The feminist author did something extraordinary in 2005-6 ... she posed as a man for 18 months. The journey opened her eyes but ended up crushing her soul.
The trauma of a worldview in pieces around your feet would profoundly affect anyone’s sense of identity, regardless of the starting point. I went through something similar without the gender component, but it was equally devastating. Ultimately, it led me to Christianity as a foundation and a new life, lived in the service of the common good. I am truly grateful.
Thank you for your tender elegy for Norah Vincent.
What a terrible tragedy that this brilliant loving woman lost her battle for life.
Her courageous exploration of what it is truly like to be a man
revealed truths that must have shocked her to the core:
Most men are not the villains her feminist ideology told her they are.
No.
Most men are highly vulnerable caring creatures
who are in desperate need of the love and acceptance of women.
Maybe she saw no place or herself within her new understanding of the world.
She was already a deeply depressed person--
always inwardly judged by her sadistic superego as a failure.
But now she saw herself as a TOTAL failure.
I would venture that the psychological malignancy (plague)
that eventually broke and killed her
was her passive acceptance of a lie.
The lie promulgated by her sadistic superego:
that passive surrender to its dictates (i.e., succumbing to despair) was strength.
Her ego bought this cruel lie
and concluded that surrender to death
was safer than coming out of her walled off passive despair
and fighting to embrace life.
Nora Vincent had a kind and loving soul.
She was seeking truth when she set out on her exploration.
She had tried and tried to overcome her sick mind.
But whatever treatment she may have had
did not strengthen her to the point that she could win the battle.
She ultimately surrendered completely to the victim position
of recurring failure/disappointment
and had herself euthanized.
Surrender was the seductive poison in her mind
to which I believe she was unconsciously addicted.
I am not blaming, I am explaining.
Despair is never the antidote to the seductive poison of passive surrender
which is harbored in smaller or larger amounts in all of us.
It is only by challenging our unconscious passive surrender
that we survive.
Nora Vincent's defeated ego, speaking prior to her death:
"Despair was strength. Despair was the scab and the scar. The walled city in a time of plague. A closed fortification. A sure thing, because it was always safer, less painful to stop trying than it was to repeatedly try and fail. Failure-disappointment-was a poison in my blood. Despair was the antidote."
The trauma of a worldview in pieces around your feet would profoundly affect anyone’s sense of identity, regardless of the starting point. I went through something similar without the gender component, but it was equally devastating. Ultimately, it led me to Christianity as a foundation and a new life, lived in the service of the common good. I am truly grateful.
Jim,
Thank you for your tender elegy for Norah Vincent.
What a terrible tragedy that this brilliant loving woman lost her battle for life.
Her courageous exploration of what it is truly like to be a man
revealed truths that must have shocked her to the core:
Most men are not the villains her feminist ideology told her they are.
No.
Most men are highly vulnerable caring creatures
who are in desperate need of the love and acceptance of women.
Maybe she saw no place or herself within her new understanding of the world.
She was already a deeply depressed person--
always inwardly judged by her sadistic superego as a failure.
But now she saw herself as a TOTAL failure.
I would venture that the psychological malignancy (plague)
that eventually broke and killed her
was her passive acceptance of a lie.
The lie promulgated by her sadistic superego:
that passive surrender to its dictates (i.e., succumbing to despair) was strength.
Her ego bought this cruel lie
and concluded that surrender to death
was safer than coming out of her walled off passive despair
and fighting to embrace life.
Nora Vincent had a kind and loving soul.
She was seeking truth when she set out on her exploration.
She had tried and tried to overcome her sick mind.
But whatever treatment she may have had
did not strengthen her to the point that she could win the battle.
She ultimately surrendered completely to the victim position
of recurring failure/disappointment
and had herself euthanized.
Surrender was the seductive poison in her mind
to which I believe she was unconsciously addicted.
I am not blaming, I am explaining.
Despair is never the antidote to the seductive poison of passive surrender
which is harbored in smaller or larger amounts in all of us.
It is only by challenging our unconscious passive surrender
that we survive.
Nora Vincent's defeated ego, speaking prior to her death:
"Despair was strength. Despair was the scab and the scar. The walled city in a time of plague. A closed fortification. A sure thing, because it was always safer, less painful to stop trying than it was to repeatedly try and fail. Failure-disappointment-was a poison in my blood. Despair was the antidote."
Jim this is such a fascinating story! I just ordered the book from the library.
Wow. Great piece of writing, Jim. Quite an interesting story. And sad. Thank you.