4.Norah Vincent, Author
Vincent was a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies from
its 2001 inception to 2003. She has also had columns at Salon.com, The Advocate,the Los Angeles Times, and
the Village Voice.Vincent's book Self-Made Man retells an eighteen-month experiment in which she disguised herself
as a man.This follows in the tradition of undercover journalism such as Black Like Me. Vincent talked about the experience
in HARDtalk extra on BBC on April 21, 2006 and described her experiences in male-male and male-female relationships.
She joined an all-male bowling club, joined a men's therapy group, went to a strip club, visited Catholic monks in
a cloister, and dated women. Vincent writes about how the only time she has ever been considered excessively feminine was during
her stint as a man: her alter ego, Ned, was assumed to be gay on several occasions, and features which in her as a woman had
been seen as �butch� became oddly effeminate when seen in a man. (She is a lesbian.) Vincent asserts that, since the experiment, she
has never been more glad to be female.
