I’ve been pretty interested in Gender theory and how our society, lived experience, and culture is shaped and shapes our lives due to gender.
I think my current beliefs on it is somewhat like, even before the reading of this particular book,
- I definitely believe that all human beings regardless of gender deserve equal rights and opportunities
- I definitely believe that there are some things that society deems innately masculine or feminine and I think for the most part this is silly
- However I do also believe that there are differences between the sexes and we should treat people accordingly to that. (To use age as an analogy, we talk in baby talk to babies, or talk louder to old people. we still acknowledge both as humans, but recognise that they have different needs when it comes to communication, and act accordingly. I cannot pinpoint the exact difference so easily with gender, but the point is proportionate)
- I find the current trend of society as trying to see past the differences between all of us, and instead of customising solutions to fit everyone instead of just the Man, are trying to create a template for everyone to fit into instead.
This book was recommended to me somewhere on reddit, and it is supposed to be about a journalist, who spent an year living as a Man, and how that experience shaped her perception of manhood and masculinity. Interesting.
I am a straight man, and I love talking about gender, sex, identity and relationships, especially with people who have definitions that conflict with traditional norms. to this date I feel like the most open and honest conversation I’ve had about these things were with a gay man and a trans man, both of whom had very interesting things to say about what they consider manly and masculine. In my head, that is because if you fit the more or less average definition of man, there is not much cause to think about or question the depths and bounds of your masculinity. Alternative expressions of it do tend to have that effect, which made me curious about this. That conversation is what prompted the google where I reddited this book.
Now I will actually start reading it, with the intention set in my head.
It all starts with the name. When she starts thinking about how to start this project(of living one year as a man), the first thing she needs, to start mapping out her action plan is a name. She settles on Ned, btw. So similar to my own process. Though I usually get stuck on the name.
It’s interesting, the author says she first dressed as an old man, for halloween, when she was seven years old. So odd. It seems true of many artists, that their art seems to be echoes of their childhood. Her Mom was also an actor, who successfully played the part of (a woman playing a man)
It’s 1:56 Am on a Friday morning and its raining outside and Im really enjoying reading this book actually.
“Lacan wrote that love is giving something you don’t possess to someone who doesn’t exist”
Man i got to check this Lacan guy out
“A good point. This came up often in the group—the idea that anger was not an unproductive emotion if followed to its source. The way these guys told it, anger was the one emotion they had in abundance, the one emotion that the world had allowed them to have in abundance, so by implication it contained everything else—sorrow, pain, need, shame. You name it. It was a feeling they knew well, and it was the place where most of their other feelings hid. Nobody here was going to judge you for letting it speak.”
It’s interesting, how riveting this book actually was. I started reading it Thursday night, and i was done by 3-4 am Friday morning. Right book, right time. The author really did try very hard to get into the male experience, I feel, and was rather charitable in her views. Her heart seems to be in the right place.
Norah, the author, masquerades as Ned, a late 20s man, in order to infiltrate and write about what it feels like to be a man, and how society treats you different based on gender. To do this, she progressively ups the ante. She starts in a bowling league, moving her way up to more and more “man” places, like a strip club, dating women, the work environment, and finally a monastery and a male retreat. It’s also interesting to note that she is a lesbian, which makes some things interesting because she does in fact get attracted to the women she is seeing as Ned.
Some interesting things in no particular order
- She is struck by the immediate anonymity she is offered. As someone dressing up like a man, she has to apply a beard wig and stuff like that, and the first time she goes out she is damn scared of someone recognising her. instead she notices that she same neighbourhood she inhabits as a woman, which greets her with staring and sizing up, completely ignores her as a man. To look at her(him?) for more than a second would invite a challenge, which no body wants.
- Her experience dating does cause her to have some sympathy for men. She seems to have decently successful time getting dates, but the difference in openness/body language/initial perception she notices as Ned dating girls vs Norah dating girls is immense.
- She towards the end has extreme dysphoria and mental issues from having to suppress so much of her femininity for so long. At several points, she describes imagery that was difficult for her to watch, where she pities certain people with an almost maternal instinct, and how difficult it is for her to suppress that part of her because of commitment to the bit.
- It also makes her realise parts of her female identity by contrast to the male experience.
“But that night in drag, we walked by those same stoops and doorways and bodegas. We walked by those same groups of men. Only this time they didn’t stare. On the contrary, when they met my eyes they looked away immediately and concertedly and never looked back. It was astounding, the difference, the respect they showed me by not looking at me, by purposely not staring.That was it. That was what had annoyed me so much about meeting their gaze as a woman, not the desire, if that was ever there, but the disrespect, the entitlement. It was rude, and it was meant to be rude, and seeing those guys looking away deferentially when they thought I was male, I could validate in retrospect the true hostility of their former stares.”
- One thing I was struck with is how humans can make true connections with each other, even through the veil of dishonesty. I found that really beautiful. She does meet people along her journey who connect with her on a deep level, even after she reveals to them the extent of her deception.
- She is also perfectly aware of her deception, necessary as it is to carry out her plan, and feeels quite bad for it. She recognises that its necessary though, and often comes out and reveals it after she has attained the info. I think this is admirable.
- Norah, as she describes herself, is a “butch dyke”. She describes herself as someone not very feminine, and a “tomboy”, or masculine woman. She says she was never accused of being feminine or effeminate more than when she was pretending to be a man. Intersting, that putting on a identity as a man is in fact what highlighted the still feminine parts of her so much that she was accused of being feminine.