Journal Entry #2

Some information that surprised our group in the second section, pages 73-144, was the extremely blunt and graphic language. Norah starts off this reading section by attending many local strip clubs. The language she uses to describe the images around her is very graphic and only suitable for a mature audience.

Some assumptions Norah has during this selection were that men enjoyed the strip clubs and that dating would be the least challenging part of her experiment. After experiencing these two things first hand, however, Norah is surprised to find out her assumptions were wrong. In strip clubs the men seemed almost as ashamed as the women were. They didn’t find joy in going to strip clubs; instead they felt almost a sense of self pity. When it came to dating, since Norah had an advantage to dating women, she thought this would be one of her easier tasks, but after going to bars and meeting women and being repeatedly rejected, reality hit. Women, being naturally hurt by men, had their guard up before even meeting Norah, which was very frustrating for her.
Something our group found interesting was how she explained women’s outlook on men. She explained that women, since generally they are heterosexual, have only dated men, thus only allowing them to be hurt by men; but what women need to realize is that both men and women are capable of hurting. Women cannot go into a relationship thinking they will be hurt, because by doing this they’re only setting themselves up for failure. Women need to look at men as individuals because everyone is different. What makes this so interesting is as mostly girls (minus Luke) reading this book we can apply this to our life. This seems like very valuable advice, and maybe if taken, dating will come easier to us all. It is a theory we have never really thought about in the past.

We were all surprised by the fact that three of the women Vincent dated and explained herself to still wanted to sleep with her. All three were heterosexual women and it was even after they found out Vincent was a women that they were still willing to sleep with her! This surprised us because we thought that there would be no going to bed together in this chapter because she is pretending to be a man who is dating heterosexual women - who like men! Why would this be? This could be due to the possibility of her emotional involvement and how unlike a guy her emails and conversations were.

Also, we were surprised when Vincent brought up the idea about violence and rape towards women brought on by men. We almost thought she was going to make an excuse for it, but then she did quote, “I make no excuses for this. There are none.” We are glad she cleared things up, but still she claimed she felt “attuned” to the idea because acting as a male she felt women held all the power. She didn’t feel important or powerful instead feeling women had control and could grant or say give worth only to people they wanted. She discusses how this rejection might fuel someone to want more power and that is possibly the fueling in abuse or rape. This all adds up but still is quite alarming she addresses this issue the way that she does. She addresses it in such a tone to give it an explanation; we were alarmed because in our opinion there is no explanation for that kind of violence.

Vincent raps up the end of chapter 4 by discussing our species short comings. The author’s tone at the end of this chapter seems angry and then somewhat sad. She does not discuss without emotion how she feels towards both men and women. She begins to appreciate the manly man, who has all the qualities that testosterone gives them, and she also forgives women for her flaws. She makes a good point in saying that one needs to “balance on our own side of the equation.” We can all apply this to our own lives, we feel, by remembering that no one is perfect; we should be accepting and we should not set such high standards that no human species can reach.

One thing in Chapter 5 we felt she should have addressed at the beginning of the chapter was how she really got into the monastery. Did she tell them about her experiment? She briefly touches on it and it just kind of sounded like they let her in pretty easy, but did she run into any difficultly? It sounds like just anyone could go and do exactly what she did if they just call up the vocation director and are willing to pay to stay. If we could we would have asked her to explain this into more detail.