E: Didn't noticed this was posted before. Still valuable though.

Tl;dr

Lesbian and feminist journalist Norah Vincent lives as a man for 18 months. Finds out women are more privileged than men. Also, red pill truths galore.

Body

Video

Norah Vincent is a lesbian and feminist journalist writing columns for the LA Times and The Village Voice among others. As social experiments she decides to live as a man for 18 months. She becomes her male alter ego, Ned Vincent. Her motives are as followed:

I wanted to enter male spheres of interest and see how men were with each other. I want to be friends with men and I want to know how male friendships work from the inside out.

So she joined a male bowling team, a sport she totally sucked in. How did the men react? Responding to the question why “they didn’t run her out of town”:

It is the most amazing thing because that shows the generosity that they have.

To her surprise, they accepted her, they didn’t mock her at all.

The handshake was unbelievable, it blew me away the first time I shook hands with a guy, a strange guy. It is strange because you think of women “We are so nice, we are so easy, men are so mean.... complete opposite. [...] They just took me in, no questions asked.

So she develops friendships with these men. At some point she decided to reveal herself to be a woman to her closest friend in the bowling group, later the rest of the group. Guess what? They accepted it and took it well. However, looking back they could tell she was different from the other men.

They showed me up as really being the one who was really judgmental because they are the ones who took me in, not knowing anything about me. They are the ones who made me their friend, no judgments attached.

After the reveal, Norah and the friend became closer and the friend became way more open about emotions, something uncommon among men, according to Norah.

There is a tremendous potential for tenderness among men and I am not sure if that is always realized and it is terribly sad.

So far she found out that men, in comparison to women, are less judgmental but also less tender (say, stoic) to each other. How about sexuality? Before the reveal, she also visited a couple of strip clubs. This is where the interesting part comes in.

I really ranced smacked against the difference between male and female sexuality. Female sexuality is mental and male sexuality is a bodily function, it is a necessity. You just HAVE to do it.

Another interesting quote, on the lack of intimacy in strip clubs

I saw the men there, I saw their looks on their faces, I saw them sitting alone, sitting there burbling. This is not about appreciation of women, it is not about appreciation of their own sexuality. It is about an urge and that is not always that pleasurable.

Men have had the tears and emotional expression sort of pounded out of them from an early age. By the time they are men they don’t even have the vocabulary anymore or the emotional awareness to really say what they are feeling.

Norah says she was never, ever, aroused when going to the strip club. Her sexuality is mental, men’s is not.

It is a drive. Because we do not have testosterone in our system, we do not understand how hard it is.

A man can get intimacy by approaching women outside the strip club and develop a relationship, possibly. Some of Norah’s comments on this.

In [approaching], women have all the power. We just sit there and with one word, “No”, we crush someone. The thing is we don’t have to do the part where you go across the room and you go up to a stranger and say the first words. Those first words are so hard to say without sounding like a cheeseball, jerk or whatever else.

She even managed to get some dates (30!) dressed as Ned. On the question if she had ever fun during those dates, she answers she rarely had any fun. Instead, she felt the pressure to prove herself. She was shocked that women had no interest in soft men. Her prejudice was that the ideal man is a woman in a man’s body. She found out women want manly men. Funny thing is that after she revealed her true identity during the date, some women still wanted to pursue the relationship because “they connected”.

So she even goes to some sort of men camp (see video) and eventually just snaps. She checked into a hospital with severe depression to not being able to play the role as Ned anymore. Her views on men changed forever:

Men are suffering. They have different problems than women have but they do not have it better. They need our sympathy, they need our love and they need each other more than anything else. They need to be together.

I am so much closer to myself. I really like me and I really like being a woman. [...] I think it is more of a privilege.

I focused on certain points. If you have interest in knowing more about the experiment, you can buy her book on it here.

Lessons learned (according to Norah Vincent)

*Men are less judgmental but also less tender among eachother.

*Male and female sexuality is radically different. Male’s is a bodily function, female’s is mental.

*Within the dating scene, the man’s role is much, MUCH, tougher than the woman’s.

*Also, women want manly men, not feminine ones

*Men suffering just as much as women are

E2: People are commenting on the fact that this post points out that men's lifes are as hard as women's but in fact men's are harder. I state Norah's opinions on this in this post, not my own.