Blog Guide To the Text

Kaylee Moore thought that Self Made Man was a completely new book for her. She had never heard of it before this English class. When she researched it through and figured out what it was about she was intrigued. She hasn't had much experience with the gay and lesbian cultures, or even cross dressing for that matter. She is aware of what these groups are about, and how they behave with one another and other individuals, but she does not have a full understanding of why they act the way they do. Being a heterosexual female, reading Self Made Man will test her open mindedness to theses two different subcultures. Anyone who reads a controversial book like this is affected by the morals and the values they have grown up with. Growing up in a heterosexual household in an area without any type of cross dressing puts Kaylee in situation of little understanding of this book. This means that she will learn more from it and hopefully gain a better understanding of the two subcultures she barely knows anything about.

Self-Made Man can be interpreted in many different ways, depending on the reader. Kaylee found out that she does not have a lot in common with Norah Vincent or Ned. She had never had a lot of background information regarding cross dressing so this book was definitely new to her. Kaylee has grown up in a heterosexual household for eighteen years and therefore has been involved in multiple relationships with males. Unlike Ned, Kaylee wears a size eight shoes and does not have a 5 o’clock shadow. She is a strong Catholic and attends church almost every Sunday. She feels that every person who reads this book will have a completely different outlook and take on it. Some people may relate more to Norah Vincent than others and have more in common with her. She feels this affects how one interprets this book and can allow one to agree or disagree with her conclusions. Kaylee is looking forward to learning more about the male culture and keeping in mind Vincent’s cross over to Ned.

Before Tony read the book Self Made Man, by Norah Vincent he did not know much about the subculture of cross-dressing. Tony was from a community of mostly heterosexual people, and was not used to being around the gay/ lesbian subculture. Tony came from a Roman Catholic Church, which did not really have that many people that were from this subculture. With this background the book was going to be a completely new experience. The book Self Made Man should give Tony a better understanding of the cross-dressing subculture. There is much to learn about this culture and in the end will hopefully give Tony a more well rounded view on the world around him.

There were a couple of films about disguised men and women Linda had watched in the past and found them amusing and refreshing to her. The first thought of the book Self Made Man for Linda was completely familiar since she herself found it easier to be with guy friends than girl friends and sometimes questioned the nature of opposite sexes to herself. However, Linda feels there are still a lot of things that she is not aware of and will soon learn about them in Vincent's point of view. Linda herself has felt sexual discrimination in this world and often let down by the thought and she hopes that this Self Made Man would provide some different future perspective about the notion and make both sexes understand about differences and similarities in order to improve ideas about them.