Vincent, Norah: Self-Made Man: One Woman's Year Disguised as a Man

[rachelmanija]

Due to getting stuck for several hours in the Dallas-Fort Worth airport, while the plane supposed to take me to Los Angeles was diverted to Oklahoma lest it be sucked up by a tornado, I was forced to hit the airport bookshop for additional reading material, which is how I obtained this. At the time I thought the author's name was familiar because I'd heard of the unusual premise. Several chapters in I realized that Vincent used to be a particularly annoying columnist for the "LA Times." Oops.

Vincent is a non-transgender lesbian who decided to disguise herself as a man for a year to find out how the other half lived. She also mentions her long-held fascination with gender and gender roles, but claimed that despite being a tomboy, she never ever ever, no really not ever not once, ever wanted to be a man, and hated almost every minute of pretending to be one. (Except for the times when she male-bonded and realized how wonderful male camaraderie is and how totally different it is from her "friendships" with shallow, back-stabbing women-- one thing that came up a lot is that Vincent's current social circles resemble the movie Mean Girls.)

I would be surprised it living a persona wasn't uncomfortable and disturbing, but there was a point when I wondered if she was protesting too much. Such a crazy-ambitious feat of role-playing and disguise may not be about her deep secret desire to be male, but it's got to be about some deep desire. That really ought to have been explored more.

Curiously, Vincent fails to explore the one group for which she has a genuine control: men of her own social class, race, and similar social circles. (White New York upper-crust intelligentsia, as far as I could tell.) Instead, she penetrates blue-collar bowling leagues, sleazy door-to-door sales companies, a monastery, cheap strip clubs, and an Iron John group. She also dates women, which comes closest to seeing her own life as if she were a straight man.

The reason I pick on this is that the book turns out to be at least as much about class as it is about gender, but Vincent consistently compares poor blue-collar men to rich professional women, and then makes conclusions about gender.

In perhaps the most ridiculous instance of this, she describes the physical state that blue collar men attain after a lifetime of hard labor, stress, and poverty (weather-beaten complexion, callouses, etc) and says that it proves that men and women are inherently and biologically totally different in a way that cannot at all be accounted for by social conditions. This makes no sense whatsoever, as everything she describes, except for the five o'clock shadow and several pounds of muscle, would also be true of women who work similar jobs.

The failure to account for class differences also undermined the conclusions she arrived at, which is that men are not really powerful and priveleged compared to women, because the desperate door-to-door salesmen (etc) she met had unhappy lives. I still do not understand how she reached that conclusion given that the only people more miserable and exploited than the male salesmen were the female salesmen, but there you have it.

Generally, she seemed to cherry-pick for blue-collar or middle-class white Christians in settings in which a certain set of stereotypical male traits are expected or selected for. If she'd broadened her horizons, she might have found large groups of men in cultures (for the broad meaning of the word) in which emotional expressiveness or conversation on subjects other than sports or friendly relationships with women are common and expected.

Many non-WASP cultures do not expect or require men to repress all shows of emotion, or to be painfully inarticulate. (Many if not most brands of Jewish culture, for instance, encourage men to talk, to each other or to women, on many subjects and at great length eloquently.) Cheap strip clubs are an excellent setting if you're looking for men who feel driven to engage in cheap sex. It is unsurprising to find gynophobia and repressed homosexuality in monasteries.

Some of the reportage was good, and the chapter on the bowling league was touching-- she really bonded with those men. I also enjoyed the chapter on iron John, as I've always been curious about what goes on in those groups. The chapter on dating exerted a horrifying, train-wreck fascination.

But again, her conclusions were both obvious and flawed: of course going on dates under false pretences is even more unlikely to give you a fun time than normal dating. Of course women will be pissed off if, after two dates, you inform them that you're not available for a relationship and never were. And of course men who are attending Iron John meetings will be unhappy with social constructions of masculinity. That's like going to AA meetings in the hope of drawing general conclusions about how Americans relate to alcohol.

I don't know what her lesbian dates were like, but getting rejected is not unique to men, and if I can manage to cope with men who cruelly and capriciously withold sex from me by refusing to date or have sex with me, without gaining a murderous hatred of men, I don't see why men can't do the same.

Though Vincent does not seem to be a feminist, reading her book put me in a radical mood. Especially the chapter where she discovers that men hate women because women hold the power to give or withhold sex, so they're constantly being rejected. And also women are bitchy. No wonder men are so angry! No wonder women get raped! It's all because every woman is not automatically available upon demand!

More general conclusions: It's really hard to be a man, much harder than it is to be a woman, and women fail to appreciate that. Women are back-stabbing, boring, bitchy, and have totally unreasonable expectations of men. The genders are so different, biologically and inherently, that they are basically two different species. There are no social advantages to being a man. Dating and marriage is scary and unpleasant for men, and that plus their uncontrollable sex drives means all men either go to nasty strip clubs or want to. Traditional male roles are stifling. (OK, I agree with the last one.)

Well, that was negative. Generally, I disagreed with her politics, and felt that though some of her reportage was good, she consistently drew overly sweeping, unwarranted, and/or obvious conclusions from it.

Comments

[umbo.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting this. I'd seen the book somewhere (possibly even the airport) and was curious about it, but now I definitely know better than to buy it, because it sounds like the kind of thing that would piss me off!

[oyceter]

Wow. Um. Wow.

That just really makes me want to shake that book a lot. I think if I had read it, I would have thrown it at a wall.

[mistressrenet.livejournal.com]

I sort of want to shake the author.

[cyberpilate.livejournal.com]

Thank you for reading that book and giving a report back. I'd been passing by it constantly at Borders and toying with the idea of reading it but... something seemed a little... fishy about the whole idea? Does that make any sense?

[rayechu.livejournal.com]

Wow, that sounds remarkable familiar. I wonder if someone else I have known has read it. Bravo for at least finishing it, as that is more than I would have done.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Have this codfish, it sounds as though it's needed.

Yet another of those 'massive societal generalisations on the basis of my highly limited and atypical experience and superficial observations' type of books.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

oursin, wasn't there an excerpt from her in the Guardian? Because if not her, then someone very much like her. I remember reading it at the time and boggling at her experience of feminity, because it doesn't match mine: I've got male friends, I've got female friends, and I've had very deep and very meaningful conversations with them. I've worked in mostly-male environment - white Van driver, warehouse-with-heavy-lifting, machine operator, and while the banter sometimes got a little too sexual for my taste, I never had any trouble with it. (I had trouble with the guy who thought chatting casually meant I wanted to be kissed by him, but he was an outler) - and the guys with the more explicit (though still well short of offensive) talk were the guys who kept it to light banter.

Nothing in that article was a revelation to me: I've had the experience of what it's like to be on equal footing with men without ever pretending to be one.

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

Sorry, Iron John groups?

(Book sounds dreadful. Man.

(Er. So to speak.)

[cleverpunition.livejournal.com]

["I don't know what her lesbian dates were like, but getting rejected is not unique to men, and if I can manage to cope with men who cruelly and capriciously withold sex from me by refusing to date or have sex with me, without gaining a murderous hatred of men, I don't see why men can't do the same."]

Oh. Ow. Ribs hurting from the pinching and the clenching of the laughing out louding.

Brilliant explication!

~kym

[gaudior.livejournal.com]

I couldn't help but notice that when she started the book, she had a serious girlfriend, and at some point over the course of it, she didn't. This seems... relevant, to her views on women. She didn't mention it.

I did read the book, I did find it interesting, but I think mostly in the context of the psychology of gender class which I was taking at the same time. When we discussed it, we couldn't help but question what insights she got from doing this which a trans guy wouldn't (with more) besides "being a guy is really unpleasant!"

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I didn't catch that-- I thought she had the girlfriend all the way through, and wondered what in the world she thought about the whole thing. She sure didn't seem to like women.

I suppose the one insight a non-trans woman would have above a trans person is that, in a sense, the trans person was a man all along who had been forced to masquerade as a woman, and so their comparable insights from the passing perspective would be of female society, not male.

[gaudior.livejournal.com]

That's true. And I can see a case being made for a tourist having different insights from a native or immigrant, which could also be interesting and worthwhile.

Which makes it a shame that Vincent's weren't so much, really.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Well, I agree with her on one point: [many] men have much more difficult lives than [many] women think that "men" have.

Otherwise, thanks for an informative review. In my experience, the failure to understand (or apparently even recognize the existence of) class differences is common among (1) academics, (2) people who are certain their own "ism" bête noire is responsible for all the evil in the world, (3) most other Americans.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I think it's hard to be a human being. And it's hard to be forced into a narrow societal role, especially if it doesn't happen to be one that comes naturally to you.

But when Vincent was going on and on about how terrifying it is for a man to date when he knows that a woman might coldly reject him, I actually felt less sympathetic to men than I had before, as I was thinking, "And how much more terrifying is it to know that a man you date might rape, beat, or murder you? World's smallest violin!"

I think Vincent noticed class differences, but failed to actually think about them.

[crowyhead.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the review -- I'd been intrigued by the book, but at the same time I remembered Vincent writing some really virulently anti-trans editorials for The Advocate, so it pissed me off that she was now making money by writing a book on passing for a man (obviously not the same thing as being trans, but it still bothered me).

[kate_nepveu]

. . . I would have returned it, or at least bought something else.

[cofax7]

Icon love!

Rachel, thanks for the review. I remember when the book came out last year it got a lot of press; I hadn't seen any class-based critiques of it, and it does sound like it would piss me off.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

She has a nicely readable style, I'll give her that.

[chomiji]

Wow ... now I'm so glad I didn't read this book. I'll confess to sometimes have trouble bonding with groups of women myself, but really! What appalling generalizations!

It sounds like she has some real issues with stereotyped sex roles: I should think she'd reject them, but instead, she seems to be buying into them big time. I wonder if her (subconscious?) decision to avoid privileged white men had something to do with an assumption on her part that they aren't very "masculine" by her own definitions?

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I meanly guessed that she avoided them for fear that she'd find out exactly what sort of priveleges she was missing out on by being female. And also, perhaps, because she might find that they weren't terribly different from her. Either of those events would ruin her conclusions.

suddenly paranoid, i post anonymously

[(Anonymous)]

I don't know what her lesbian dates were like, but getting rejected is not unique to men, and if I can manage to cope with men who cruelly and capriciously withold sex from me by refusing to date or have sex with me, without gaining a murderous hatred of men, I don't see why men can't do the same.

I have been thinking a lot recently about the whole "mad with desire, he couldn't control himself" rhetorical trope we have for men's sexual behavior-- a few months ago I realized I was in love with someone who had no idea I am attracted to her, and this person often (in the normal course of our lives) is physically intimate with me, occasionally jokingly flirty.

When this happens I am reminded how completely fucked up it is that a standard model of behavior, or explanation for behavior, is that of a man driven to violent action because his sense of desire was inflamed by an unavailable woman. I can stand there, melting and trembling when my best friend pretends to flirt with me, and I still know the difference between right and wrong-- hell, I even know the difference between pragmatic and self-indulgent. (Which is why I haven't told her.) Oh, man, I hate the patriarchy.

[naomikritzer]

My response to this book was rather similar. Here's what I wrote, in my previously-mentioned secret book journal. (I will have to split this up, it's too long for LJ):

>>>Have you ever thought it would be interesting to be a fly on the wall to observe how men treat other men without women around? Have you ever imagined being male, just temporarily, to see whether people treat you differently, and what it's like? That was probably what was going through Norah Vincent's head when she wrote her book proposal: she was going to dress up and pass as a man, "Ned," for a year, trying out various male experiences -- an all-male bowling league, strip clubs, dating, a Catholic monastery, a door-to-door sales job, and an Iron John esque male bonding retreat.

I knew going in that this experience was a lot less fun than she'd expected. In fact, it was so disoriented and upsetting, she wound up deeply depressed and passively suicidal, and sought inpatient psychiatric treatment (which went on to inspire her next book, Voluntary Madness).

What I didn't expect was how creepy the book was.

In some respects, the book reminded me of Swish: My Quest to Become the Gayest Man Ever -- except Joel Derfner really was a gay man. In his final chapter, he did go to an Exodus (ex-gay ministries) weekend under false pretenses. He realized that weekend he'd made some terribly mistaken assumptions. He had assumed that he would dislike these people, and thus feel comfortable deceiving them in order to write about them unflatteringly. This was absolutely incorrect; he discovered that while he felt absolutely horrified by the lives some of these men were leading, he also quite liked many of them. And he felt horribly guilty for the deception he'd perpetrated, especially as -- he realized in retrospect -- he could have gone to the Exodus weekend and said, "I'm gay and I'm happy being gay. I'm here because I'm writing a book." And people would have treated him just as kindly and with just as much openness.

So -- Norah Vincent made that same basic mistake, but for eighteen months.

[naomikritzer]

...

Strangely, she chose groups to infiltrate as a man that she'd never actually experienced as a woman, either. The book opens with her working-class girlfriend's observation (as Norah goes off to join the men's bowling league) that "the difference between your people and my people is that my people bowl without irony." The barely-between-the-lines classism in that chapter is painful to read; Norah is at least somewhat aware of it, and is apologetic about the fact that she assumed that these working-class men would be closed minded, conservative, homophobic bigots. It's clear that it's not just masculinity that's foreign territory to her; so is anyone who isn't a New York City hipster.

I think it's also fairly clear that she sought out groups of people she expected to dislike, out of a sense that she wouldn't feel as bad about deceiving them -- and like Derfner, was taken by surprise at how likable some individuals were when she actually got to know them. In the chapters where she successfully finds mostly loathsome people (like the strip club chapter), it's clear that the dislike helps only somewhat.

Possibly the chapter where she felt the guiltiest for her deception was the one in which she infiltrated a monastery -- again, an environment she had never experienced as a woman, and knew pretty much nothing about. (She was raised Catholic, but had not been a practicing Catholic for years, and had never gone on a retreat at a convent or anything like that.) With the bowling league and the monastery, she confessed at least to her closest friends that she was female, before moving on. At the monastery, she was graciously and immediately forgiven by all three men she'd told, something she was profoundly grateful for -- but it was clear they genuinely felt betrayed, and used, even if they forgave her for it.

Possibly the chapter I found full-on creepiest was the dating chapter. She mostly went on one-off blind dates via Internet dating sites, and she resolved that if she hit it off with anyone enough that she saw them three times, she would tell them on the third date that she was really a girl. There was one woman, Sasha, who she describes as self-absorbed and kind of nutty, who wound up on a third date with Norah. Norah dropped hints over dinner, but waited until they were in the bedroom making out before the Big Reveal. Sasha went on to sleep with her anyway. This was a particularly interesting (and disturbing) chapter after reading Whipping Girl a few weeks ago. The author of Whipping Girl objects rather vehemently to the stereotypical image of the deceptive transsexual who lures in the innocent man only to be revealed as having a PENIS OMG as the clothes come off. This is an incredibly toxic stereotype, not least because of the transsexual people (most of them women) who are murdered every year, by people who claim, "he didn't tell me he was a guy and I just snapped when I found out." For Norah to deliberately enact this sort of scene really bothered me; there was no reason to let it get that far.

There was a lot that bothered me, honestly, and it clearly bothered her, as well, given how awful she felt when she was done. <<<

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting your review here - I enjoyed it. And yeah, Vincent really creeped me out, and I did feel that some of her deceptions went well beyond what's acceptable for undercover journalism.

[naomikritzer]

For some reason, I read a whole bunch of "infiltration memoirs" kind of close together. Joel Derfner (in his totally awesome and delightful memoir, Swish, which I mentioned above) infiltrated an ex-gay organization's weekend, and then felt horribly guilty about it. I also read a book called The Unlikely Disciple in which a guy from some liberal arts college transferred for a semester to Liberty U. The fascinating thing about that one was that he managed to do it WITHOUT lying ... he just didn't always fill in all the details. When people asked him why he'd come there from Wesleyan, he said he wanted to know what it was like at a Christian university. Which was true. The other thing that really made me love that particular book was that even though he was writing about people he profoundly disagreed with, he managed to go into this experience with genuine openness, and wrote with love and respect about the parts of the experience that he really enjoyed. (For instance, at Liberty, along with getting a roommate, he was assigned to a small prayer group, which was expected to meet every night, share concerns, and pray for each other. He grew to really love this, and missed it when he went back to Wesleyan.)

Anyway, I don't blame you for not wanting to read Voluntary Madness ... although it was better than Self-Made Man.

(Sorry for yapping endlessly on this ANCIENT post, but better here for this tangent than back on the "books about psychology!" thread.)

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I love book commentary! Swish sounds charming, and I never even heard of it.

Can you email me a link to your Sekrit Book Review Journal?