beginning. In particular, given Valerio's past associations with This Bridge Called My Back and This Bridge We Call Home, I was looking forward to race and feminism being figured in more centrally in The Testosterone Files than other FTM texts (memoir and otherwise).
While by no means have I exhausted the entire genre, I'd have to say that in my readings thus far, I've been hard-pressed to find a FTM text that leaves me feeling satisfied with its treatment of race. So, admittedly, The Testosterone Files had a lot to live up to...perhaps too much.
Frankly, I'm torn...I'm definitely glad to have read the book, as well as to own it. I will proudly display it on my bookshelf (where self space is at a high premium). As a trans text, I think that its focus on testosterone (as opposed to surgery) helps to stretch the boundaries of the genre, and of how we think about trans itself. Like other FTM texts, there is much focus on the body and its physical transformations, but because the emphasis isn't on surgery it offers something to those readers who either want to transition without surgery, or simply have to transition and live without surgery due to other constraints (e.g., affordability, or lack thereof).
Even though Valerio makes clear in the text that he experienced discomfort with his breasts, and that it was because of the lack of being able to afford top surgery that he hadn't had surgery (well, until he wrote this book!), the need for surgery becomes an undertone in the text--ever present but not overwhelmingly so. Instead, what dominates is talk about testosterone.
"The hormones really work."
It's a realization that Valerio seems taken aback by. He writes, "The hormones...I'd read about testosterone and its dramatic effects in his [Lou Sullivan's] booklet, but I had never in my wildest dreams imagined that it could be this good. This transformation is a miracle" (103).
Like other similar texts, Valerio describes the changes his physical body undergoes as he begins to inject testosterone--the disappearance of his extra fat, the coarsening texture of his hair, the changes in his skin. Interestingly, Valerio also describes the changes his bodily emotions undergo with the effects of testosterone. I say bodily emotions here because Valerio makes clear that it's not just about emotions disconnected from his body, but precisely the way in which his body, because of its changing chemistry, processes emotions differently than it once did, ultimately resulting in different physical manifestations of those emotions.
Specifically, he finds that testosterone has limited his ability to physically cry as he once did, and instead has increased his aggressiveness. When I first encountered these testimonials of his about how women are biologically predisposed to cry and men to fight, something in me tightened. My initial reaction was to get defensive and to wonder how a text that I thought would be so feminist could so blatantly reinforce traditional gender stereotypes. Then I remembered that there are grains of truth in most stereotypes, and that what was important was to not overcompensate by trying to make the argument that not all women cry at the drop of a hat, or that men can cry, but rather to respect and honor Valerio's experiences. In this way, The Testosterone Files, has been invaluable to me in challenging my understanding of myself as a feminist, gently helping me to grow further into the kind of feminism that inspired me from the beginning--one that not only prized difference, but saw our power coming from those very differences (thanks Audre Lorde!).
As I said earlier, however, despite the ways in which The Testosterone Files added to my knowledge and understanding of another man's transformation, I was disappointed that race wasn't a more central issue throughout the text. There are moments when Valerio writes about his Native heritage, about his mother and being on the reserve, about passing as white at some times, and Latino at others, but these are but moments, and conversations about race don't seem to be sustained throughout.
In the end, I feel like the book Valerio wanted to write about was about testosterone above all else. In that respects, he succeeded. The book I wanted Valerio to have written was about negotiating racial and feminist consciousness and politics in a context of FTM transition. I recognize that my disappointments in The Testosterone Files are not Valerio's failings, but rather signs of my own longings.
October 11, 2006 | |
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