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The Testosterone Files
Max Wolf Valerio’s memoir “The Testosterone Files” is one that describes the psychological, physiological, and social transformation that occurred in the first five years of his transition from female to male. One of the main focuses in the book is the hormonal transformation that occurred, rather than a typical transformation through surgery. This is because Valerio credits testosterone as the most definitive and crucial aspect of his transformation. The book is organized into three parts: Beginning, Before Testosterone, and After Testosterone.

The prologue is an important aspect of the book because Valerio uses an in depth narration of what it is like to be a transsexual to allow his readers to understand the trials and tribulations that one experiences when going through a sex change. In this section, Valerio wants people to understand that transsexuals are not simply just a branch of lesbian or gay. He wants people to understand that “transsexual identities must be defined and expressed on our own terms”. In Valerio’s opinion, transsexuals voices and experiences, until more recently, are unheard and incompletely imagined which is one of the reasons he wanted to write this memoir.

Part one is the section titled, The Beginning, which introduces you to Valerio as he begins his transition from female to male. Valerio discusses the physical changes occurring that have allowed him to understand what it feels like to experience biological masculinity. He talks about how others, as well as himself, have noticed the process of him “becoming more male”, or as Judith Butler would call it, gender performativity. . Valerio describes in detail the physical, sexual, and personal changes of becoming male, starting from his first shot of testosterone. Physical changes such as his voice becoming deeper and his hair becoming darker and coarser. Sexual changes such as heightened sex drive and sexual attraction to things that he was not attracted to before. Valerio’s personal changes were ones surrounding the fact that he had to accept that all that he was before, and all that made him who he was before, would not change although he is now a male.

Part two which is the section title, Before Testosterone, narrates what led Valerio to decide that changing sex was the right path for him. This section of the book describes cultural and ethnic background of both his mother and father. As a child Valerio had much difficulty with his mother’s acceptance that he was not happy being a girl. Valerio talks about one of his relationships that lead him to discover that being a lesbian, and sex between two women, did not arouse him. He discovered that his attraction towards women wasn’t a lesbian attraction rather that it was a heterosexual attraction, one from a man to a woman. The beginning chapters in this section detail many of Valerio’s relationships and friendships that helped him to accept his true desire of wanting to become a male. The later chapters detail more of the physical changes that he believed needed to be taken care of for him to ultimately appear as male such as binding his breasts, and wearing mens underwear as well as stuffing it.

Part three, which is the section titled After Testosterone, is one written so that the readers can feel Valerio’s emotional, social, and perceptual transformation from female to male. The beginning chapters of this section narrates Valerio’s acceptance of becoming a male. His body is physically transitioning and he is adapting to doing and experiencing ‘male’ things such as shaving, adapting to a deeper voice, and having straight women make advances towards him .. He also discusses the emotional experiences of telling everyone who didn’t yet already know that he was becoming a male. He describes an in detail encounter of coming out as transsexual to one of his female co-workers as a way to narrate the difficulty of identity politics when transitioning .. With this woman, Valerio experienced his first intimate encounter with a female since transitioning to a male. Valerio also narrates his perceptual experiences of not actually having a penis, but being physically male otherwise .. The book ends off with his discovery of his Adams apple that has grown from the testosterone which signifies his excitement and recognition that this transition was exactly what Max needed to be happy with himself.