Man Made: A Memoir [Hardcover]

Ken Baker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2001

The bracingly honest memoir of a star athlete who lived with a brain tumor that flooded his body with female hormones and sent him into a sexual netherworld from which he would emerge with insights about sexuality and manhood few could imagine.

On the surface, Ken Baker seemed a model man. He was a

nationally ranked hockey goalie; girls threw themselves at him; fans cheered him. Inside, though, he didn't feel like a "man." Baker found that despite his attraction to women, he had little sex drive and even less of a sex life. To his anguish, he repeatedly found himself unable to perform sexually. Despite strenuous workouts, his body remained flabby and soft.

In his eventual career as a Hollywood correspondent for People, Baker found himself challenged and tormented by the sexually charged atmosphere of Tinseltown. His relations with women fractured. Physically, matters would grow more bizarre as he would one day find himself lactating.

The macho culture that reared Baker made it agonizingly difficult for him to seek help. But he would eventually learn that he was suffering from a rare brain tumor that flooded his body with massive amounts of a female hormone. Six hours of brain surgery would accomplish what years of therapy, rumination, and denial could not. Finally, Ken Baker would be able to feel-and function-like a man.

At a moment of heated debate over nature versus nurture, Man Made-like no other book-illuminates the biochemical nature of sexuality. Moreover, it is a fascinating chronicle of growing up sexually as a male in America-and a profound recollection of the pain that accompanies sexual dysfunction in our post sexual-revolution culture.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Ken Baker was a working-class boy from Buffalo, New York, who dreamed of playing professional hockey; his idea of masculinity was formed by a father who chain-smoked, warned his sons that "girls will ruin your life" (he had to marry the author's pregnant mother), and sneered at doctors' warnings to mend his bad habits--"You gotta die of something." But Baker had a tumor in his brain that flooded his body with the female hormone prolactin; he leaked milk from his nipples and could hardly ever have an erection. His wince-inducing memoir pulls no punches and uses no euphemisms in telling what it was like to be a sexually dysfunctional man in a sex-saturated society. Female readers may take a certain grim satisfaction in learning that men, too, can feel vulnerable and sexually exploited, but most will simply marvel at Baker's willingness to reveal the gory details of his failure-riddled sex life. Although he makes some high-minded claims about the insights he gained from his ordeal ("I was able to journey to a biological place few men will ever know.... My manhood today is stronger because of it"), what's really gripping here is his blow-by-blow account of what it felt like to dread sex instead of chase it, to approach intercourse as a test rather than a pleasure. We can only be relieved that surgery restored him to hormonally normal masculinity at age 27, although the girlfriend who stood by him through it and then listened to him explode with testosterone-charged rage when she complained about his subsequent insensitivity might disagree. Baker's slick prose reflects his background in celebrity journalism (he worked at People and is now a senior writer at Us), but there's no denying the fascination of his bizarre story. --Wendy Smith

From Publishers Weekly

Describing the locker-room banter of his college hockey team, Baker writes, "They don't realize how lucky they are. If they like a girl, just about the only thing stopping them from being with her is the girl. I also have to contend with myself." While locker-room epiphanies are ubiquitous in male gender studies, Baker's memoir about struggling with masculinity in contemporary culture is unique. Throughout his adolescence and early adult life, he suffered from a massive overabundance of prolactin--the hormone that allows females to produce milk. This imbalance, caused by a benign tumor in Baker's brain, engendered a host of physical problems, such as impotence, excess fat on his hips and breasts and sensitive nipples that would occasionally excrete a milky substance. While much of the book traces Baker's long medical quest for the cause of these unsettling symptoms, the heart of the book is a meditation on how society constructs maleness and what happens to men who do not fit the mold. Baker's account of his boyhood is well observed but ordinary, while his detailing of his adult romantic life is painfully adroit. Some of the best parts of the book show Baker's growing awareness of the role that homophobia plays in constituting "appropriate" social maleness: from seeing his father making fun of "faggots" in his youth to covering gay activist protests against Pat Robertson's homophobic religious views. A senior writer at US Weekly, Baker has a breezy journalistic style that may attract those outside the realm of gender studies. While his specific medical problem may be too singular to interest a mass readership, his contemplation of the social prisons of gender and sexuality is not. Agent, Jane Dystel.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Tarcher; Remainder edition (March 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1585420832
• ISBN-13: 978-1585420834
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,108,850 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This Book Changed My Life, February 3, 2002

By 

Glenn (Golden, Colorado USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Man Made: A Memoir (Hardcover)

As a man diagnosed with the same malady as the author, reading about someone who had endured the same misery as myself was both shocking and reassuring. Ken Baker describes his journey in compelling and sometimes painfully honest prose. His description of a descent into a torturous abyss is rivaled only by his ascent from the very depths of despair. Most of my family and closests friends have read this book and have a new found understanding for the hell some of us have endured. Mr. Baker's book is a worthy example of the power of the human spirit.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A very good read!, March 3, 2001

By 

N. Russell (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Man Made: A Memoir (Hardcover)

I really enjoyed this book. On one level Man Made is a psychological and sociological memoir. More importantly however, it's just a plain old good read-- as entertaining as it is thought provoking. In a natural, anecdotal and seemingly effortless style, the author tells the tale of his journey through boyhood and into early adulthood, while simultaneously bringing the reader along on a spiraling tumble into a crisis of health, self-awareness, manhood and humanity. The author shares some valuable and unique insights into gender rolls, manhood in modern America, and the way that we all interact with and view one another, and ourselves, as men and women. A well written, compelling story about what happens when the body becomes one's own worst enemy. Man Made is an all-around good read-- I recommend that anyone pick it up.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars What's it like to be a man without testicles, April 14, 2004

By 

world class wreckin cru "dallasite" (Dallas, TX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Man Made: A Memoir (Hardcover)

A prolactinoma is a pituitary gland tumor that produces excessive amounts of the hormone prolactin. This slow-growing tumor accurs in both men and women and is often not identified as the source of health problems until it has grown to a rather large size. In a male, excessive prolactin has an emasculating and feminizing effect. Testosterone levels decrease, the sex drive all but disappears, and erections are practically impossible to achieve. To make matters worse, when prolactin reaches high enough levels in the blood, it can cause males to lactate.

At least 10 years of Ken Baker's life was spent in the confusing world created by his prolactinoma. He was unable to understand why the rest of the guys around him were so sex-obsessed. He could not figure out why 500 sit-ups a day didn't flatten his stomach even though his fellow hockey players were able to build up their bodies with less dedication. He didn't understand why a young athletic male such as himself could rarely ever achieve an erection. He didn't know why his headaches were getting worse, and he certainly had no clue why he was lactating. But to designate Ken Baker's years living with a prolactinoma in his head as an emasculated hell would not do justice to his profound experience. He has had the rare opportunity of observing the members of his own gender with the mindset of someone somewhere between male and female. He saw us for what we are. The obsession with sex, the never-cry-in-public manliness, the male chauvinism, and other characteristics we as males possess, Ken Baker could not relate to. When finally diagnosed and treated (most importantly, when sex drive and erections returned), he was finally able to understand why so many men possessed the characteristics that he had disdained for so long.

This book several other storylines besides the chief one of the author's struggle to understand his "emasculation." He describes his relationship with his father who he loved very much despite the fact that he was often unsupportive, tempestuous, and even racist. The descriptions of his relationships with his brothers invoke both laughter and sadness.

I recommend this book to anyone who accepts the fallacy that male attitudes, sex drive, and the such are solely under the control of the mind and that males just choose to be what they are. Ken Baker is proof that a little hormone called testosterone has quite a bit more to do with it than you think.