The commencement of a "man" in a "man's" world: Chapters 1-3 of "Self-Made Man"

Norah Vincent’s journalistic piece Self-Made Man raises plenty of questions surrounding gender. Despite her overwhelming appeal to emotions and her tendency to over-generalize, Vincent recognizes many of the ways gender is socially constructed that supports the idea of gender as a performance. Additionally, her experience as a “man” shows the oppressive nature of patriarchy, and its affects on women and men.

Chapter 1 “Getting Started” describes Norah’s transformation into Ned, the man she will perform for a year. Her interest in drag started through a friend and manifested itself in a night out in the East Village of New York as a man. In that single outing Norah remembers having an epiphany of sorts about the way men interact on a daily basis: The men she came across looked away immediately instead of holding a gaze. This was contrary to Norah’s experience as a female living in that same neighborhood. As a woman, Norah had to constantly try to ignore the male eyes that followed her down the street. While she was in drag, Norah recalls feeling “the respect they [the neighborhood men] showed me by not looking at me, by purposely not staring” (3). She confirms her experiential hypothesis through male friends and was astounded that what she had experienced was the norm. She had “learned such an important secret about the way males and females communicate with each other, and about the unspoken codes of male experience” in such a short period, what about if she passed as a man for much longer period of time (4). Couldn’t she “potentially observe much more about the social differences between the sexes”? From there Norah takes transforming to a man very seriously. She wanted to offer an analytical and introspective narrative on the “sociological implications of passing as the opposite sex” that was not found in mainstream media portrayals of gender bending. With the help of a few professionals- (makeup artist, personal weight-lifting trainer/dietician, and a voice coach) and new accessories-(glasses, clothes, etc.), Norah began her journey as a man, in a man’s world.

The end of chapter 1 commences a trend in Norah’s journalism; an appeal to emotions that at times perhaps skews other aspects (including the analytical and introspective) of the story. She disclaims that while she deceived and lied to many people in the writing of this piece she “can claim with relative surety that in the end [she] paid a higher emotional price for my circumstantial deceptions that an of my subjects did”

Ned joins a bowling league for his first attempt to enter the “male” world in Chapter 2: “Friendship.” Although his biggest challenge in this chapter was his lack of bowling skills, Ned learns many things about his male bowling companions- Jim, Bob, and Allen. These three men are stereotypical American bowlers- white, middle-aged, and working-class men, escaping their wives and families once a week at the local bowling ally. However, Norah’s initial judgment of the men proves wrong as they struggle with things that aren’t “typically male.” Jim’s wife, for example, is dying of cancer and while it is not appropriate to show too much emotion, Ned notices the subtle things that show Jim’s love for his wife. Additionally, Norah’s description of Alex’s (Bob’s son) presence at the bowling ally begins to unravel the complexities of the socialization of boys into men (rite of passage-esque).

What struck me the most about this chapter was the fleeting recognition of class in these men’s lives. Although Norah does mention these things her approach to her bowling friends lacks an analysis that understands the emphasis that class (and race) play in the shaping of these men’s masculinities. Further, I was completely surprise (and in some ways unconvinced) with the responses of Jim, Allen, and Bob of finding out that Ned was in fact a woman. Do you think Vincent could be altering some of the happenings, or have I (and in some ways society) misinterpreted and stereotyped these type of men?

Ned is introduced to the infamous “titty bar” in Chapter 3 “Sex.” This was the most revealing and interesting of chapters for me. Ned begins to understand the culture of these clubs and comes to extremely insightful conclusions. Vincent paints the pictures of the “titty bar” as a separate culture. It is a place where men go to express their sexuality in “appropriate” ways. These ways include wanting and liking to look at naked women that meet an unnatural standard of “beauty” one that largely resembles something fake – like a doll. Although the portrayal of these women and the men’s response to it is surely misogynistic, Vincent thinks part of it may be contrary to misogyny; “…the idea that you [heterosexual men] could only treat as an object something that resembled a real woman as little as possible, because only then could you bear to mistreat it and yourself enough to satisfy your instincts” (79). Toward the end of the chapter Vincent further concludes “In those places male sexuality felt like something you weren’t supposed to feel but did, like something heavy you were carrying around and had nowhere to unload except in the lap of some damaged stranger” (90). She continues to outline a larger theme in the book which I really agree with and like- that men are just as much victims in these types of situations as women- but in very different ways. Men’s “victim-hood” has differing levels of oppressive results and is hard to directly compare to women’s but nonetheless, no one comes out clean.

So far I have enjoyed reading Vincent’s journey as a Ned. Her experiences thus far, show that performing maleness has its unwarranted side-effects and in a patriarchical society where they are largely the oppressors being a man is not as liberating as we may initially think. How would you respond to the questions below?

Questions:

1. To what extent is Ned performing gender? Does Norah’s performance of Ned refute or support Butler’s ideas in Gender Trouble? (For example, in order to truly perform gender in the dichotomous system, do you have to truthfully identify with the gender you are performing?)
2. Are there limitations to how much one can learn in just drag about the opposite biological sex?
3. To what extent is Vincent ignoring class, race, and sexual orientation in her analysis of male culture?