Thomas Page McBee

Thomas Page McBee (born 1981)^[1] is an American transgender journalist, television writer, and amateur boxer. He was the first transgender man to box in Madison Square Garden,^[1] which he discusses in Amateur. His first book, Man Alive, won a Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Nonfiction.^[2][3]

McBee was born in Hickory, North Carolina, in 1981^[1] and grew up outside of Pittsburgh.^[4]

McBee has noted that he "knew [he] wasn't a girl before [he] knew much of anything."^[5] However, he also did not resonate with men's "jockeying power dynamics or aversion to hugs."^[5] In his late-twenties, he realized that although he "didn't connect with the cultural expectations of Being a Man, [he] knew that [he]'d grown up and become one."^[5] He began hormone replacement therapy when he was 30 years old and at 31, he received a new birth certificate from North Carolina Vital Records, an experience he described as feeling like he had been "born again".^[5]

As of 2022, McBee lived in Los Angeles with his wife, Jessica Bloom.^[6][7]

Aside from writing, McBee was a senior editor at Quartz and taught at City University of New York.^[8] He has also served as an advisor at West Virginia University's Graduate School of Journalism.^[8][7]

McBee has written regular columns in The Rumpus ("Self-Made Man"),^[9] Them ("Amateur"),^[10] Bitch,^[11] Pacific Standard ("The American Man"),^[12] and Teen Vogue.^[13] His writing has also appeared in The New York Times, T Magazine, Esquire, GQ, Glamour, Playboy, The Atlantic, VICE,^[14] and other publications.

In 2019 and 2020, McBee wrote episodes for Netflix's Tales of the City and Showtime's The L Word: Generation Q.^[15] He has also appeared on the documentary film No Ordinary Man and the mini-series The Art of Intersection.^[15]

In 2021, McBee was a supervising producer on The Umbrella Academy, where he architected a storyline in which Elliot Page's character transitions to male, mirroring the actor's real-world transition.^[16] In 2022, he served as a writer and co-producer on the fourth season of The Umbrella Academy. He is currently developing several film and television projects, including a television adaptation for Amateur.^[6]

Amateur: A True Story About What Makes a Man was published August 14, 2018, by Scribner. The book received a starred review from Publishers Weekly,^[17] as well as positive reviews from Kirkus,^[18] The New Republic,^[19] Buzzfeed,^[20] Booklist,^[21] The Rumpus,^[22] The Guardian,^[23] Los Angeles Review of Books,^[24] and Shelf Awareness.^[25][26] Amateur was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Nonfiction,^[27] nominated for The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction,^[28] and shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize.

Man Alive: A True Story of Violence, Forgiveness and Becoming a Man was published September 9, 2014, by City Lights Publishers. The book received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly,^[29] Kirkus Reviews,^[30] Lambda Literary Foundation,^[31] and Library Journal.^[32] Man Alive won a Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Nonfiction.^[2][3]

• Official website