Norah Vincent, RIP
August 20, 2022 2:43 PM Subscribe
Norah Vincent, Who Chronicled Passing as a Man, Is Dead at 53
Ms. Vincent died on July 6 at a clinic in Switzerland. She was 53. Her death, which was not reported at the time, was confirmed on Thursday by Justine Hardy, a friend. The death, she said, was medically assisted, or what is known as a voluntary assisted death. [NYT] [archive version]
Norah Vincent previously
Norah Vincent previously
This post was deleted for the following reason: So, this person was transphobic, Islamophobic, anti-feminist, anti-choice, ableist, etc., and it just doesn't really seem like there is much here that makes it worth dredging up her various insulting ideas, statements and positions. -- taz
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When I heard about her book, my main thought was jealously that I would never be able to pass well enough to do the same experiment in the opposite direction. It only took me fifteen years from that point to realize I was trans.
posted by eruonna at 4:07 PM on August 20, 2022 [18 favorites]
When I heard about her book, my main thought was jealously that I would never be able to pass well enough to do the same experiment in the opposite direction. It only took me fifteen years from that point to realize I was trans.
posted by eruonna at 4:07 PM on August 20, 2022 [18 favorites]
This needs a transphobia content warning. Norah Vincent was anti-trans.
posted by The Adventure Begins at 5:02 PM on August 20, 2022 [13 favorites]
posted by The Adventure Begins at 5:02 PM on August 20, 2022 [13 favorites]
She was suffering, she wrote, for the same reason that many of the men she met were suffering: Their assigned gender roles, she found, were suffocating them and alienating them from themselves.
Interesting. I'm not familiar with this person nor her work, but the first thing that popped into my mind was, "yes, manhood can be oppressive." But the second thing was, "maybe you, as a woman, are discovering what dysphoria is like without realising it because you feel like a woman pretending to be a man."
I don't know if she addressed that possibility in her work, but it seems like a missed opportunity on her part, if not.
posted by klanawa at 5:30 PM on August 20, 2022 [7 favorites]
Interesting. I'm not familiar with this person nor her work, but the first thing that popped into my mind was, "yes, manhood can be oppressive." But the second thing was, "maybe you, as a woman, are discovering what dysphoria is like without realising it because you feel like a woman pretending to be a man."
I don't know if she addressed that possibility in her work, but it seems like a missed opportunity on her part, if not.
posted by klanawa at 5:30 PM on August 20, 2022 [7 favorites]
From what I've read, she was a TERF-without-the-feminism. Also, she wrote some shockingly racist pieces for Salon back in the day.
posted by praemunire at 5:51 PM on August 20, 2022 [9 favorites]
posted by praemunire at 5:51 PM on August 20, 2022 [9 favorites]
I am also not familiar with this person and her work. What popped into my head was how much it sucks that she held views comporting to the transmisogynistic boogeyman of "A person of the Wrong Gender is pretending to be Your Gender to get into your gender-specific spaces (like bathrooms!) with ulterior motives!", but when it was her and one motive was a book deal, that was all fine
posted by Earthtopus at 5:55 PM on August 20, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by Earthtopus at 5:55 PM on August 20, 2022 [4 favorites]
.
Tangential question: is Mx the most commonly used honorific for gender-neutral persons in the US?
posted by neuron at 6:43 PM on August 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
Tangential question: is Mx the most commonly used honorific for gender-neutral persons in the US?
posted by neuron at 6:43 PM on August 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
NYT uses Mx. on request. I'm not sure this person considered themselves non-binary, though? In fact I think not.
posted by praemunire at 7:29 PM on August 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by praemunire at 7:29 PM on August 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
Just a plain ol' slightly androgynist bread-and-butter, more-or-less cis female here. That is, I'm pretty sure at 68 I'll be acting on any internal doubts and/questions. I have some empathy for Norah--sounds like she had some tough feels and was greatly conflicted. Just wish she would have had more empathy for others.
many of the men she met were suffering
Agreed. Many of the women, any gender, any sex, anybody. Any culture I've run into seems to have it screwed up. And the cultures that seem to do things better.... Well, we can always screw it up for them. Will children from dysfunctional families please sit down? The rest of you... Oh, no one left standing. Sorry.
posted by BlueHorse at 8:51 PM on August 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
many of the men she met were suffering
Agreed. Many of the women, any gender, any sex, anybody. Any culture I've run into seems to have it screwed up. And the cultures that seem to do things better.... Well, we can always screw it up for them. Will children from dysfunctional families please sit down? The rest of you... Oh, no one left standing. Sorry.
posted by BlueHorse at 8:51 PM on August 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
Jesus, I first joined MeFi in 2006 and I think I must have memory holed how bad much of the conversation was back then (actually, I probably contributed to making it worse). That previously thread is a trainwreck.
posted by derrinyet at 9:26 PM on August 20, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by derrinyet at 9:26 PM on August 20, 2022 [3 favorites]
I have some empathy for Norah--sounds like she had some tough feels and was greatly conflicted. Just wish she would have had more empathy for others.
"It's time for America to stop coddling the Palestinians -- they're bloodthirsty bigots who would have exterminated the Jews if they were in charge....If treated according to their own barbaric rules, with the same visceral bigotry, the Palestinians would have been exterminated long ago, and all their Jewish executioners enshrined as martyrs...Who could forget the hideous spectacle this past September of Palestinians celebrating in the streets upon hearing that thousands of civilians had been killed in the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks? This was perhaps the most shocking footage any of us had ever seen"
"Doesn't it strike you, for example, that this death beach scenario [some Floridians entering into shark-infested waters], and the way that these would-be water babies have responded to it, sounds an awful lot like the sexual habits of a certain segment of the gay male population? In a recent New York Times article on the 20th year of AIDS, Erica Goode reported the sad finding that, these days, your average Priapus is likely to have lapsed again into having unsafe sex. It seems a new complacency has arisen in the wake of the stunning success of the latest HIV drug cocktails, which have managed, for now at least, to stem the death toll of AIDS. ...Think of it. Each young surfer, determined to ride the waves of sexual bliss though he knows the waters to be infested with ravenous, disease-bearing, unscrupulous sharks who'd just as soon maim him as look at him, jumps in feet first. The authorities have warned him against it, but he insists on going in without (sorry for the ham-handed analogy) his wetsuit. Yet, he does so fully expecting that if he meets with a bad end, the Coast Guard will dutifully dispatch its fearless Argonauts to try to save him."
"One of the biggest obstacles facing the disabled is that they can't get jobs because, as spokespeople like Phyllis Rubenfeld pointed out, they lack basic math and reading skills. Perhaps the money that's going into disability studies departments should really be going into job training programs. Unfortunately, disability studies graduates won't have much firsthand experience with the ABCs of their chosen disciplines -- they'll be convinced that the Earl of Oxford "was actually" Shakespeare, and they won't have learned how to think for themselves. But at least they'll avoid insidious doctors who wish to treat them, they'll understand their innate role as revolutionaries and, by God, they'll know they're normal."
Empathy is not the issue here. Or, at least, it's but a single one in a sea.
posted by praemunire at 9:30 PM on August 20, 2022 [6 favorites]
"It's time for America to stop coddling the Palestinians -- they're bloodthirsty bigots who would have exterminated the Jews if they were in charge....If treated according to their own barbaric rules, with the same visceral bigotry, the Palestinians would have been exterminated long ago, and all their Jewish executioners enshrined as martyrs...Who could forget the hideous spectacle this past September of Palestinians celebrating in the streets upon hearing that thousands of civilians had been killed in the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks? This was perhaps the most shocking footage any of us had ever seen"
"Doesn't it strike you, for example, that this death beach scenario [some Floridians entering into shark-infested waters], and the way that these would-be water babies have responded to it, sounds an awful lot like the sexual habits of a certain segment of the gay male population? In a recent New York Times article on the 20th year of AIDS, Erica Goode reported the sad finding that, these days, your average Priapus is likely to have lapsed again into having unsafe sex. It seems a new complacency has arisen in the wake of the stunning success of the latest HIV drug cocktails, which have managed, for now at least, to stem the death toll of AIDS. ...Think of it. Each young surfer, determined to ride the waves of sexual bliss though he knows the waters to be infested with ravenous, disease-bearing, unscrupulous sharks who'd just as soon maim him as look at him, jumps in feet first. The authorities have warned him against it, but he insists on going in without (sorry for the ham-handed analogy) his wetsuit. Yet, he does so fully expecting that if he meets with a bad end, the Coast Guard will dutifully dispatch its fearless Argonauts to try to save him."
"One of the biggest obstacles facing the disabled is that they can't get jobs because, as spokespeople like Phyllis Rubenfeld pointed out, they lack basic math and reading skills. Perhaps the money that's going into disability studies departments should really be going into job training programs. Unfortunately, disability studies graduates won't have much firsthand experience with the ABCs of their chosen disciplines -- they'll be convinced that the Earl of Oxford "was actually" Shakespeare, and they won't have learned how to think for themselves. But at least they'll avoid insidious doctors who wish to treat them, they'll understand their innate role as revolutionaries and, by God, they'll know they're normal."
Empathy is not the issue here. Or, at least, it's but a single one in a sea.
posted by praemunire at 9:30 PM on August 20, 2022 [6 favorites]
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