A month or so back, I received a strange package in the mail from an old friend I’d lost touch with; it was Norah Vincent’s “SELF-MADE MAN: One Woman’s Journey Into Manhood And Back Again” and it was a fascinating and infuriating read. What was fascinating to me was not so much the topic of the book, but the neuroses and narcissism of the author, a self-proclaimed butch lesbian who seemed incredibly ill-suited to this particular experiment. What was infuriating to me was that nearly all her conclusions were painfully obvious – either reinforcements of cultural stereotypes or “insights” about the problems men face (which should be obvious to all those with a relatively open mind who have long-term interactions “as” men; i.e., anyone [male or female] who has been perceived as a man for years).
The topic of the book is Norah’s year-long drag-act as “Ned,” a bookish, slight man with perpetual 5-o’clock shadow (courtesy of some drag lessons by a friend). I use the word “drag” very intentionally here because Norah clearly has no aspirations to become a man permanently (she’s not at all trans and, oddly, never even touches on the subject of trans-men in the entire book); for her, it really is an “act,” albeit one that goes further than she had perhaps intended. She puts herself in typical or extreme masculine environments such as joining a bowling league, frequenting strip clubs, “Red Bull” sales jobs, a men’s support group and even tries “heterosexual” dating as a man.
I have to commend the author on the bravery of going through with this experiment despite the risks and her not insignificant misgivings. All in all, she did it mostly full-time (at least in public) for a year and a half. However, I do not understand the rationale of most of her decisions. What did she hope to gain by posing as a man in strip clubs (that she couldn’t have observed as a woman patron)? Why does she feel compelled to “out” herself to her bowling buddies and, after she convinces her first bowling buddy Jim that she is a woman through lengthy discussion and display of ID cards, why does she flash him her breasts in the parking lot as they’re leaving? Why, when she’s dating as a man, does she keep dating certain people after she starts to build an emotional connection (eventually “revealing” her womanhood) and then sleep with one of those women? Why does she always feel compelled to “reveal” herself (even in the monastery and later agonizes about whether to to tell the men’s group leader)?
I was frustrated that she never seemed to take it seriously, or, rather, was unwilling to go the distance. She didn’t give a clear reason for her revelations to the various men she developed relationships with, but at various points indicated that she felt bad about the “deception.” However, I think she was just uncomfortable not being seen as a woman, and therefore (sub-consciously) sabotaged her man-act. At the end, she talks about the nervous breakdown she had and how she couldn’t keep Ned and Norah at the same time because the man and woman psyches were so diametrically opposed (which I think aligns with my perception of sabotage). No doubt maintaining the facade of manhood is a challenge (it is even for the men who grow up doing it and more obviously so for a “newbie” like Ned), especially with her previous and very different identity; however, given how successful she was at being perceived as a man, it should have been obvious how much of gender is performance, when instead she concludes that her gender is “hard-wired.”
Her various observations about men are alternately banal, faux-insightful and (perhaps) truly insightful. On several occasions she comments on the irrepressible [hetero]sexuality of men (e.g., their need for strip club-type outlets), which I couldn’t help but bristle at. In other places, she says things like “other guys, it turned out, were hypervigilant about the rules of manhood…” (well, duh). On the other hand, she comments on the difficulty of living up to the expectations of being a man in the world of dating, especially in a post-feminist world (where many women expect traditional aspects of manhood alongside conflicting modern sensitivity). My favorite passage was (within the final chapter, Self):
Men’s healing is in women’s interest, though for women, that healing will mean accepting on some level not only that men are — and here is the dreaded word — victims of the patriarchy, too, but (and this will be the hardest part to swallow), that women have been codeterminers in the system, at times as invested and active as men themselves in making and keeping men in their role.
What? I mean, is this actually surprising to anyone? I guess I’m privileged to be a keen observer of gender who has been (mostly) perceived as male and therefore these points are painfully obvious and the disclaimers unnecessary, but perhaps to a lesbian feminist intellectual, such observations might be astonishing. And, reluctantly, I’ll admit this is probably not a thought that has crossed the minds of most of mainstream America, but I like to imagine that it wouldn’t be surprising to them (even though I know that questioning gender is a Pandora’s box most people are unwilling to touch).
So many revelations and yet, at the end, although she feels more compassion for men, she doesn’t change her behavior towards them and is grateful to escape her masquerade. She is careful not to draw any generalized conclusions about gender in the broad sense as being hard-wired (she only describes her reactions in terms of herself), but it’s hard not to infer that, despite the fact that a woman was able to successfully interact as a man in various environments with some physical cues and acting, that her failure to thrive as a man is in some way indicative of the native tendencies of both men and women. And her complete avoidance (I assume it is intentional as I can’t imagine she is ignorant) of the topic of transsexualism and transmen in particular is bizarre and gaping given its relevance to the subject matter.
Having lived much of my life as androgynous (to lesser and greater degrees) and, at times, being seen as 100% man or 100% women, it’s hard for me to understand how people can be so invested in gender as tied to biology/genitalia. Undoubtedly, hormones have their effects, but our roles in society are really determined by cues (which, as Norah/Ned observed, can be manipulated). Our role (and how we’re treated because of it) can’t help but have a profound effect on how we act and on our identity. Given the premise, her background (tomboy/lesbian) and her audacity to pull it off, I was expecting something a bit more (perhaps something more in line with my own experiences/observations or revelatory beyond that), but at least it was engaging (I’ve don’t usually yell at the books I’m reading). 🙂
