["Self-Made Man"] drew comparisons to “Black Like Me,” the white journalist John Howard Griffin’s 1961 book about his experiences passing as a Black man in the segregated Deep South.... Ms. Vincent was a lesbian. She was not transgender, or gender fluid. She was, however, interested in gender and identity....
She was a libertarian. She tilted at postmodernism and multiculturalism. She argued for the rights of fetuses and against identity politics, which she saw as infantilizing and irresponsible. She did not believe that transsexuals were members of the opposite sex after they had surgery and had taken hormones, a position that led one writer to label her a bigot. She was a contrarian, and proud of it....
Being Ned [that is, researching "Self-Made Man"] had worn Ms. Vincent down; she felt alienated and disassociated, and... she checked herself into a hospital for depression. She was suffering, she wrote, for the same reason that many of the men she met were suffering: Their assigned gender roles, she found, were suffocating them and alienating them from themselves. “Manhood is a leaden mythology riding on the shoulders of every man,” she wrote....
We're told the death was "medically assisted, or what is known as a voluntary assisted death."
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I was interestedt to find her sympathizing with men. The book took aim at the feminists' view of the oppressive patriarchy, men riding high and loving it, men having the freedom to do whatever and burden women with the leftovers.
Men had roles and the roles had costs. In my experience, though, the ability to fulfill the role expectation, or the experience of having done so, was a positive. That's a pretty deeply ingrained role, when you get a charge out of doing what's assigned, despite the cost.
And she was alert to the cost.
Bless her.
Why did she commit suicide? was she sick? or just tired?
That was a compassionate book. She wasn't a transgender: she cross-dressed temporarily to pass as a man, men, from working class to other settings, and her writing was insightful. I hate to hear she killed herself. I hate that there are countries that let mentally ill (she had been institutionalized and wrote about that as well) people commit suicide. Abet it, really. Tourism suicide. That's sick.
I wonder if she was being targeted by trans activists, as my lesbian friend tells me is very common in her circles now.
The gender debate has taken on a life (or death) of it's own. Multiple genders, gender dysphoria, gender euphoria, non-binary, cis-gender, personal pronouns, puberty blockers, top surgery, penis tuck et al. The end result? Suicide rates will continue to climb and it will befuddle the experts.
Sad. We are worse off without her.
She flew to Switzerland to kill herself.
Another day, another huge word salad filled with flowery metaphors and deep insight used to describe a person and a lifestyle that is deeply disturbing and miserably tragic.
The meme is real. You don't see these people in their old-old age. What a miserable and philosophically disingenuous way to live one's life. To go through with it just so you can write some miserably tortured book about misery and then after death have someone else write some a exposition about your infantile insights into all the secrets you didn't find and the questions you didn't get answers to.
When this hysteria is over and sanity returns, 21st century history is going to be very very unkind to the trans movement.
I have never felt that the demands of manhood were oppressive, but many of the demands of various individual women sure seemed so, fortunately there are lots of different kinds of women. The secret is to not make particular women into “every woman,” or particular men into “every man.”
Tucker had a segment last night on euthanasia. Apparently it is easy and common in Canada. A guy got himself killed due to hearing loss. No word if the oppression of being a man played any part.
Norah Vincent seems like a thoughtful woman who wanted to learn something by passing as a man. It is a shame that she didn't realize that the experiment was flawed because she isn't a man. Her investigation differs from Black Like Me because a black man and a white man are physiologically the same. Absent testosterone and other hormonal difference, she wasn't processing her experiences the same way a man would.
I never felt that manliness was a burden. I am sympathetic to young men in our society. The burden is that our culture has confusing expectations for men that seem to run counter to our natural inclinations. I think the same is true for young women. Pushing masculine and feminine toward some androgynous middle ground doesn't seem to work for anyone.
tim in vermont
That's the key. The demands of manhood are so ingrained that they actually feel good, despite the costs, some of which are considered honorable.
Example. Before retirement, my wife was a high school Spanish teacher. As such, she arranged to take kids to Spain or Mexico. I helped on one trip to Mexico and three to Spain.
Various things had to be done to prepare, of course, and one of them was the parents' meeting.
"That's my husband," she said, pointing to a large guy in the back with no particular expression, "he's a pretty good body guard."
She was putting together a trip for their kids to another country and making a number of arrangements to see large, poorly-lit buildings and such, and one consideration was safety and her arrangement for that was me. One parent shortly thereafter said she was glad "Sarge" was going on the trip.
Okay so far. I'm hubby and I want her to be safe and her enterprise to succeed.
But. We used a tour company. On the '97 trip there was another high school group--company needs a certain minimum to make their overhead--and two chaperones. In the '99 trip, two other groups and three chaperones.
All of the other chaperones were teachers on the young side of middle age. All had had experience in such trips.
And all of them made a special point of sincerely thanking me for being there. "I feel so much better with you here...." and a dozen different explications of the sentiment.
Which was, I was supposed to be looking out for a dozen and a half white-bread, corn-fed midwestern teenagers, mostly girls, and now, by the happenstance of the tour group arrangements, I had a couple of dozen more to guard as well.
This was so obvious as to not need to be named. It was my role expectation and the other chaperones were, in effect, making sure we were on the same page but the social convention was so obvious it need not be explained. It simply was.
I had to get nose-to-nose with a couple of maniacs, eyeball those pretending not to be eyeballing our (my)kids.
Had it come to blows instead of intimidation, I might have been hurt, likely not. I might have been in a Spanish jail.
That was my lot. Because I'm a guy and it's my job.
Everybody knows it, everybody knew it, nobody had to say it out loud. Which is the point of this story. Everybody knows it and nobody has to say it out loud.
Secondarily, as a guy, it is presumed I've taken at least some thought as to how do such things including do I know at least something about how to fight. Am I sufficiently physically confident that a guy approaching our group yelling looks me in the eye and goes away? If not, I am not fulfilling my assigned--nobody asked me about it--my job.
It is so ingrained including the likely or actual costs that I see it as kind of gratifying that I get a chance to do it. Which, when you think about it is sort of bassackwards.
There have been many other such requirements, potential and actual since I was about five, but the reason for using the trips to Spain as examples was to make the case of how casually but seriously others put me in the role of guarding their kids as well as mine. How it was casually expected and need not be explained.
"Chronicled Passing as a Man"
How did she do it? By working on power lines, sewage systems, car repair, forestry, mining, oil platforms, infantry squads, new technology and successful startups?
Transgender, trans/social, confusion, and self-abortion: the progressive conflation of social liberalism.
I first heard about her via Andrew Sullivan. He was her champion, when she was attacked for her controversial positions. The attacks on her seemed motivated from this persistent idea that if you deviate from certain narratives designed to further an agenda, at that time it was gay rights, you will hurt that cause. You see that in black\white discussions today. Academics like Glenn Lowry and John McWhorter are called uncle Toms and sellouts because in the issue of race they dare to think and speak for themselves.
RIP
fortunately there are lots of different kinds of women. The secret is to not make particular women into “every woman,” or particular men into “every man.”
Binary sexes: male and female, binary sex-correlated genders: masculine and feminine, respectively, natural and social engendered roles, and a diversity of individuals, minority of one. #PrinciplesMatter (character)
Sad to hear.
I thought her book was interesting and enlightening. And I’d certainly withhold judgment on the circumstances of her death until there’s a verified account of them. There are fates worse than death to which no one deserves to be condemned on behalf of anyone else’s expectations or needs. Though I agree that euthanasia for psychiatric reasons would be ethically fraught and hopefully avoided.
It’s interesting that people familiar with her foray into cross-dressing would feel emboldened in continuing to demand that anyone fit themselves into any social or even biological categories, which they obviously do for reasons of their own comfort. Freedom allows for as much technological progress as it does self-expression, and I can’t imagine trusting anyone who would say, “This thing you want to be, this way of presenting yourself, it’s uncomfortable to me and how I think things should be. Change back for my benefit.” How selfish and authoritarian.
But transgenderism is the least of these people’s problems. Do they really think their politics will stop AI? Transhumanism? CRISPR?
As far as the predictable laments on males in modern society go, I guess the expectations of a less violent, less self-sufficient species are going to be more of a problem for some than for others. The need for the hero myth understandably runs strong, but crying out for every man to keep acting out his own strongman fantasies (or those we’d project onto him) is a non-starter in a world less easily shaped by the Putins, the Orbans, the Trumps, the Bolsonaros or any of their failed male role-model predecessors from the 1930s.
I suppose poorly-passing transsexuals can be annoying, but tyrants are intolerable. A gender-bending sloppy strut is better to see more of than more out-thrust Mussolini chins, especially off the White House balcony following discharge from Walter Reed.
Sebastian. It's in the book and the men in question seem to have been fooled, if you want to put it that way.
So some other country thinks it gets to kill mentally ill Americans for money? Let's address that.
She was physically beautiful- as either/both a woman or man.
I haven’t ever heard of her- but, I feel a loss b/c she’s gone.
hpudding
"the need for the hero myth understandably runs strong, but crying out for every man to keep acting out his own strongman fantasies (or those we’d project onto him)"
It isn't fantasies. There area bad guys out there and people want to be protected and...the social expectation is that the next guy you meet--if you're a woman or child--will protect you. And there are social conventions to that end.
How sad. It was an interesting and insightful book, and she seemed to be genuinely an intellectually curious person. Those are rare and we should always miss them when they're gone.
Wikipedia:
Vincent asserts that, since the experiment, she had more fully realized the benefits of being female and the disadvantages of being male, stating, "I really like being a woman. ... I like it more now because I think it's more of a privilege."
Vincent also stated that she had gained more sympathy and understanding for men and the male condition: "Men are suffering. They have different problems than women have but they don't 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."
...
Vincent was described as a libertarian who was critical of postmodernism and multiculturalism. She did not believe that transgender people were the sex they identified as, leading her to be accused of bigotry. In an article for The Village Voice, she wrote: "[Transsexuality] signifies the death of the self, the soul, that good old-fashioned indubitable 'I' so beloved of Descartes, whose great adage 'I think, therefore I am' has become an ontological joke on the order of 'I tinker, and there I am.'"
There's much to think about there. It sounds like she came to a mature and nuanced point of view. It's probably time to reassess all of our privilege categories, but intersectionality prevents that.
Pushing masculine and feminine toward some androgynous middle ground doesn't seem to work for anyone.
Some people are being pushed and naturally resent it. Other people are already more or less there, at the middle ground, and don't want to be pushed back into old roles. Hence the problems. Where does simply being human and trying not to be stereotypes end, and being androgynous or non-binary begins? There seems to be an unavoidable conflict between people who want maximum differentiation between the sexes and those who want to minimize the difference. What makes it even more confusing is that -- while we know the physiological differences between the sexes -- the psychological differences between genders are harder to define, given that men and women are participating in the same spheres of life.
I suppose it sound horrible to say this, but I hope she was suffering from some disease, and not choosing to end her life because of depression or ordinary sadness. Maybe some people will understand what I am trying to say.
Not many women can truly pass as a man...
She took passing for a man too far.
The suicide rate among males in 2020 was 4 times higher than the rate among females.
Does her death have to be another occasion to bash Trump? I'm not sure how much Trump has in common with the dictators of the Thirties. That's a fantasy of his opponents, largely disproved by the ease with which he was undercut and eventually ejected by them. Obviously, Trump had no paramilitary forces and didn't intend to rule by decree.
But consider Boris Johnson's call for a more feminine world. The world isn't the West, and the feminized West is going to have trouble dealing with foreign strongmen. Even "Dark Brandon," or at least his handlers, have some inkling of that. His regime has been quite forceful in dealing with domestic opponents as well.
In honor of Norah Vincent, I feel compelled to comment. "Self-made Man" was an astonishing book. I still recommend it to this day. She was an author of amazing courage, insight, and honesty, but I'm not surprised to hear that she never quite recovered from it. I would recommend it to anyone. It exposed a whole new way of thinking and being to me. So sad about what happened to her.
In honor of Norah Vincent, I feel compelled to comment. "Self-made Man" was an astonishing book. I still recommend it to this day. She was an author of amazing courage, insight, and honesty, but I'm not surprised to hear that she never quite recovered from it. I would recommend it to anyone. It exposed a whole new way of thinking and being to me. So sad about what happened to her.
There are sociopaths and there are opportunists. I thought a guy who shrugged off a half million Americans dying only to worry about boosting the economy and get re-elected was a bad guy, but apparently many like to put their faith in him. They felt protected by someone with no principles who’s thrown anyone he’s ever known under the bus while demanding loyalty of them. Go figure.
More Americans are becoming self-sufficient enough through connected systems, economies and legal norms to not need personal protectors. Call Angie’s List for a plumber instead of marrying one. Some people haven’t gotten the memo on this, but the women have. Darwin has a stronger say in things than Dickens, Angie Dickinson or the Donald.
Finally, an even better way to boost testosterone than promoting testicle tanning (as featured on Tucker Carlson’s insane show) would be to stop plasticizing the environment with estrogenic hormone disrupters. Most Americans now have evidence of microplastics in their actual blood. And yet, those preaching the “politics of the manly” tell us that the big oil companies poisoning us with this stuff can’t be touched, because they’re profitable and doing the manly work of exploiting extractive resources. Go figure.
No wonder feminism is ascendant. There are connections to see for solving our problems that the single-minded linear thinkers have brought upon us themselves. Harder, faster, better stops working after a while. The guns have been given more rights than the people killed by them. The direction of our escape from these horrible problems will not be pointed to by a penis.
Maybe some people will understand what I am trying to say.
I watched a relative endure dementia and years of wearing a catheter because his doctor was too incompetent to understand his uretha was blocked (and his undiagnosed dementia kept him from saying anything; they drained 4-5 liters of urine). He endured months of fear and pain before dying.
Yes, I understand completely.
She was confused through the conflation of natural and social engendered roles and standards, which was further exacerbated by her own untenable band in the transgender spectrum. Keep women affordable, available, and profitable, and, with social progress, your little girls, and boys, too.
Blogger hpudding said...
There are sociopaths and there are opportunists. I thought a guy who shrugged off a half million Americans dying only to worry about boosting the economy and get re-elected was a bad guy, but apparently many like to put their faith in him. They felt protected by someone with no principles who’s thrown anyone he’s ever known under the bus while demanding loyalty of them. Go figure.
Biden is bad but I think you are too harsh on him. :)
That's very sad. It was a good book, and I enjoyed reading it
"Black Like Me" was a very powerful book. I read it when it came out but was sure that it had been published earlier. Nope, 1961. I had never heard of the other author.
No, Norah Vincent did not end her life because of anything she learned or wrote in "Self-Made Man." If you truly want to know why read "Adeline." After finishing the work on Virginia Wolff, Vincent tried to kill herself in her bathtub with a knife, but the knife was dull from use, and her roommate saw her with the knife and called the police.
Norah had a lifelong illness that she could no longer tolerate -- depression and anxiety. Those who think depression is a temporary state of having the blues or just being sad and all one must do is cheer up, be thankful for what one has, and make daily gratitude lists will simply never understand. It is my own D&A that brought me to Norah Vincent. I do understand, I do feel as she did. In April 2015, she wrote an essay for Literary Hub attempting to explain why she would eventually die by some form of suicide:
"There are many artists, philosophers, mystics, seekers and other visionaries who have lived long, productive, contented lives well into old age, and died of natural causes. Samuel Beckett, for instance, who contemplated some of the grimmest visions of the human condition since Dante, and who withstood the ravages of debilitating depression and anxiety all his life, died of emphysema and a degenerative neurological disorder at the age of 83. Many of Beckett’s characters express some version of what for him had become a personal conviction: “You must go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on.”
And yet, living so long and not dying by his own hand does not in and of itself make Beckett or anyone else a hero or a success, any more than succumbing to suicide makes Woolf or anyone else a failure. It bears remembering something that Robin Williams mentioned in an interview that he had given years before he committed suicide in August, 2014. He was discussing addiction, but the import of what he said, which was wisely cautionary and profound, applies equally to depression and suicidal intent. It never goes away. It lies in wait for the moments when we are weakest. Managing it is a constant battle. We must be ever vigilant. Even so, we do not always prevail."
Fortunately for me, I am more the Beckett type. Norah died by assisted suicide in Switzerland. She wrote that "succumbing to suicide" did not make one a success or failure anymore than resisting. I would add that "succumbing to suicide" does not make one selfish, either. Norah Vincent led an imperfect life the best she could before she became too tired to continue. If there is anything after death, let her know peace.
Sebastian. It's in the book and the men in question seem to have been fooled, if you want to put it that way.
hpudding said...
There are sociopaths and there are opportunists. I thought a guy who shrugged off a half million Americans dying only to worry about boosting the economy and get re-elected was a bad guy, but apparently many like to put their faith in him.
It's time for another round of "stupid or dishonest?"
Trump quite properly opposed shutting down the economy, because unlike you he was intelligent enough to know that the lockdowns would have negative effects worse than remaining open
How many people are going to die early because of the Covid weight gain?
How many people died because of lake of social companionship?
How many had their lives destroyed as their businesses were destroyed by the lockdowns?
The biggest sociopaths here are the ones pushinging / justifying the lockdowns, so if you want to see one, look in the mirror
"She was suffering, she wrote, for the same reason that many of the men she met were suffering: Their assigned gender roles, she found, were suffocating them and alienating them from themselves. “Manhood is a leaden mythology riding on the shoulders of every man,” she wrote.... "
Watch the documetary "The Red Pill". When a feminist filmmaker Cassie Jaye sets out to document the mysterious and polarizing world of the Men's Rights Movement, she begins to question her own beliefs. you can watch it for free here:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/amzn1.dv.gti.f8ad5670-3852-7463-a332-ca5870eb5a5d?ref=imdb_web&autoplay=1&ref_=imdbref_tt_wbr_fdv&tag=imdbtag_tt_wbr_fdv-20
"Chronicled Passing as a Man"
And yet in the end, she passed as a woman.
I enjoyed her book. One part that I found rather amusing was her surprise and annoyance at how peoples reaction to her changed when she was passing as a man. As a woman she was used to being regarded as a tough dyke; someone who might punch out anyone who looked at her funny. As a man other men tended to regard her as a rather weak and effeminate fellow, certainly no threat. As a woman she looked tough, as a man...not so much. All things are relative.
Sebastian, read the book. She was profoundly sensitive about the unacknowledged responsibilities and burdens of being men. She talks about hard labor, joins a bowling club, and looks at different classes of people. She was somewhat limited in her ability to pass as male, but she tried.
A really rare iconoclast. I lost track of her but will read her work on mental illness. She was everything Jennifer Finney Boylan, the Times' resident trans writer, is not. Boylan's memoir repulsed me with its narcissism and what she does to her wife and children.
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