Norah Vincent | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1968-09-20)September 20, 1968 Detroit,Michigan, U.S. |
| Died | July 6, 2022(2022-07-06) (aged 53) Switzerland |
| Occupation | Journalist |
| Alma mater | Williams College |
| Notable works | Self-Made Man |
| Spouse | Kristen Erickson (divorced) |
Norah Mary Vincent (September 20, 1968 – July 6, 2022) was an American writer. She was a weekly columnist for theLos Angeles Times and a quarterly columnist on politics and culture for the nationalgay news magazineThe Advocate. She was a columnist forThe Village Voice andSalon.com. Her writing appeared inThe New Republic,The New York Times,[1]New York Post,The Washington Post and other periodicals.[2] She gained particular attention in 2006 for her bookSelf-Made Man, detailing her experiences when she lived as a man for eighteen months.
Norah Mary Vincent was born inDetroit, and grew up both there and inLondon where her father was employed as a lawyer for theFord Motor Company.[3] She attendedWilliams College, where she graduated with a BA in philosophy in 1990, before undertaking graduate studies atBoston College.[2][3] She also worked as an editor forFree Press.[3]
Vincent's bookSelf-Made Man (2006) retells an eighteen-month experiment in the early 2000s in which shedisguised herself as a man.[1][4] This was compared to previousundercover journalism such asBlack Like Me.[3] Vincent was interviewed byJuju Chang on theABC News program20/20[5] and talked about the experience inHARDtalk extra onBBC on April 21, 2006, where she described her experiences in male-male and male-female relationships. She joined an all-malebowling club,[1] joined a men'stherapy group, went to astrip club,[1] dated women, and used her knowledge as a lapsedCatholic[1][5][6] to visit monks in amonastery.[7]
Vincent wrote that the only time she has ever been considered excessively feminine was during her stint as a man. Heralter ego, Ned, was assumed to be gay on several occasions. Features which had been perceived asbutch when she presented as a woman were perceived as oddly effeminate when she presented as a man. Vincent asserted that, since the experiment, she had more fully realized the benefits of being female and the disadvantages of being male, stating, "I really like being a woman. ... I like it more now because I think it's more of a privilege."[5]
Vincent also stated that she had gained more sympathy and understanding for men and the male condition: "Men are suffering. They have different problems than women have but they don't have it better. They need our sympathy, they need our love, and they need each other more than anything else. They need to be together."[5]
Vincent's bookVoluntary Madness (2008) relates her experiences as an inpatient in three institutions for mentally ill patients: "a ward in a public city hospital, a private Midwestern institution, and a pricey New Age clinic."[8] She criticized doctors who she claimed were unapproachable, noting that too many relied on drugs as therapy, while others addressed only symptoms instead of their underlying causes.[9]
Vincent's book also addresses the question ofpseudopatients and those who remained ill because of their lack of willingness to cooperate in their therapy.[1][10]
Vincent later wrote two novels:Thy Neighbor (2012), described byThe New York Times as "a dark, comic thriller", andAdeline (2015), which imagines the life ofVirginia Woolf from when she wroteTo the Lighthouse until Woolf's suicide in 1941.[3]
Vincent, who identified as a lesbian, was briefly married to Kristen Erickson, but soon divorced.[3]
Vincent was described as alibertarian who was critical ofpostmodernism andmulticulturalism.[3] She did not believe that transgender people were the sex they identified as, a position that led one writer to label her a bigot.[3] In an article forThe Village Voice, she wrote: "[Transsexuality] signifies the death of the self, the soul, that good old-fashioned indubitable 'I' so beloved ofDescartes, whose great adage 'I think, therefore I am' has become an ontological joke on the order of 'I tinker, and there I am.'"[11]
InVoluntary Madness, Vincent details her decade-long history with treatment-resistant depression, saying: "...my brain was never quite the same after I zapped it with that first course ofSSRIs."[12] Due to her experience as a man during the making ofSelf-Made Man she ultimately had a depressive breakdown, leading Vincent to admit herself to a locked psychiatric facility, stating it was the high price she paid for "the burden of deception" of a separate identity and for trying to hold two gender identities in her mind.[13][14]
Vincent died viaassisted suicide at a clinic in Switzerland on July 6, 2022, aged 53. Her death was not reported until August 2022.[3]
