Sophia C. reviewed on 7/17/2009 + 289 more book reviews

Self-Made Man is a clever but inaccurate title for this book. Lesbian journalist Norah Vincent wasn't on a transgender or transvestite exploration; rather, like a Shakespearean heroine, she disguises herself as a man to see how the world would treat her as Ned. And write a book about it. Her observations over a year and a half are well organized in discrete chapters such as friendship, sex, love, life, work, and self.

Most women won't have a tepid response to Vincent's accounts of infiltrating a bowling league, a monastery, and a men's liberation support group, frequenting strip clubs, dating women, and selling door-to-door. Those who hate it would cite her obviously biased perspective as a white, middle class homosexual woman stepping into unrepresentative slices of male life, and the cliched conclusion that men and women alike are stifled by their gender roles. Those who like it will value the insight her disguise, which afforded the ability to observe men in male-only environments, offered her, hopefully with which the sexes might better understand each other.

What I found most interesting, however, was the psychological impact this experiment had on Vincent herself -- which leads to her next book, Voluntary Madness. I found her writing articulate enough that I will read the "sequel."

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