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What's it like to be a man?

Disguised as a man, U.S.-based journalist Norah Vincent explored the psyche of men. She has put together her experiences in an interesting book

Is ours really a man's world? Do men have the best of everything by keeping women carefully below the glass ceiling at home and at the workplace? Norah Vincent, a U.S.-based journalist, decided to find out. In what is called immersion or embedded journalism, she dressed up as a man and infiltrated male bastions. She joined an all-male bowling team and a pitilessly exploited door-to-door sales group. She spent time at a monastery and a "men's movement" retreat. She became a regular at strip bars. To us in India, anaesthetised by "Oh, not again!" kind of cross dressing in movies since Valli Thirumanam, what Norah Vincent did looks like a dragged yawn. But this is no mindless comedy track. What the author has recorded in her book Self-Made Man: One Woman's Journey into Manhood and Back is scholarly and authentic, if subjective.

Amazingly, not one of the men she moved closely with for 18 months caught her in the act. But the author had some in-built help for the project. She is tall, has really large feet and wears her hair closely cut. To this she added a tight sports bra, a pair of framed square glasses and a carefully applied 5 o'clock shadow. She lifted weights and took voice lessons to settle her speech into a deep pitch. She got herself a masculine wardrobe. She stepped out as Ned the writer to gather her material.

The tougher challenge was acting like a man. She was terrified to start with. There were bloopers in conversation. But with practice, Ned could have had an easier time. "People accept whatever reality you give them," she said.

Incredible? Right. But wait till you hear what Ned observed and understood. As a man in a man's world, the author found repeatedly that her theories about men were off the mark. She discovered that men weren't the happy conquerors, the MCPs that women believed they were. Manhood did not come packaged in empowerment, as she had thought. It was questioned and challenged, by other men, women and even children. (Are you a man?") Worse, men were trapped in a culturally concocted manhood, and never allowed to be themselves.

Men constantly had to prove their worth. In a place like the monastery, men suffered isolation and reserve. Their freedom to express emotions was taken away, leaving them hurt.

Hard to please

When she dated and worked as Ned, the author saw that weakness in women was protected; in men, bludgeoned out. To her genuine surprise, she realised it was women who were phoney, who back-stabbed all the time.

And women are hard to please. They want men to be protectors, "big and strong in spirit and body", guys who would fix broken machinery, check out strange noises at night, stand up when there is even a faint hint of insult in the air. At the same time, they expect them to be subservient, make their every whim a reality. They want a guy to lean on to, with the proviso that he is aware of his "reduced place" in today's world. Women manipulate men. They try to use their presumed moral superiority to advantage. True, men came off better against the author's set opinions about them. But aren't we all in the same thinking mould? What we forget is this: we have a tendency to see the world through gender stereotypes, through our own faulty views based on the pain we have suffered in our relationships with men/women. Ours is gender-coded behaviour.

The book's fascinating parts are when the author spills her secret to the men she befriends. Thriller-like, they hold you breathless. Where they can be expected to thrash her to pulp, men take it unexpectedly well. After all, what she said and did was a lie and betrayal of trust. Once they overcome embarrassment, men across educational levels are ready to forgive. They become less reserved and seem to feel, in some way, relieved.

Great empathy touches her conclusions about life as a man. She discovers that phrases like "take control" and "show your guts" that she had heard from men worked, in a lot of situations. So the one male advantage that still stands is mental fitness. At least the fitness they exhibit.

Well, her dual-personality existence, being on guard constantly while filing away her perceptions, watching herself being someone else, took its toll. She finally cracked. During a fireside ceremony on a men's retreat, she asked one of them to cut her hand. "I figured if I could cut myself and bleed, then I wouldn't feel so bad about deceiving these people," she said. She spent time in a hospital before completing the book.

What could have ended up as a shallow TV exclusive comes out as a serious study into the male psyche. It shines the light on why men do the things they do, why they are what they are, how they suffer from lack of role models. If widely read, it will help women to be less judgmental when confronted with what they think is unacceptable in male behaviour. May be it will start a necessary debate on gender relationships and perceptions.

GEETA PADMANABHAN

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