“I wanted to be a tall, flat-chested, muscular, bearded, hairy human being with no uterus and a penis. If that was ‘man’, great. If not, OK.” A helpful commenter on my “Mr. Mom” post suggested checking out this post written by a Female-to-Male transsexual explaining why he wanted to be a man and how the world looks different under the influence of testosterone. It’s a pretty good read, offering his personal experience (including a pretty funny, if completely earnest, list of reasons he wanted to stop being a she) and offers some refreshingly honest takes on gender politics. One of my favourite bits:

After [Testosterone], I discovered that if I could think about something heretofore not sexually interesting during approximately six masturbation-to-orgasm sessions, that item would become a turn-on in and of itself….no matter what it was. I could literally program myself in a Pavlovian manner to be aroused by whatever I wanted. I found this out by accident, after I inadvertently added a few new dishes to my arousal buffet without meaning to. When I realized this, I sort of sat in shock for a while, and then I said to myself, “Boy, you’re going to have to be very, very careful from now on.”

THE TOPLESS BAR: The May issue of Esquire, the one men’s magazine that’s consistently worth getting for the articles, isn’t online yet. But it has some good stuff, not least “The Things That Carried Him,” [UPDATE: Oh, look, it is online. Thanks Marc] the story plugged on the cover as the important ulterior motive behind getting Jessica Simpson to pose for them. If you’re looking for something less likely to provoke you to want to bang your head repeatedly against the table long enough that you forget that some idiot started a useless war, there’s a mini-article on page 40:

Things it’s Okay for a Man to Do While Shirtless in Public Beach-go. Have appendix removed. Sit in any section labeled “splash zone.” Attend Burning Man. Crawl towards an oasis. Hew something. Watch a friend get busted on Cops (in person or on TV). Celebrate a bicycle kick. Stanch the bleeding of a dying man. Play against “the shirts.” Bale hay. Frolic in the spray of an open fire hydrant (only under the age of 12). Talk to a blind person.

“Win the heavyweight championship of the world” is an obvious omission. If you can think of any others, holla.

And if you want to read something interesting that is online now that addresses various issues from other items in this post — toplessness-in-public (’cause of the manboobs), taking testosterone supplements (because of elevated estrogen levels), testicles and unfortunate things that can happen to them — and in the process outlines some of the stupid shit men do, take a peek at Canadian novelist Craig Davidson’s “Look at Me, I’m a Big Strong Boy!”, about taking steroids for research. And, you know, kicks.

JUST CALL ME DUDEBLOGGER: If it seems a little crowded around here, it may be because the femblogging bigwigs at Jezebel linked here in a post about me and this blog. There’s a great one-liner there to use in response to an accusation of misogyny (”only insofar as I’m a misanthropist”), some advice to me on how big-league bloggers go about earning their keep (essentially: more pith, less ponder), the requisite ode to the agoraphobia-fighting power of cocktails and a troubling bit in the comments comparing my physical appearance to Mr. DeMartino from Daria (Merci to these guys for the photo). Elsewhere in the comments: an accusation that my whole schtick is a rip-off of Fight Club (just wait for the post when I reveal how the bully who beat me up in front of everyone in high school was actually… me. That’ll recontextualize my girlfriend’s shocked reaction). And to HeatherNumber1from the comments, one word about the baby seal balls everyone allegedly sucks around here: delicious. You really ought to pressure the editors to publish the recipe.

IN AUSTRALIA, IT’S “BLOKEBLOGGER”: Speaking of dudebloggers and misanthropy, I stumbled across Sam De Brite’s All Men Are Liars, a blog “on the business of the bloke” published by the Sydney Morning Herald in the land of the counter-clockwise flush. He seems to be worth reading, and I was particularly drawn to his post deliniating the most ungentlemanly sporting behaviour:

“Sharks captain Paul Gallen faces two contrary-conduct charges … one for the facial attack that reopened a gaping wound near Anthony Laffranchi’s right eye and the other for allegedly squeezing Josh Graham’s testicles,” said Jethro.

“That’s rather graphic for a breakfast conversation,” I replied before we shared a look of knowing pain.

Interestingly, neither of us were referring to the fact a football player had allegedly torn open another player’s stitched face but that he’d reportedly put a zesty clench on his opponent’s testicles.

DUDE, THAT BEARD IS SO GAY. IT SAYS SO RIGHT HERE IN CHAPTER 8: I’m sometimes a fan of non-academic books that seem bizarely specific in their subject matter. I loved Darren Wershler-Henry’s The Iron Whim: A Fragmented History of Typewriting, for example. Or Mark Kurlansky’s Salt: A World History. Even when I have no inclination to read such books, I like the idea that someone can contribute to Man’s Search For Meaning through the intimate study of something very specific. Kind of like how, depsite my fairly strident irreligiosity, I loved hearing from a Catholic priest who played semi-pro hockey that he saw his athleticism as a way of expressing the glory of God in exactly the same way as artists do through paiting or music. Finding the transcendent in the apparently mundane, in both cases. So to the list of books I won’t read beyond a cursory scan but that I’m glad exist in the world anyway, add One Thousand Beards: A Cultural History of Facial Hair by Allan Peterkin, recently put back in print by Arsenal Pulp Press (That’s a Google Books link, for your preview reading pleasure).

His writing style is pleasantly conversational on my skim, and in addition to chapter titles such as “Beards of Fame and Infamy,” “The Gay Beard” and “The Postmodern Beard,” illustrations and marginal lists, there are appendices of practical advice (the perfect dry shave, for example). So, you know, if you always wondered why “there’s nothing innocent about facial hair,” this book will tell you. Or if you just want to know what that skeezy, sculpted beard the guy at the coffee shop wears is called (they’re all called something), it’ll tell you that too.

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Posted on Monday, April 14th, 2008 at 9:35 am. Follow comments through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comment or trackback.