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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Generally, it was a nice article, but why would any woman find a contradiction between being attorney general and wearing sexy lingerie?
There is no contradiction between female power cum intellectual achievement and being sexy. In fact, smart is very sexy.
And why wouldn't a brilliant, successful woman be interested in baking cookies. Has the author no hobbies? Has he never needed to relax his mind?
Anyway, otherwise, I did enjoy the article, and I agree that the reviewed author is pretty confused about gender issues.
Penny
Dear Mr. O'Hehir,
Thank you for writing the kind of review that should be written: one that takes the book seriously, argues with it at points, and puts it in the context of the sweep of ideas in the broader culture. I may not read Mrs. Vincent's book, but thanks to your review I've had the chance to think deeply about the issues it raises and to give due consideration to reading it.
John Bush
Sydney, Australia
This was an excellent review. I so appreciate Andrew Leonard's discussing gender issues this carefully. He delineates the fuzzy space between assumptions and realities of gendered living. He asks hard questions of Norah Vincent and of his audience, without ever stereotyping, condescending or going for easy answers. In so doing, he assumes his audience to be intelligent, willing to suspend our own assumptions and to entertain ambiguities. He neither rehashes simplistic media flappage about "gender wars" nor does he address an overly-specific audience in an overly confessional or combative tone.
In short, Mr. Leonard in one article manages what Broadsheet and nearly all of Salon's gender-focused feature articles for the past several months have continuously fail to accomplish.
Not much to say except kuds to Andrew O'Hehir for an excellent review and not jsut for making want to read the book, but also giving me some food for thought this early in the morning ;)
I suppose that it is different for women, but it is not like men in the East Village (at least some) don't objectify other men.
In HS (back in the feminist porn attack heyday) I always wanted to contradict my female friends in their claims that men aren't objectified in porn. I really wanted to just say "check out gay porn sister" and see if you don't see passive guys. Of course that would have required coming out, but that's a different story.
The whole point of dividing the world into a female species and a male species really leaves something out. Are gay men an intermediate gender (since apparently Vincent doesn't think even lesbians leave the female sphere)? I agree with the reviewer that it'd have been better for her to have explored being a gay man too.
Although I've always maintained that who you date breeds more solidarity than gender necessarily--e.g. gay men and fag hags...
"Ned" is right to observe that holding another man's gaze for more than the socially prescribed microsecond is either an invitation to rumble or a solicitation to suck. This is male human Pack Behaviour 101 stuff.
To be brutally frank, I'm surprised an article on gender issues of this calibur came from Salon. Maybe the bar has been lowered by the cliched "you go grrrrrrrl" drivel in Broadsheet (which 90% of the time celebrates women's empowerment at the expense of men, if it even dares to tackle any real gender issues at all).
Written with understanding and insight that defies the typical 'FOUR LEGS GOOD! TWO LEGS BAD!' bullshit that political writers today feel compelled to put in EVERY freaking article that they write. In this case, it is the WOMEN GOOD! MEN BAD! convention of the American Left that is defied, and it is very welcome.
Thanks for the excellent review, Mr. O'Hehir.
Bowling league? Strip clubs? Men's retreat? Monastery? This does not sound like a book about a woman's experience as a man, but rather as a woman's attempt to act out various male stereotypes. Most real men spend very little, if any, time in the above settings.
Andrew O’Hehir’s review of Norah Vincent “Self-Made Man” was as interesting as I hope the book to be when I pick it up – all the more reason I was disappointed by his tired stereotype (which is a downright myth) that schizophrenia is some form of split personality. While it’s a common enough error for journalists to use the word schizophrenia to describe a paradox or “split personality” – it’s sloppy and all the more disturbing when placed alongside the use of the word “loony bin” in the review’s headline. Is a pediatric ward of a hospital a “rugrat bin”? Is a cancer ward a “tumor bin”? Stigmatizing language like this makes an otherwise good review unintentionally reveal a few of the author’s own prejudices.
One thing to comment on, this section:
It's true, as Ned/Norah later observes, that the teammates scarcely discuss their emotional lives, and do so only in clipped, coded form. When Jim's wife is diagnosed with a recurrence of cancer, which is evidently life-threatening, the guys barely talk about it. Mainly what Vincent discovers is one of the hoariest truths of manhood, that these all-male institutions (sports teams, card games, hunting and fishing clubs) are in their own way zones of nurture and liberation.
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These zones are also places where one goes to, you know, bowl or whatever. Places where simple routine and low-intensity conversation is prized.
It would be interesting to know how many of Jim's teamates talked with him about his wife before or after their leauge meetings.
written with great sensitivity and very well balanced between criticism and praise. Write more like it!
On another note, holding ANY stranger's gaze for more than 10 seconds is going to discomfit them. If i do more than glance briefly and give an impersonal smile out of politeness (sometimes if I only do that) men take it as a serious invitation. Hell, I've had guys try to pick me up even when i barely do a polite head jerk. Very very annoying. All I'm trying to do is say "hello, the human being in me acknowledges the human being in you" but it turns into a sexual or dominance thing. If I looked at a woman in the eyes for ten seconds on the street I think she'd be a little weirded out; Like, what is SHE staring at. Western cultures put a big premium on direct eye contact and a firm handshake but i think that we forget that staring someone in the eye is a very aggressive act. It is, essentially, a dominance game that probably has very deep evolutionary roots. For example, in Japan it's considered rude to stare in someone's face and up until a few years ago, shaking hands was rather rude too.
I have to say, I love having a strong handshake. Men (except really strong ones) can't squeeze my hands to pieces and I think that it gives me a bit of a psychological edge. I HATE the weak little dead fish handshakes that so many women (especially older women) give. I HATE it when guys shake my fingertips like some old-fashioned handshake.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Salon headlines in your mailbox
