Female author lives life as a 'self-made' man
(China Daily)
Updated: 2006-01-23 05:40

LONDON: In the battle between the sexes, Norah Vincent was a secret agent. For 18 months she lived as a man, trying to resolve the gender divide.

Norah Vincent: "Fortunate, proud, free and glad in every way to be a woman."

The result is a book, "Self-Made Man," chronicling how she joined a men's bowling team, visited strip clubs and dated women. She took a job in sales, wore a prosthetic penis under her jockstrap in the gym and attached synthetic hair to her face. As "Ned," she worked out to bulk up and bound her breasts flat.

Her work has now won wide acclaim as a ground-breaking piece of social journalism. It has been described as following in the footsteps of author John Howard Griffin, a white man who disguised himself as a black American for a year in 1959. That book, "Black Like Me," went a long way to opening United States' eyes to racial discrimination.

Far from finding life easier as a man, Vincent ended up concluding that men have it tough. They battle aggression and stereotyping and are forced to suppress emotions. It may be a man's world but Vincent is pleased to be a woman. "I am staying right where I am: fortunate, proud, free and glad in every way to be a woman," is the book's final sentence.

She got a job and began befriending men on a sales team that thrived on testosterone. She quickly came up against the ugly side of male life.

Her colleagues made sexist comments, discussed in graphic terms what they would like to do to women who walked by and went to strip clubs.

She concludes that the bravado hides suppressed emotion. Strip clubs are places of sadness and loneliness and she feels "a profound pity" for the men.

She was also shocked by the women she dated. "I listened to them talk literally for hours about the most minute, mind-numbing details of their personal lives. Listening to them was like undergoing a slow frontal lobotomy."

Vincent calls for a male liberation movement. She wants men to free themselves from their traditional roles and express themselves.

(China Daily 01/23/2006 page1)