A review by cocoonofbooks
Amateur: A True Story About What Makes a Man by Thomas Page McBee

4.0

McBee does a nice job narrating his own audiobook, but there were a few times I wished I was reading in print because a line was so stunning or well crafted that I wanted to highlight and capture it. Through his story of becoming an amateur boxer to compete in a charity match — in the process becoming the first transgender man to box in Madison Square Garden — McBee explores the idea of "masculinity" and the extent to which he is or is not able to define it for himself. Even having experienced sexist patterns of behavior from the other side, he finds he can't always stay aware of his own talking over female colleagues or notice the experience a woman around him is having. In the boxing gym, he finds the paradox that, while men police each other's adherence to the cultural expectations of masculinity, the fact that they're already "proving" their manliness through boxing allows them to be physically affectionate with each other in ways not found in other areas of life.

I'm not sure McBee shared any truly new ideas in this book, but he did a nice job of weaving interviews with researchers into his own personal experiences and bringing it all together. He's a journalist by trade, so it's not surprising that he can write well. This was a quick listen (under 4 hours) that would be valuable for anyone to read. Content warning for his experiences of childhood sexual abuse, as well as a mention of being mugged as an adult.