Thomas Page McBee

Thomas Page McBee (Hickory, North Carolina, 1981) was the first transsexual boxer to fight at Madison Square Garden. But, of course, that’s just a headline; his story goes far beyond that achievement because his is not a simple narrative of overcoming or of success. Born with the body of a woman, he couldn’t have surgery until he was thirty. When he did, it not only changed his body, it changed his perception of the world. In Man Alive: A True Story of Violence, Forgiveness and Becoming a Man (City Lights Publishers, 2014) he explains in the first person how that in turn changed his view of masculinity and its privileges. He also tells what happened afterwards. He realized that he had learn to relate in a different way, so he enrolled in a boxing gym to explore issues such as violence and identity. And he did it, precisely, to understand the toxicity of certain stereotypes, of the male who hits rather than hugs. Page was a journalist before all this and still is. He is former editor of Quartz, masculinity expert for Vice and writes for publications such as The New York Times, Glamour and Playboy. These memoires of a new man and amateur boxer were named Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Buzzfeed and NPR Books.