Barbara’s comments here sent me in search of a priceless excerpt from Norah Vincent’s book. Its title is self explanatory: Self-Made Man: My year Disguised as a Man.

Vincent, a lesbian in her regular life, describes dating women while disguised as Ned:

“I listened to [the women] talk literally for hours about the most minute, mind-numbing details of their personal lives; men they were still in love with; men they had divorced, roommates and co-worker they hated…. Listening to them was like undergoing a slow frontal lobotomy. I sat there stunned by the social ineptitude of people to whom it never seemed to occur that no one, much less a first date, would have any interest in enduring this ordeal …”

Seconded in my VDARE.com article, “The Silly Sex?”:

“The Apprentice candidates constitute a restricted sample, chosen for a combination of looks and status. Despite this, the disparities in character and cerebral agility between the men and the women could not be more glaring. An obviously dé class é act, the women would have been utterly risible if they were not so revolting….”

Question: Vincent had clearly dated women before. Had she always found them generally lacking? If not, what changed once she assumed her fictitious identity? I have an idea, but it’ll have to wait until tomorrow. I’m tired.

Answer: Vincent probably dated lesbians, not straight women. The following are generalizations, but nonetheless valid, I believe: the lesbians I’ve known over the years (my sister, for one) are not as petty and self-absorbed as straight women. My best friend in Cape-Town was a beautiful and feminine gay woman. In addition to her keen intellect, we got on famously because she was without pettiness. There was no rivalry in the relationship just good intellectual rapport. I’d say she combined the emotional intimacy and empathic qualities often associated with women and the rationality and clear thinking identified with men. Although I still think that to make people fairer, kinder, and more compassionate, one has to first teach them to think and reason.

About such generalizations: Individualists, libertarians in particular, think that broad statements about aggregate group characteristics are collectivist, ergo 1) forbidden 2) erroneous. This is a confusion—it demonstrates an inability to jump a level of abstraction. Generalizations, provided they are substantiated by hard evidence not hunches, are not incorrect. Science rests on the ability to generalize to the larger population observations drawn from a representative sample. People make prudent decision in their daily lives based on probabilities and generalities. That one chooses not to live in a particular crime-ridden area, for example, in no way implies that all residents there are criminals.

Men and women do in general display a different emotional and intellectual make-up, but this doesn’t preclude countless individuals from transcending the stereotypes associated with their gender. True, Oprah’s target market is huge—distressingly so. But a lot of women are not prone to becoming addled by Oprah.