The Female Self-Made Man Struck by Male Powerlessness
Norah Vincent wanted to experience what life would be like as a man. As a journalist, she decided to conduct an 18-month gender change experiment using herself as a guinea pig. She documented her findings in her 2006 book ‘Self-Made Man’.
Although she was a lesbian and never identified as transgender, she was curious about living like a man. As part of her transformation into her male alter ego Ned, she created fake stubble using tiny pieces of wool and exercised with weights to develop her shoulder and chest muscles. She styled her short hair in a flattop and wore rectangular glasses to create a more masculine impression. She also hid her breasts using a very tight sports bra and wore a soft prosthetic penis. Training with a vocal coach, she learnt to deepen her voice and adopt a manly posture.
Living life as Ned, she sought out various typically masculine activities and situations. She was constantly shocked by how welcoming men were towards her. For instance, she participated in a blue-collar bowling league, where the other men accepted her as one of their own. Despite her poor technique and performance, they were extremely supportive of her efforts. To her even greater surprise, when she finally revealed she was really a woman, they took her revelation well. Apparently, they’d thought she was a gay man due to her feminine mannerisms, but they didn’t mind.
Although she frequently experienced rejection in singles’ bars, she did manage to date some women. In her book, she describes taking women out as Ned as the most challenging part of the experiment. The dates were nerve-wrecking, even when the women obviously liked her and she liked them. She had “never felt more vulnerable to total strangers, never more socially defenseless”, she writes, than in her “clanking suit of borrowed armor”.
She realised that masculine toughness was a facade encouraged and enforced by all of society. It’s an act which men must master in order to be received favourably by women and other men alike.
Disappointingly, in her conclusion she still clings onto the obscure notion of patriarchy, while acknowledging that women have a vast role in determining how men behave. If this patriarchy is constructed and maintained by women at least to the same degree as it is by men, isn’t the concept redundant?
It’s a pity that Vincent failed to reach the glaring conclusion staring her in the face the whole time: that male and female gender roles had evolved not as a result of oppression, but simply out of necessity. For most of human history, the continuity of civilisation depended on men’s often self-destructive, sacrificial courage and overall (mental and physical) strength. Although these attributes may no longer be needed and are often inexpedient in modern western society, they are likely biologically ingrained to some extent, as well as culturally imposed.
When Vincent first embarked on this journey, she was expecting to experience the feminist myth of male privilege first-hand. Instead, by taking part in all-male therapeutic workshops, she discovered the many ways in which men are severely disadvantaged. As a result, she sank into a deep depression for much of the same reason a lot of men do: for feeling isolated, lonely and powerless.
Her mental health continued to deteriorate. Even after resuming life as Norah, she was still experiencing Ned’s depression as her own. Eventually, she admitted herself to a psychiatric institution. She wrote candidly about her time at the hospital in her subsequent book ‘Voluntary Madness’, published in 2008.
“Did I need medication? Or did I need someone to talk to? Someone, that is, who would do more than charge the going rate for nodding and whip out a prescription pad before the first fifty minutes were up. Was I physiologically depressed? At an innate biochemical disadvantage? Or was reaching for the pad just the way things were done because the doc had been well patronized by the drug reps and had plenty of samples in her file cabinet?”
Her persistent depression drove her to attempt suicide in 2014. Tragically, she was never able to overcome the suffering caused by her mental health struggles. She tried various medications, but nothing worked to improve her condition. She passed away via assisted suicide in Switzerland in July 2022, at the age of 53. Her death was reported in August.
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