Norah Vincent: writer disguised herself as a man for 18 months to write a book on gender. After the experiment, she was institutionalized for depression, and stated that she never felt so glad for being a woman. [xpost from: todayilearned]

DruchiiConversion · 2012-10-26T22:10:30+00:00

One of these days I am going to have to read this book.

2012-10-26T22:54:21+00:00

I just read an excerpt from the guardian. It's quite interesting. Link

warsie · 2012-10-26T23:04:49+00:00

I have that book in my bookshelf. I havent opened it yet.

EtovNowd · 2012-10-27T09:36:26+00:00

If you listen to the audiobook, which is her reading her work, you could obviously tell it wasn't the experiment that made her depressed. She was already like that.

2012-10-27T13:26:55+00:00

Wow, she has balls to do an experiment like that...

I wonder if anyone here is willing to ante in and do this for science? I'm too tall...

EDIT: I bought the book, if I finish it I'll post a review.

ErasmusMRA · 2012-10-26T22:17:22+00:00

Just to give everyone an idea of what this book is like, here's an excerpt:

I had lived in that neighbourhood 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. 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.

You don't live as the opposite sex for eighteen months, go to bars and on dates, and end up in bed and pull a "surprise" on your lover just for a book. She wanted to live as a man. This is something feminists seem to share -- penis envy. They don't just want to be equal to men, they want everything men have, they want to be men. The grass is always greener on the other side.

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