Self-Made Man

Norah Vincent, a journalist, published Self-Made Man: My Year Disguised as a Man in 2006. It describes an experiment that ran for eighteen months, in which she dressed as a man and joined places that are traditionally for men only, among them a monastery and a men's bowling league.

She describes the book as a human project, and she says at the outset that she is a lesbian and not transgender. To pass as a man she had her hair cut short, flattened her chest with a small sports bra, hired a make-up artist to give her a five o'clock shadow, and spent months learning to produce a deeper voice; she also changed her diet and exercise to put on muscle across her shoulders.

As her alter ego, Ned, she went to strip clubs, on dates and to a men's support group, and she became part of a men's bowling team, where, as she tells it, the men simply took her in without asking questions. She became friends with them, went along to strip clubs with them, dated women who had no idea who she was, and in the end told them the truth, which they took well.