Max Wolf Valerio facts for kids
Max Wolf Valerio (born February 16, 1957, in Heidelberg, West Germany) is an American poet, memoir writer, essayist and actor. He has lived for many years in San Francisco, California.
Valerio described his transition and experiences as a trans man in the 2006 memoir The Testosterone Files. He also writes and performs poetry, and has acted in films and appeared in many documentaries.
Early life
Valerio identifies his mother as being of Blackfoot descent, specifically from the Kainai in Alberta, Canada. Valerio's father is Spanish. Valerio has researched his heritage and inferred that his paternal ancestors were crypto-Jews who had become conversos but secretly handed on Sephardic Jewish traditions.
Valerio's father was in the United States Army for 20 years, which caused them to move frequently in the United States and Europe. Max was born in a US Army hospital in Heidelberg, Germany. Valerio lived in many US states including Maryland, Washington, California, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Colorado, as well as in Canada, and again in Germany as a child and teenager.
Transition
Valerio transitioned in 1989 from female to male.
Valerio talks about his first steps of transitioning in the movie "MAX with Max W. Valerio", a short documentary-style film by Monika Treut. Max goes into deeper depth about the testosterone side of transitioning and early steps in his book The Testosterone Files. He also appears in Gendernauts, another film by Monika Treut.
In his writing, Valerio describes the counselling he received, his experiences with hormone therapy, and the physical changes he observed.
The Testosterone Files
Valerio's memoir The Testosterone Files 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 themes of the book is the role of testosterone in his transition. The book is organized into three parts: "Beginning," "Before Testosterone," and "After Testosterone."
In the prologue, 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. Valerio says that transsexuals are not simply just a branch of lesbian or gay. He asserts 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".
The first section, "Beginning", describes 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. These include physical changes such as his voice becoming deeper and his hair becoming darker and coarser.
The second section, "Before Testosterone", shows what led Valerio to decide that changing sex was the right path for him. Valerio describes the cultural and ethnic backgrounds of his mother and father.
The third section, "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.
Max Valerio had an increase in energy almost immediately, as well an inability to cry as he once had as a female.
In the film MAX, Valerio talks about his experience of perceptual, emotional and physical change with testosterone. Filmed in New York City in the early 1990s, the film is a groundbreaking exploration of trans male experience.
Political views
As a teen, Valerio became involved with left-wing radical politics. He was a part of the American Indian Movement and participated in marches and visited the Pine Ridge Reservation when it was under siege by the F.B.I after the Wounded Knee Occupation. Valerio's political transformation was from left-wing radical and then to the Democratic Party, and eventually to more libertarian/classic liberal. He identifies as a classic liberal.
Works
- This Bridge Called My Back (Anthology, 1981 [pre-transition])
- "Animal Magnetism" (chapbook of poems, 1984 [pre-transition])
- This Bridge We Call Home (Anthology, 2002)
- The Testosterone Files: My social and hormonal transition from female to male (Memoir, 2006)
- Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics (Poetry Anthology, 2013)
- Manning Up: Transsexual Men on Finding Brotherhood, Family and Themselves (Collection, 2014)
- The Criminal: The Invisibility of Parallel Forces (Poetry, 2019)
Filmography
- Max (Documentary, 1992)
- Female Misbehavior feature-length film featuring the short film: "Max" (Documentary, 1992)
- You Don't Know Dick: Courageous Hearts of Transsexual Men (Documentary, 1997)
- Gendernauts: A Journey Through Shifting (Documentary, 1999)
- Unhung Heroes (Film, 2002)
- Octopus Alarm (Documentary, 2005)
- Maggots and Men (Film, 2009)
- Straight White Male (Documentary, 2011)
- Genderation (Documentary, 2021)
- Framing Agnes (2022)
