I met Max Wolf Valerio for the first time last week, although I have known about his existence for over twelve years, when I first started dealing with my gender issues.
His book, The Testosterone Files: My Hormonal and Social Transformation from Female to Male, is the story of his own transition and his own very personal, very interesting, sometimes funny, and sometimes painful experiences and observations about transition, testosterone, and gender roles and expectations in our culture.
Max is a great guy, which I discovered when I met him, and he is a traditionally masculine man, which makes his initial impact on me, years ago, a little ironic.
The first time I saw Max was in Loren Cameron’s Body Alchemy: Transsexual Portraits, which is where I first became familiar with several well-known trans men, including James Green. But as I was flipping through the pages, I was well aware that none of these men was really like me — in their “before” photos, they were already exhibiting the “masculine” traits of the men they would become.
At that time, I was still very feminine and very female. Although seeing that book made me realize that what I wanted was possible, I still felt very different from the people I was seeing — until I turned a page and saw a very beautiful, very defiant, long-haired female with dangling earrings looking back at me.
In my mind, this person was “feminine.” In my mind, this person was like me. And then I saw the “after” picture — Max Valerio. And I realized that this could happen for someone like me as well.
I told Max that story when I met him. I wanted him to know the how his presence in that book had affected me. It turns out that he was not so feminine as his picture might have indicated, but that didn’t matter. The important thing was that it was there when I needed it, and I imposed on that photo what I needed to at the time.
We all go through life not realizing that something we might consider to be insignificant or nonexistent could have a huge impact on someone else’s life. Max said he was glad that he was able to help me in that way. He didn’t care that I had brought my own “stuff” to what I was seeing. We all bring our own stuff to whatever we see or read, and that’s what makes it so significant to us.
We had a fantastic conversation, he is a wonderful guy, and I was so glad to be able to meet him after all these years. If you haven’t read his book, I would encourage you to add it to your collection. He’s a great writer and a very interesting person.
The more FTM voices that people are able to experience, the more visible we become, and our memoirs are one of the best ways for people to get to know us and to discover the diversities and the commonalities in the FTM experience.
