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

Product Information

Through this research, Vincent becomes very sympathetic to men. She sees the stresses they have and the limited emotional range society permits them to have. These pressures may be similar to the ones bearing on her as she, like them, tries to act the male part. Are there any public figures whom you admire for expanding social definitions of gender? Do you have any heroes—personal, political, or literary?

a b c d Dixon, Charles Robert (2011). All about the Benjamins: the Nineteenth Century Character Assassination of Benjamin Franklin (PDF) (Thesis). Tuscaloosa, Alabama: The University of Alabama. p.222. She struggles a lot with the guilt of decieving people into thinking she is a man, and so her relationships as a man are only ever superficial. As soon as she begins to develop a closeness with anyone she reveals that she is female. While it is very easy to relate to her feelings, one cannot help but feel it is giving her a rather eschewed perception of what it is to be a man. She paints a rather lonely and tortured picture of the average man, but she goes to the extreme ends of male culture (strip bars, a monastry, mens self help group, a competitive work place) to find experiences and does not live a rounded of meaninful life as 'ned' her alter ego. Vincent, Norah (2008). Voluntary madness: my year lost and found in the loony bin. New York: Viking. p.14. ISBN 978-1-440-64103-9. Full disclosure: I've cross-dressed once. I passed. I didn't change any of my mannerisms or jewelry. I wore my regular glasses and my regular jeans. People see what they expect to see. Wish I could upload the photo so you could see it too.Since Vincent, as far as I can see, neither has a clear question nor a hypothesis, the purpose of the book becomes unclear and there is no theme during the chapter discussions, nor resolution or final analysis in the end. I had lived in that neighborhood for years, walking its streets where men lurk outside of bodegas, on stoops and in doorways much of the day. As a woman, you couldn't walk down those streets invisibly. You were an object of desire or at least semiprurient interest to the men who waited there, even if you weren't pretty-that, or you were just another piece of pussy to be put in its place. Either way, their eyes followed you all the way up and down the street, never wavering, asserting their dominance as a matter of course. If you were female and you lived there, you got used to being stared down, because it happened every day and there wasn't anything you could do about it. Neesam, Malcolm G. (2022). Wells & Swells, the golden age of Harrogate Spa, 1842-1923, vol.1 (1ed.). Lancaster, England: Carnegie Publishing. ISBN 9781859362389. (Dawson's) brilliant business instinct made him a very rich man Miller, Bryan (April 6, 1988). "Oh, to Dine in Saugus, Mass". The New York Times . Retrieved November 12, 2017. a b c d "A self-made man. Woman goes undercover to experience life as a man". 20/20. ABC news. January 20, 2006. Archived from the original on October 8, 2007 . Retrieved November 7, 2007.

Discuss the two quotations at the beginning of the book. What does each one mean? What is their combined effect? Ward, Kate (December 10, 2008). "Voluntary Madness". EW.com. Entertainment Weekly. Archived from the original on November 24, 2020 . Retrieved August 19, 2022. Although a few of Vincent's realizations are meaningful—like that some men may feel just as oppressed by patriarchal ideas about gender roles as the women they are supposed to be oppressing—most of her revelations amount to something like "Not all men are complete pigs all the time, and some of them even have feelings!" While I thought the book was an interesting social experiment, it wasn't meaningful to me. It's clear to me that Vincent's ultimate conclusions likely would have been closer to the starting point for many of the women I know. urn:lcp:selfmademan00nora:epub:d49b782f-d41d-4ccb-b82a-499cfc07045d Extramarc UCLA Voyager Foldoutcount 0 Identifier selfmademan00nora Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t7mp69b6k Isbn 9780143038702 What influence do you think the media have on sexual roles? Do you see any trends that alarm or encourage you?Miller, Zeke (September 21, 2011). "Here's The Viral Video Of Elizabeth Warren Going After GOP On 'Class Warfare' Charge". Business Insider . Retrieved November 12, 2017. Going into this book, I thought it'd be all about how awesome it is to be a man. Vincent makes it clear early on that this would not be the case, which was a surprise to her as well. A tomboy in childhood and a lesbian, she writes:

Cawelti, John G. (1988) [1965]. Apostles of the self-made man. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p.279. ISBN 9780226098708. I enjoyed the analysis of how even in this supposedly intellectual and spiritual environment the macho manliness was still important in some ways and instilled in its members. As Vincent concludes the fear of homosexuality has a strong link to this mechanism. Ironically a least two of the monks that Ned meets are confirmed to be gay, but they both supress it. At the end of this chapter Vincent has a mental breakdown as a result of the constant switching of between being Norah and Ned, combined with the strain added by the remorse she feels for betraying people who she meets. Vincent is very open about her condition and it adds an extra layer to what she has gone through. However there is not much in the previous chapters that point to any constant emotional battle, so it feels in some ways less connected to the rest of the story than it could have done. Debs, Eugene V. (April 1893). "self-made+men"+is+seemingly+paradoxical&pg=RA5-PA267 "Self-Made Men". Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen's Magazine. Unsigned editorial. Vol.17, no.4 . Retrieved November 14, 2017. The term "self-made men" is seemingly paradoxical — since men who rise from obscurity to eminence in any of the walks of life, must have been assisted by agencies quite independent of themselves All that said, the book was interesting, if only because, as I mentioned before, most of her experiences as "Ned" were just as foreign to me as they were to Norah Vincent. If you decide to read the book, unless you're particularly interested in strip clubs, I recommend skipping chapter three; the rest of the book is plenty explicit without it, and that chapter is really more gratuitously depressing than titillating anyway.A woman can be downright ugly on close inspection, and every desirable aspect of her fake, the product of bleach, silicon and surgery, but if she's sporting the right signifiers, she's hot. She is her disguise, not a person but a type. A suit, I found, does very much the same thing for a man. You see it, not him, and you bow to it.” Again, as with the bowling chapter, this is very much a description of a certain socio-economic strata, rather than of male life. You have the 18 year old pregnant girl in tight clothes and the 20-something Bulgarian ex-pro tennis-player, both scrambling to make a living in the harsh realities of non-college-graduate employment world. White, Matthew. "The rise of cities in the 18th century". British Library . Retrieved 3 April 2022. If you want to read the short version of the book, read this chapter. This is where Vincent puts all of her experiences together and analyses her life as a man.

This makes me think I would not want that. The book also makes me think that I wish I had a man with a mixture of male/female traits. With long hair and a deep voice who can be himself around me and he'll let me be myself.

Media Reviews

But for me, watching the show brought my former experience in drag to the forefront of my mind again and made me realize that passing in costume in the daylight could be possible with the right help. I knew that writing a book about passing in the world as a man would give me the chance to explore some of the unexplored territory that the show had left out, and that I had barely broached in my brief foray in drag years before. Candid, compassionate, and witty, Vincent has written for the Washington Post, Village Voice, and Los Angeles Times, and she brings the full force of her experience to bear on the battle between the sexes. Her sharp intellect, emotional honesty, and keen perception combine to create a book that is difficult to sum up and impossible to put down. Self-Made Man both confirms and explodes stereotypes, ultimately presenting manhood as a complicated and contradictory experience that deserves greater attention from both sexes. Whether male or female, readers will find Self-Made Man a compelling, illuminating read and one that is certain to spark conversation. This, Vincent would agree, is the first step toward better understanding between the sexes. If you could switch genders for a day, what would you do? Why? What sort of man or woman do you think you would be?