MANNING UP Transsexual Men on Finding Brotherhood, Family & Themselves
Twenty-seven men who transitioned from female to male discuss their roles as male community members: fathers, sons, brothers, husbands, boyfriends, friends, and mentors. Not since Max Wolf Valerio’s The Testosterone Files and Jamison Green’s Becoming a Visible Man has nonfiction seen such thorough and sensitive explorations of manhood, masculinity, and male embodiment—and never in a collection with such a diversity of voices. Contributors offer an incredible range of cultural, class, ethnic, spiritual, and generational backgrounds. Their work addresses topics including birthing and raising children, gay male sexuality, facing racism, and finding solace in deeply held religious beliefs. Contributors include established writers such as Valerio, Aaron Devor (author of FTM: Female-to-Male Transsexuals in Society) and Ryan Sallans (author of Second Son), as well as exciting new authors.
“After a recent episode of life grumbling where I found myself saying, I’m sick of gender, gender, gender...I begrudgingly picked up Manning Up and began to read. Wow! I found myself crying, laughing, annoyed, proud, grieving and deeply touched. While Manning Up is about gender, the reality is that this book is about growing up and stepping up. This is a book that encapsulates the complexities of doing both. What so many of us experience on this gender journey—confusion, determination, compassion, ferocity, love—takes courage. The willingness of these contributors to be open and share from their hearts, to me, is the epitome of what it means to Man Up! I truly feel the courage of them all.” —Aidan Key, Gender educator, activist, and founder of Gender Odyssey
“It is the distinct tone of each story that gives this book its strength, separates it from ‘coming out’ books, and makes it accessible and compelling to anyone, not just people in the GLBT community...I’m not going to lie to you and say this is a book of quick and easy reads, of short essays about being a man in modern society. There are pieces in here that will challenge you. There are pieces that are poetic and lyrical and others that are forceful and in-your-face. They are not all uplifting, with pat endings, starring the characters that popular media has taught us to expect in the stories of trans* people. But they are worth your time.” —JJ Vincent, The Good Men Project magazine
Ten years after writing their stories in this seminal collection, authors talk about their lives and experiences of fatherhood, community building, and self-acceptance. Their unique insights into what it means to be a man in the world transforms the limiting parameters of manhood that society imposes on men and invites us to extend our imagination of what men can be in the 21st century. Includes insights from famous transmen Jamison Green, Zander Keig, and Aaron Devor.
