Drat. I was hoping to post six entries in March, but it wasn’t meant to be. I even forgot to post a Saint Patrick’s Day update. I need a calendar that marks all of the Celtic holidays. Hm… I ought to look into that.
There is a book that has been gaining some attention lately at one of the web logs I occasionally read. Aggressively enthusiastic recommendations might be a better way of putting it. The book in question is Self-Made Man by Norah Vincent. I had noticed it at the bookshop where I work and thought it might be interesting, but as I am burdened with an enormous and ever-growing backlog of books I want to read, I decided at the time that it was not interesting enough to leap ahead of the queue. The unbridled praise I was reading in the thread both intrigued me and stoked my inner skeptic, however, so I decided to let it leap ahead after all.
It is not a long book, and I read it in two days (and I would have read it in one if I hadn’t had to work). To briefly summarize, it is about a woman who passed herself as a man in order to see what it is like to be treated as a man by other men and by women. Inevitably, this leads her to infer what it is like to be a man, and why men are the way they are, and what consequences this has for women and the human race. It starts as a personal quest for understanding, and although she warns at the beginning of the book that her experiment was far from scientific or authoritative, by the end of the book she can’t help but express her experiences as universal truths, and that is where the book fails. I suppose it is too great a temptation to render sweeping judgments about the human condition and overgeneralizations about huge portions of the population in a society in which punditry and soundbytes take the place of intelligent discourse and in-depth reporting. I do not doubt the author’s honesty, intentions, or integrity, but I do see a tendency to enlarge her personal experiences and draw distorted conclusions from them. I am not suggesting that her conclusions are false in their entirety, but I am asserting that some of her conclusions are accurate only for the groups to which she was exposed, for you see her entire project was limited to exploring subcultures, and I’m afraid one cannot understand the whole by limiting one’s investigations to a few peripheral, unrepresentative parts. By way of explanation, allow me to put it this way: If a man were to convincingly disguise himself as a woman and successfully infiltrate a tupperware party, a convent, a women’s Wiccan commune, and try his hand at being an Avon saleswoman, do you think that he would, from those experiences, understand the fundamental essence of being a woman and how women interact amongst themselves and with men? I think not. Vincent’s experiences include joining a “white trash” men’s bowling team, frequenting the sleaziest low class strip clubs, living in a Catholic monastery, joining a Robert Bly-inspired “men’s movement” group, and getting a “job” as a door-to-door salesman for one of those countless 100% commission rip-off employers. That doesn’t represent my experiences as a man; in fact, it doesn’t represent the experiences of any of my male friends. Hers are experiences with subcultures, and some subcultures have a tendency to attract those who deviate from the norm in a certain way, and reinforce certain deviations in many cases by their very nature. This is not a good source on which to base a general evaluation of being a man.
As I read the book, I was curious to find out whether she met anyone like me, and what her reaction would be, but alas, she was apparently searching for stereotypes, and was often surprised and torn with guilt to discover many of those stereotypes were false. She never sought to interact with any men who might be well-adjusted or independent (even if she did find them occasionally), but tried to immerse herself amongst men who were dealing with severe emotional wounds (usually as a result of their dysfunctional upbringing) and who depended on a group for their own sense of validity. Is it any wonder she should develop such stunted conclusions about men’s emotional states (or supposed lack thereof)? I am not suggesting the book was without value; it had its moments of revealed truth, and it was written well. I just wish she hadn’t resorted to the bits of mystical sanctimony and the (perhaps unintentional) pigeonholing she claimed she would avoid.
My greatest concern is that there are those who will not take the observations of this book with a grain of salt. They will exaggerate it and apply it to everyone and everything, thwarting the good intentions of the author by employing it as another source to uphold stereotypes, the “Us vs. Them” mentality, and the old “unbridgeable chasm” arguments used to justify non-negotiation. Readers beware, all men are not necessarily represented in the book.