''Self-Made Man: My Year Disguised as a Man'' is a 2006 book by journalist

Norah Vincent Norah Mary Vincent (September 20, 1968 – July 6, 2022) was an American writer. She was a weekly columnist for the ''Los Angeles Times'' and a quarterly columnist on politics and culture for the national gay and lesbian news magazine '' The A ...

, recounting an 18-month experiment in which she disguised herself as a man and then integrated into traditionally male-only venues, such as a bowling league and a monastery. She described this as "a human project" about learning. She states at the beginning that she is a

lesbian A lesbian is a Homosexuality, homosexual woman.Zimmerman, p. 453. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate n ...

but not transgender. In the book, she describes her experiences as a man in strip clubs, on dates, and as part of a men's support group. In order to effectively pose as a man, Vincent acquired a buzz cut and flattened her chest using a small sports bra. She also hired a makeup artist to fake a five o'clock shadow and trained for months to imitate a deeper male voice. She changed her diet and exercise regime to "bulk up" with more upper-body muscle. Vincent joined a men's bowling team, where she says "

he men He or HE may refer to: Language * He (pronoun), an English pronoun * He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ * He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets * He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' in ...

just took me in ... no questions asked." She eventually became friends with them, even coming along to strip clubs and dating women who had no idea of her true sex. She later revealed that she was actually female to the men, who "took it well."''Self-made Man: My Year Disguised as a Man'' Vincent also recorded ''Self-Made Man'' as an audiobook for Penguin Highbridge.Self Made Man Penguin Highbridge (Audio) (January 19, 2006) Vincent wrote about how the only time she had ever been considered excessively feminine was during her stint as a man: her alter ego, Ned, was assumed to be gay on several occasions. Features of herself that had before been seen as

butch Butch may refer to: People * Butch (nickname), a list of people * Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch, an Old West outlaw gang *Barbara Butch, French lesbian DJ and activist * Butch Miller (wrestler) (born 1944), ring name of New Zealand professional wr ...

were seen as oddly effeminate. Vincent stated that, after the experiment, she gained more sympathy for 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."

References

LGBT autobiographies 2006 non-fiction books Cross-dressing in literature Masculinity LGBT literature in the United States {{LGBT-book-stub

See also

References