Self-Made ManNorah Vincent

Chapter 1: Getting StartedThe idea for the book first came in 1998 or 1999 when the author went out in drag at the request of a friend.When the author first did this and walked around her neighborhood, she noticed a dramatic difference in other peoples’ reactions to her. Most importantly, no one stared at her, which was an uncomfortable fact of life that she and all other women had to constantly deal with from men. In fact, other men would only fleetingly look at her and would purposefully avoid eye contact. The author found this treatment more respectful and that men also did it to avoid challenging each other and to adhere to an unspoken code of conduct needed to keep the peace.The author inferred that posing as a man for a longer period of time and having more social interactions under the guise would teach her more about differences between the sexes.The author chose an identity for her male alter ego. The name Ned was selected because it was the author’s childhood nickname. From her earliest memories, the author was a hardcore tomboy “…that makes you think there must be a gay gene.” In fact, she turned out to be a lesbian.For young girls around the age of puberty, growing breasts and developing other feminine features was badly coveted since the entry into womanhood makes them interesting to boys for once. Prepubescent girls are afforded no worth before they are sexually unattractive and at the same time have no redeeming male traits like physical strength. The author had three older brothers, meaning that all of their female friends were older than the author and hence more sexually developed. The author remembers feeling intense jealousy and self-loathing as a girl because of the contrast between herself and the older females, and she also remembers being made fun of by her own brothers.Most women have smoother skin than men, and this is evident both to the touch and in appearance.Ned had a light beard and glasses.The author used cupless sport bras sized too small for her coupled with baggy shirts to hide her breasts. She also began working out to build upper body muscle and she wore a prosthetic penis.Ned dressed in a preppie, casual manner.The author used a professional speech coach to learn to speak like a man. She learned that women tend to speak more quickly and using more words than men, often interrupting normal breathing rhythm. In consequence, women often run out of breath before they have finished their thoughts, forcing them either to speed up their speech to finish or to gasp before continuing. Later on, while posing as Ned, the author indeed noticed this in her interactions with other women.Men speak more slowly, with fewer words and with a more natural, relaxed breathing rhythm. The author found that simply imitating this manner of speech alone made her voice deeper, though not enough to pass for a man. Additional training was needed.The author did this project for academic reasons and not because she was a transsexual or transvestite: She did not enjoy most of her time as Ned, did not find that being male came naturally to her, and she enjoyed reverting to her feminine form.The author has been fascinated by the gender construct all of her life.The author found it troubling to deceive people about her sex.

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The author found that passing for a male was surprisingly easy, but dealing with the consequences of a new gender identity was harder than expected. The project took a serious emotional toll on her.

Chapter 2: FriendshipNed decided to first infiltrate an all-male bowling league. She found the experience of stepping into a bowling alley on men’s night to be overwhelmingly intimidating even though she was properly disguised.Women feel very out of place in strongly male environments like car repair shops or barbershops. It is an unspoken rule that women should not enter such places.Ned made arrangements to join a league. In spite of her best efforts, Ned still felt very feminine compared to the rough, working-class men who were on the team. Ned found a palpable and immediate bond of brotherhood between the men that she had seldom felt among women. A handshake with another man, for instance, was much warmer than most of the hugs Ned had shared with women in greeting. Ned observed male friendships and first-time meetings to be more genuine than those among females. While the women’s rights movement had attempted to impress a sense of solidarity among females, Ned came to find that men had already mastered this long ago and it continued to exist without outside support.Ned found first-time female greetings to be stilted and full of competition and suspicion masked by superficial warmth. The men at the bowling alley, on the other hand, accepted Ned from the start.The other members of the bowling league were Jim, Allen and Bob.The author found Jim to be the most social and to be very charming because he could make fun of himself and make light of past misfortunes without any bitterness.The bowling nights usually began with grunts and small “Hello’s” that among females would have been considered rude. The author interpreted this as a means to maintain appropriate male emotional levels: Fellow males indicated that they were happy to see one another, yet not excessively happy. While “white trash” males are the only group that remains socially acceptable to vilify and stereotype, the author found no detectable hints of racism among them.The bowling alley group was utilitarian in its views and did not care for politics or other complex issues.They were uninterested in gays or the rich. The men criticized individual members when they stepped out of line in some subtle way.The author found that the men had sexual impulses that their wives could not satisfy, and that the men learned to deal with it by looking at pornography or going to strip clubs and not telling their wives about it. Curiously, the men spoke very highly of their wives.The author concludes that the male sex drive and marriage are incompatible.Physical fighting was still necessary in rare cases to establish a male social hierarchy.Older men with stronger control over their sexual urges were able to more freely associate with women and to subliminate their urges into a “caring” persona. The author found one such man at the bowling events who seemed to almost see through Ned’s disguise.The phenomenon of older males mentoring younger males was natural and ubiquitous, like a father teaching a son.

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The authors found her male teammates to be instinctively and honestly helpful and forthright with advice to improve her game, whereas past experiences in all-female sports had demonstrated that women did not help each other out and secretly wanted one another to fail.Even members of opposing teams were ready to help Ned. The author came to realize that men derived no honor and little pleasure from beating a weaker opponent, and that they wanted a fair fight. On the other hand, the author recalled past instances in which females would stoop to extremes of nastiness to defeat those who stood in their way.The author found the occasional instances of kindness from the men to be more genuine than those she commonly got from female friends because of the formers’ rarity.Ned discovered that men indeed have a full range of emotions, but they are unspoken and only other men close by can sense them. To a casual observer or to a woman, these feelings are invisible, lending the false impression that men are emotionless. When the author revealed her true identity to Jim, he reacted with persistent disbelief. He also said that it was no wonder she was a woman because she was a good listener.Norah found that Jim opened up to her more than he did to Ned, and that he had many things on his mind he could not say around other men but felt comfortable telling a good female friend.Two weeks after revealing herself to Jim, Ned told the rest of the team she was female. The men reacted positively in the end and, like Jim, found Norah to be more interesting and likeable than Ned.The author noticed how, when the men discussed emotional subjects such as a wife being diagnosed with cancer, there was sympathy from the listener but also an almost painful degree of restraint for the sake of remaining “unemotional.”Men are afraid to make themselves appear vulnerable.The men of the bowling league became more progressive and pro-gay in their views after their experiences with the author.The author concludes that this first foray into “manhood” also made her feel ashamed of her own judgmental attitude towards the men due to their lower class. They showed her no corresponding disrespect.

Chapter 3: SexStrip clubs with fully nude dancing generally don’t serve alcohol.The author believes that misogynist behavior actually hides insecurity and pain, and that men actually badly desire the affection of women. She also notes that males of course play up their objectification of women when in the presence of male peers.The author was strongly repulsed and depressed by the strip club scene. Attendance of strip clubs is a shameful thing that males do not admit to female partners.The responsible role of the married man is at odds with the instincts that come with the male sex drive.Men of all classes and backgrounds have primal sexual urges that cannot be satisfied by their wives. More accomplished men tend to feel more embarrassed of these impulses. Lap dances are often not as they are depicted in the movies and instead are basically clothed sex in which the male actually has an orgasm. Prostitution is also common in raunchier clubs.The author found the female dancers to be artificial and the male patrons to be pathetic. Ned came across an open “lap dance room” and observed that the lap dances were not sensual and that no one cared about the lack of privacy. Truly, the act of hugging and fondling a beautiful woman was meant purely to satisfy a biological urge.

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The author noted the difference in attitudes towards sex found in men and women. Men simply want a physically satisfying, carnal fuck while women want to connect on an emotional level during sex. [What exactly does this “emotional connection” entail?]The author believes that emotion, seduction, imagination, and mental connection are the hallmarks of female sexuality, and that all of these were absent when she got a lap dance.The author found the dancers to have very empty eyes and to be naturally or purposefully vapid.The author theorizes that men want “perfect” women for pure fucking since the perfect woman is something artificial that they would never attain anyway. Hence, their shameful sexual urges can be released without fear of recourse since the woman is not “real.” [Uhhh…]Strip clubs are an escape from reality and a journey into the male subconscious. Ned found the strippers to be unanimously uninterested in the men, though some were good at pretending they cared. The author believes from her observations that chronic patrons of strip clubs have serious problems they are not dealing with properly, and that frequent visiting of such clubs disrupts normal sexual desire.

Chapter 4: LoveThe author learned that picking up women typically meant multiple rejections of the male for every one success.Ned enlisted a handsome, outgoing male friend named Curtis to help him with courting women.At the first bar, the author probed the interest of various women by staring at them and smiling when they made eye contact. If the women smiled back, Ned walked over and talked to them.Ned was rejected by his first woman. Curtis consoled him that rejection was omnipresent for men on the prowl, even for seemingly attractive men like himself.The author states that women find it pathetic for a man to interrupt their conversations in attempts to enter into a romantic situation. Even such attempts that men believe to be well disguised are easily detected by women for what they are. The author goes on to say that she appreciates honesty in men who court her directly instead of using canned pick up lines or acting fake.Never use the word “ladies” when speaking to a group of women you are interested in.Women assume from the beginning that all strange men who talk to them simply want sex. This prejudices their responses to such men and they become protective of themselves, not taking men seriously in conversation because they think the men might be feigning interest in something simply to get the woman in bed.The author was miserable being treated so coldly by suspicious women, but she understood the causes of their behavior.There is a strange bond that exists among females that allows them to chat amicably from the start even if they don’t know one another. [Yes, I have seen this.]Ned revealed himself to be a woman to a group of females he had been trying unsuccessfully to court. Their demeanor reversed immediately.The author was hurt by the belittlement suffered on the first night out and gained a new sympathy for men and a disdain for “the game.”Ned dated a number of women in their mid thirties, and quickly found that almost all single women of this age group carried emotional baggage from previous relationships, which usually translated into a disgust for the male sex. But as a bisexual, the author was aware of the fact that neither sex is better than the other and both inflict romantic pain upon their partners.

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The author felt attacked, judged and on the defensive around these women whereas men of the same age group had accepted her as Ned under the presumption of being a good guy.The author found it hypocritical for such women to be so judgmental of Ned while they themselves were seriously flawed and often ironically displayed the same character faults for which they criticized men. Ned had to fight from the beginning to prove himself worthy of these women and of a second date.Ned found many single women in their mid thirties to be emotionally damaged, immature and unstable, though they frequently considered themselves to be the opposite. Ned’s most important relationship was with a woman named Sasha. They met over an Internet dating site, spoke for a week online, and finally met at a coffee shop for lunch. Sasha’s first act was to show Ned a collection of recently developed photographs from a co-worker’s wedding, an act which the author thought inconsiderate since it is generally known that photographs of unknown people are boring. The author later came to guess that this might have been a purposeful act meant to “weed out” men who were not interested in her as a person. [How dysfunctional…] Sasha then spent two hours talking about herself and her pending divorce and secret affair with a married man. She took advantage of Ned’s politeness. [I get the feeling the author is a little too “nice” and may not be as assertive as an average man.] The author finally got fed up with the situation and confronted Sasha about her inconsiderate and self-centered demeanor. Sasha’s response was weak and revealed her to be a depressed person. The author appreciated her honesty and found that, with a more controlling conversational approach she could interact with Sasha constructively on a less-than-romantic level to find out what her impressions of men and Ned were. [Sounds like kind of a cop out on the author’s part.]One of Sasha’s main issues was that the man she was having an affair with had refused to leave his wife for her. This predicament was entirely predictable and completely Sasha’s fault, but she still blamed the husband for it and used it as an indictment of all men. Women like Sasha were desperately unhappy and did not see how their own actions perpetuated their suffering. Their primary fault was a failure to see men as individuals and concordantly an inability to give each new man a chance.Through her other dates, Ned discovered that, while women often legitimately complained about how men were unable to communicate emotionally with women, women were also both baffled and unconcerned with male emotions. Many also simply assumed that men didn’t have emotional needs when in fact the author realized that this was a mirage created by the male’s difficulty expressing emotions with females. Ned learned from the bowling league that men indeed have a full range of emotions.The author also found many of the women she dated to be painfully boring and socially retarded in that they monopolized conversations by talking nonstop about themselves (contrary to the stereotype that men dominated conversations) without concern over whether their chosen topic was interesting to Ned. Oftentimes these long tirades were complaints about some aspect of the woman’s social life or personal history. [It should again be noted that the author seems to be a passive person who probably does not behave like an average man.]To Ned’s surprise, many of these women enthusiastically requested second dates in spite of the apparent lack of chemistry.The author was annoyed and sometimes angered by the misbehavior of the females she dated and it often made her want to be hostile towards them in return. She imagined that men in her position felt and acted the same way, perpetuating the cycle of misery.

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The author admits having the same misandry in college and shortly thereafter when she was attuned to feminism and was surrounded by crass young men. But subsequent bisexual relationships taught her that neither sex was more evil than the other, and that past and ongoing female subjugation did not make females morally superior to men.Ned found most of his women online. Several emails were typically exchanged before the first face-to-face meeting. The author discovered that a well-composed letter of at least moderate length had a shockingly strong effect on women, and that poems were especially effective. The dates told Ned that the act was so impressive because it was very rare for men to write with such investment or thought. Most men simply wanted to meet as soon as possible, clearly to evaluate the woman’s appearance and for a chance at sex. The author noted this when she dated men as herself to contrast the experience with Ned’s. While she noted a difference in that the men were much more interested in a physical appraisal rather than conversation, she also found it far less intrusive to be evaluated in terms of looks rather than personality.Ned also found that many women demanded an unreasonably strict balance between “confidence” and “arrogance” in a man. Ned noticed that many of the women she dated wanted a confident man because they had a strong desire to be led, to be held, and to be sexually dominated. Ned was thus at a disadvantage because she was physically small and passive.At the same time, the women wanted a man who would be sensitive and at times vulnerable to them.The author felt sympathy for men once she understood the dualistic expectations women put upon them. Ned’s relationship with Sasha was the longest of all the women—lasting three weeks. While the two only met one another three times, they wrote emails to each other several times a day.The author decided to reveal herself as a woman to test Sasha’s inclination towards lesbianism and to gauge whether she was attracted to Ned’s maleness or to his personality.The two of them had dinner at Sasha’s house and began sexual foreplay. At that point, the author gave up her secret. Sasha remarked that Ned had seemed effeminate for a man and that he seemed gay. Ned’s well-groomed hair and nice clothing were also noticed and appreciated by Sasha (and, as it turns out, by Ned’s other dates), but at the same time seemed bizarre for a straight man.The author had originally hypothesized that Ned would be an ideal mate for a woman since she first believed that women really wanted a woman’s personality in a man’s body. This turned out to be a false belief. Some of the women said that they were turned off by Ned’s slight stature and wanted a more physically powerful man. While Ned connected with them emotionally, and while this made dates enjoyable, sexual attraction was often weak.The author ended up having sex with Sasha, making it the latter’s first lesbian experience.The author concludes that sex for women is a secondary event that occurs only after the woman mentally and emotionally connects with a man. The man must make the woman laugh and think, and he must listen to her. For most men, however, sex is a stand-alone activity. Ned’s best date was with a woman named Anna. The two of them had powerful chemistry immediately. Even after the author came out as a woman, Anna still wanted to see her and there was still a sexual attraction.Women find it awkward to give out their phone numbers to strange men, but at the same time, it is “unmanly” for a man to give a woman his phone number.

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Some women are extremely passive around men because they have learned from an early age that assertive and intelligent women intimidate men.Women commonly repress anger and cover it with a calm façade.Ned’s worst date was with an Ivy-league educated graduate student who had spent many years living overseas throughout her life. She could tell that the woman was extremely arrogant and had a disdain for normal Americans. The author observed that this woman, along with other past woman, tested Ned’s commitment to femininity by asking about his position regarding abortion. The woman also revealed herself to be misandrist. The author tolerated this abuse in the name of interpersonal research. The author’s experience as Ned showed her just how powerful female sexuality is, and how much men feel at its whims. Females have much more power over males than they perceive. For all their advantages in terms of physical and political power, men are easily defeated by a careless “No” from a woman.The author theorizes that this sense of powerlessness is what drives some men to rape women as a way to reclaim some of their lost pride after multiple rejections.The author says that she actually fears men more than ever now that she understands their psychology. Ned’s experiences led the author to become a temporary misogynist and to become ashamed because she realized that she shared some of the faults of the women she dated.To her surprise, the author found that most women seriously loved and craved “macho” men and blue-collar types. The author concludes that men are almost all insecure around women and badly in need of female approval, but merely differ in their ability to hide this.

Chapter 5: LifeThe author next investigated an all-male environment by joining a Catholic monastery. She admits that prison or the military would have also been interesting choices to study the same dynamics, but these options were unavailable to her.The author had a side objective of learning what celibacy did to men—an examination of the opposite extreme from the sex clubs.Ned was a long-term visitor who paid money to lodge at the monastery.Monastery life was highly regimented and punctuated by compulsory prayers. The author’s description makes it sound like a joyless place.The author lived on the fourth floor, which was reserved for novice monks. She notes that this floor was mostly empty, a testament to the diminished popularity of religious devotion. Brother Vergil was a monk who had taken his simple vows in his mid twenties, and then left the community for the outside world. He gained a degree in biology, achieved a respectable level of professional success and had a romantic life, and, after experiencing much of life as an adult man, came back to the monastery. He was one of the only monks to have followed such a path.The solemn vows are the final entry into the brotherhood of the monks. Vergil was Ned’s first friend. The former was outgoing, intelligent and pleasant to be around. Ned and Vergil soon found that they had a great deal in common and they began spending time together as friends.The author next describes an interesting interaction with Father Jerome, who appeared to the author to clearly be a homosexual. Ned told Jerome about this, and while Jerome rigorously denied it, he also confessed having a fascination with homosexuality and asked Ned about his

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sexual experiences with men (the author put on the appearance of being a bisexual man). Father Jerome also told Ned that he believed the latter was falling in love with Vergil, and that he had seen such things happen before in other monasteries. The author admits that she failed to project a sufficiently masculine image and that she publicly spoke of some of the monks in ways lightly indicative of attraction. The author realized that her behavior was too affectionate and violated male mores that she, as a female, had never learned. The author began to appreciate the powerful conformist element present in all-male groups.The author began to feel pity for men because her experiences in the abbey showed her that males are taught to repress emotional expression through group experiences. She remembered a time when her brothers were young boys who were still unafraid to express their feelings and who cried to their mother about cruelties inflicted by other males in peer groups.The only emotion males are allowed to show is anger.The author found that almost all of the monks were emotionally closed off and suffered from unaddressed dysfunctions. Brother Vergil’s attitude towards Ned totally changed during their second week together—the former became very distant and at times hostile towards Ned without any explanation.Brother Jerome began to display his own insecurities about his sexuality by insulting Ned for his past gay activities and by dwelling on the riff between Vergil and Ned. The author discovered that homophobia was strong in the monastery and she suspected this was the case in other, all-male environments.Ned realized that most of the monks were socially inept, did not know much about one another and consequently were very cautious around one another. Mandatory weekly “social circles” meant to improve relations within the abbey were painfully stilted and unsuccessful. [A traditional male bonding experience like a hunting trip might have been more effective.]While the men of the abbey were not homosexual, it was clear that they had a strong need for male company and thus that they joined the monastery not just to serve God but also to have each other’s company. Many of the monks seemed to have difficulty dealing with the demands and complexities of women and preferred to be around men, who gave one another personal space and were simpler to interact with.The author found that the all-male environment of the monastery had a serious downside: None of the men knew how to communicate with one another and as such they could not express or deal with their inner pain and loneliness. Before “Vatican II,” the monks were forbidden to form close relations with one another because it was believed that this interfered with their relations with God. The older monks at the abbey still clung to these beliefs and it affected the younger members.Ned found that the abbey bad ostracized a monk named Brother Crispin because he openly struggled with depression. She surmises that the others found his expression of emotions inappropriate and “weak” considering the fact that all of them suffered from internal pain and hid it. He became “the hated projection of everybody’s hidden weaknesses.”The author became depressed by the conditions in the monastery and one day, under the guise of a confession, spoke with Father Fat at length. She confessed her true gender and Father Fat accepted it without outrage. She also hugged him at the end of the interview, which he admitted would have been impossible if he were still under the impression that Ned was a man.Ned then confronted Brother Vergil about their altered relationship. After much persistence, Ned got Vergil to admit that he found Ned too clingy and sensed what seemed like a homosexual

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attraction, hence the abrupt break in their friendship. Vergil was shocked by the author’s big confession and communicated his sense of being used and deceived. The author realized that members of all-male environments worked actively to suppress emotions and femininity in themselves and in each other—the environment was not simply some byproduct of getting a bunch of men together. Intimacies between men occur when the men share too many emotions with one another, and the men invariably appear feminine. Femininity in a man is synonymous with weakness, which in turn leads to a failure to control one’s self. Therefore, being overly emotional and being feminine are inimical to being a strong man, who is in control of himself and his surroundings at all times.Vergil admitted that he was sexually attracted to men at times.Vergil, like the men of the bowling league, became much more comfortable with the author when they began thinking of her as a woman instead of as a gay or effeminate man. The author’s habits and personality were suddenly “natural” now that her sex had changed in their eyes.In retrospect, the author was surprised by the insecure, masculine atmosphere at the monastery and had initially believed that it would be a place devoted entirely to spiritual pursuits without concern for “manliness.”The repression and suppression of emotions was overpowering at the abbey. Even for a man it was misery. The author viewed this as “distilled and concentrated maleness.” At the same time, the author found the monastery to be spiritually uplifting and the men to be essentially good people.

Chapter 6: WorkNext, the offer got a job at a nearly all-male sales company. She wanted to experience a fast-paced, ultra competitive, testosterone-laden environment. This place and others like it had standing ads in newspapers because turnover was so high.The author felt empowered and very masculine in a business suit for the first time. She observed that the business suit is a signifier that heavily altered peoples’ perceptions of and reactions to the wearer. Men are more terse, authoritative and confident than women with their speech. Men feel less of a need to establish a connection with someone when speaking to them and refrain from using so many needless “Thank you’s” and “Sorry’s.” While Ned was more masculine than ever, he had a touch of humility that greatly impressed female coworkers, who were used to hypermacho men. Observations about the interview process:-As a man, Ned was expected to brag about himself and to be charming.-As a woman, the author found male bosses to be generally observant of sexual harassment policies, and that they did not bother her. However, female bosses were often insecure with their power and would wage underhanded fights with her.-Ned’s female interviewers flirted with him and his male interviewers were very chummy. Men are expected to swear and crack sexual jokes in male environments.Ned pulled of an expert performance and was offered a job by all 12 sales agencies.All of the sales agencies were based in small, rented suites in large buildings. The author noted that the primary purposes of these facilities were to conduct job interviews to compensate for the steady stream of workers who quit or were fired and to have gatherings of all employees at the beginning and end of each day.

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The workdays for these places were 11 hours long. The morning meetings were meant to psych the salesmen up and the afternoon sessions were meant to allow them time to brag among each other about what they had accomplished, and both were necessary for workplace morale.The salesmen went door-to-door selling a product and worked entirely off commissions while their bosses back at the home office got a cut of all their sales.Ned was initially paired up with Ivan, a 27-year-old Hungarian immigrant. Most of the male workers lived paycheck to paycheck and had little money. As a result, they could not afford good clothing and looked shabby when doing their sales. Many were also too poor to afford their own cars and had to carpool with coworkers. A salesman was usually dropped off in the middle of a neighborhood in the morning and was picked up several hours later.This work was done in all types of weather.The salesmen who stuck with the job were uniformly desperate to eventually land a better job in management, though the author estimated that their chances were slim.Clutch Advertising was the most hypermasculine workplace Ned belonged to. Only four of the 25 workers were women. The author noted that many of them had excelled in competitive sports in school, and that most were singlemindedly obsessed with outperforming their peers and being the best.It was clear that job performance was an extension of sexual performance, and that the sale had many elements common to sex: confidence, conquest, and capability. Ivan was a profuse liar and was good at sounding sincere—qualities that made him a good salesman. He claimed to have slept with 74 women, to have an I.Q. of 180, and to have a nine-inch dick. Ivan also constantly cursed and talked about sex while traveling with the author in his shitty car.There were no benefits whatsoever. At the end of every day, all of the salesmen met back at the company suite. There they tallied up their sales for the day and divided the shares between themselves and the management. An average day’s work would only bring an employee $65, or $5.90 an hour. Even an excellent day’s sales would bring in just $11.81 an hour. The employee with the most sales got to ring a large, metal bell in front of everyone else.Dano was the boss. He played upon the insecurities of his workers to motivate them to complete their miserable jobs. He continually flaunted his own rich lifestyle (bragging about his personal property and how his money got him a hot wife) and reminded the salesmen that they could achieve the same if only they worked hard enough. At the same time, he always reminded them that failure was unacceptable.Fewer than 10% of the employees were female. The men were constantly talking about which ones they wanted to have sex with.Ned, Ivan, and a pretty girl named Tiffany worked together for a day.The group decided to patronize businesses with mostly male workers using Tiffany as their prime salesman. The effort failed.Next, the group tried to sell their wares in middle-class neighborhoods. The author took it upon herself to do some sales personally. Her shame at having to perform such a stupid job was reflected in her language. Most of Ned’s sales pitches failed.By the end of the day, Tiffany had clearly rejected Ivan’s advances, and he salvaged his pride by claiming to the author that Tiffany “wasn’t worth it.”The author noted an unmistakably sexual element to making sales, and that sales begat more sales by increasing the confidence of the seller.

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The author noted a difference in the way men and women salesmen worked. Women cajoled and flirted their way along, making the sale in an almost underhanded way. Men, by contrast, took control and displayed strength and assertiveness. Once the author made the switch to a male attitude, her sales increased dramatically, and her male persona intensified correspondingly. The author concludes that the male mindset gives men an edge in life. The author was then paired with Doug, a high seller at Clutch.From Doug’s sexual stories, the author came to realize that men wanted other men to envy their women with passing glances, but that staring at a man’s woman was disrespectful, just as staring into another man’s eyes is a challenge.Wealth is inextricably tied to maleness.As part of society’s residual sexist mentality, less is expected from women then men. Therefore, failure for a female is usually forgiven while for men it is condemned.At this point, the author felt she had learned everything she could from the experience and she unceremoniously quit.The author observed strong tendencies in all people to react to others in gender-specific ways, and that people often froze with uncertainty when they weren’t sure what sex she was.The author wonders if gender is an inescapable part of human thought.The author admits that the sales companies were not representative of normal workplaces and that everything there was exaggerated.

Chapter 7: SelfThe modern men’s movement was started by Robert Bly in 1990 with the publication of his book Iron John. In it, Bly identified a crisis of manhood caused by broken relationships between fathers and sons, the disappearance of male initiation rituals, and a general lack of positive male role models.Bly argues that men need to reconnect with their inner, beastly selves to self-actualize and to move forward.Bly and his followers hold men’s workshops which are closed to women.The author believed it would be a good opportunity to explore another all-male environment like the monastery, but unlike the monastery, men in the groups would be examining their own feelings.Ned first met Gabriel at the group.The men emphasized hugging to counteract the physical contact they were disallowed to have by society. The author was uncomfortable with this.The author came to realize that many of the men badly needed nonsexual physical affection from other men. [Much more common in some non-Western cultures]Through listening to the men, the author finally realized how emotionally repressed men are but she could not bring herself to truly understand them.Most of the men were broken, vulnerable people.The author met an intimidating man named Paul who struggled with anger problems. He was the leader of the group, and the author was afraid he would discover her true sex.The groups showed Ned that most of the men were poor at communicating and listening and instead just waited for their turn to speak instead of truly attempting to appreciate what the other man was saying.Paul was an exception. He listened as evidenced by his frequent follow-up questions.

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Women are taught to repress anger because appearing mean is unfeminine and turns off men.Deep explorations of male anger revealed shocking realities. Many of the men admitted to having hatred for siblings and spouses and to having detailed, extremely violent fantasies, some involving rape and murder. Some even labeled themselves “Homicidal.”Much of this anger resulted from buried feelings that seemed part of a universal male experience. Many of the men had hatred for women and described this as having a Freudian source: They had had suffocating, omnipresent mothers whom they were humiliatingly dependent upon, and other women now reminded them of this.The men also had had very poor, loaded relationships with their fathers and often deeply wanted the love of another man to compensate for this. A woman could not fill this need.The men actively mourned their fathers but were glad to be rid of their mothers.The author agreed to go to a weekend group retreat, but was seriously afraid of her cover being blown by this bunch of seeming misogynists. She was afraid such an ordeal would lead to violence.The first night at the retreat, all of the men had to undergo a Native American “initiation ritual.”The author doubted the effectiveness of the ritual in restoring lost masculinity. [The description did make it sound pretty stupid]The author was a group member with Corey, a handsome, accomplished, extremely athletic man who showed no outward signs of insecurity. The author labeled him as an archetypal high school and college jock who was very popular among both sexes. Corey said that he had a beautiful girlfriend, but couldn’t enjoy his time with her because she constantly attracted the attention of other men, and he was afraid she would leave him for someone who was richer or handsomer. The author came to realize through Corey’s example that many men feel trapped by their “duty” to uphold an impregnable, masculine image, and in fact are very insecure underneath. The expectations of women around them frequently feed this.The author also came to see that men had body image problems like women. Many men are insecure about their penis sizes and about hair loss. Ned met Toby, a very powerfully built man who looked physically threatening—in some ways the masculine ideal. Toby expressed deep pain over how people judged him for this and assumed he was a brute without getting to know him.Men often feel burdened by the expectations of manhood and family. Feminists fail to see that the positions of power dominated by males also have their disadvantages.Men have a strong drive to protect and support women. The author concludes that chivalry thus is not dead.The author believes that society focuses too much on apparent male privilege and fails to see the attendant hardships.By the end of the retreat, the author was feeling a tremendous amount of guilt for her deceptions over the course of the entire project and for her initial prejudices about men that were disproved by the experience. She irrationally believed that she owed penance for what she had done. During the final exercise at the retreat, each man was supposed to create some kind of play-act using the other men as helpers in different roles that was meant to cathartically resolve some inner issue. Ned asked Corey to cut her with a knife. Corey refused and the author deftly steered the conversation to a different topic. She wanted the pain as a release from her guilt. The author claims that she had never previously contemplated hurting herself out of guilt.The author notes that women often turn conflict and pain in on themselves.

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The author gives a scathing rendition of the final ceremony, proving without a doubt that the event was a big joke.The author left the retreat without telling anyone she was a woman.At this point, the author had spent a year and a half as Ned.After the retreat, the author had a silent nervous breakdown. She did not fully understand the nature of her illness, but she recognized that it was severe enough to warrant self-admittance to a locked psychiatric hospital. She did not connect her breakdown with her experiences as Ned.The author says that being an impostor, especially one of a different sex, is extremely hard and requires constant energy.The author left the mental hospital after only four days but required another two months of bed rest to get better and to rid herself of Ned.Men are victims of society’s expectations, and both the patriarchy and most women play a part in keeping men trapped in confining roles. Really, the men’s movement is in the interests of both men and women, though its popularity is handicapped by widespread disbelief that men are at a disadvantageous position in the world.

Chapter 8: Journey’s EndThe author found the life of a man to be very difficult. She gained a new, powerful sympathy for men after being Ned.The author had originally believed that being a man would be liberating but instead she found it very constraining.While men are generally obtuse towards emotional signals from the people around them, they are hypersensitive to femininity and weakness in other men.The author now believes that gender is ingrained in the human psyche from birth and is not a social construct.The author’s manner of interaction with men was unchanged by the experience, though she has a new empathy and understanding for men.The author believes that men deserve a movement of their own.She concludes that she is proud to be a woman after the experience as Ned.

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