Norah Vincent spoke Wednesday night as a guest lecturer for The Women's Coordinating Council on her experiences living as a man for a year and a half.

Vincent began her lecture describing her transformation into her alter ego, Ned. She explained the "fairly laborious process" of applying a beard, and the intricate uniform needed to pass as a man. Despite adorning herself in such a getup, Vincent admits she didn't completely delve into becoming Ned. Instead she lived as two different people, an experience that emotionally drained her to the point that at the end of her experience she found herself facing a breakdown.

Once she was finally transformed into Ned, she said her passing as a man was, "one of the most thrilling moments," of the entire experience. Throughout the speech, Vincent was able to meaningfully convey how the experiment affected her and how her image of gender roles was changed. 

She was able to give a depiction of what it is like to be a man by submersing herself into several different environments, including living with monks in a cloister for three weeks, joining a bowling team, being part of a men's therapy group and working as a salesman. While living as a man in these settings, she dated both gay men and heterosexual women, something that she said shed light on the difficulties men endure while dating and the preconceived notions and judgments women have about men.

During the lecture Vincent made clear her intentions for the book and the message she was trying to send. She admits that going into the project she saw gender as insignificant and as something that society constructed in order to limit what it is to be a man and a woman. After her experiment she saw the gender roles men and women play as an integral part of who we are, and the maleness and femaleness, which both sexes embrace, as a necessary component of what comprises our authentic selves.

However, Vincent highlighted the importance of not allowing yourself to be strictly confined by the gender roles that our culture creates for us. She encouraged everyone to allow themselves to find out who they are and accept every part of it.

Vincent developed an extreme sense of empathy for men. After her experiment, she cited the "tremendously sad epic of broken relationships between fathers and sons," and described the camaraderie she saw amongst men, but also saw the lack of communication between men and their friends. Vincent described the deep fear men had of becoming emotionally vulnerable because of the stigma against it, which had been created for them during their adolescence. She also described how, "living without an emotional outlet could be pretty crippling." 

When she mentioned the relationships she had formed with women and the feelings she took away from them, she described hurtful assumptions and the great misunderstandings women had about men. She gave men a voice, albeit a female one, nevertheless one that other women could relate to and one that helped bridge the gap of understanding between the sexes.

Vincent was able to put into words what it is to be a man in American culture, and the inconsistencies between women's ideas of what it is to be a man and the reality of being one. While giving her audience this very interesting insight, Vincent was witty, bright, eloquent and quite charming. I am sure no less can be expected of her book "A Self Made Man," a piece of writing that is sure to help all of us understand ourselves a bit better and without a doubt provide a great amount of understanding of the opposite sex.