This book took me much longer to read than I expected. The premise of the book intrigued me, but reading through it, I was very bored. The writing isn't bad, but it is written in such a rambling way that it is easy to zone out.

Overall, the book was okay. It was written over ten years ago so I think much of the insight is outdated. The issues that Vincent discusses men going through are the same (being the breadwinner, toughness, father-son attachments), but I think there is much more awareness of it today than ten years ago.

The descriptions of people in the book really annoyed me. They are overly negative and demeaning. Vincent makes a lot of quick judgments about people based on their appearances and seems overly critical of them. I was waiting for her to say something nice, but she just went on and on about men's beer belly's and pathetic faces.

Vincent was very honest in her writing, which it commendable, but I can't help feel negatively toward her for her actions. While she notes the level of deceit and betrayal she sunk to, it still was difficult to read. I mostly just felt bad for all of the people she lied to and got close to under false pretenses. I think she crossed some lines in the book (sneaking into the monastery as a man) and while I think her goal was an important one, I think she took it too far at times.

Okay book about masculinity, but there are definitely books with more insight on the subject. An interesting account of a woman living as a man, but very lengthy and drawn out.

The first time I took notice of Terry Crews was in White Chicks, and although I didn't really follow his career, I always enjoyed the movies and shows that I saw with him in it. This book was a fascinating look into his life and how he used to perceived it vs how he sees it now --Hindsight plays a huge part in this memoir, and it does get you thinking... well, it got me thinking about how I perceive my past actions and how I'll see my current actions in the future. It's a good way to gain some perspective, I think.

Basically the book chronicles his struggles and victories in a very easy to follow timeline, and I found that it flowed along well. I also didn't get that overpowering feeling like he was holding details back... he laid it all out on the table, even when it put him in a bad light, and there was more than enough dodgy lighting.

He seems like a very determined kind of person, which is awesome and worked for him - it also shows you how hard work and never giving up can get you where you want to be. That said, stubborn and reckless can also be added to his character traits, and there were definitely a couple of places where I thought he was being either an idiot or an asshole (or both). He is very much what we currently think of as an "Alpha" male... I kind of understand though, he didn't have great examples growing up, and he put a lot of pressure on himself to be a real man. His dad wasn't a lot of help when it came time for him to figure out what that really meant, so of course he was going to make some mistakes along the way.

I think it's unfair how boys are made to believe that they needed to be tough and never show their feelings in order to be a real man. I consider myself a feminist, but being a feminist isn't just about women's rights and empowering women. It's about gender equality, and there is a lot of pressure on guys to act a certain way. As a mother of a boy, I feel it's so important for us to raise sons who don't feel like they have to fit a certain profile in order to be thought of as a real man. Like what's the alternative anyway?

Anyway, manhood was a fun and easy read, and I'll definitely keep my eyes open for more entertainment by Terry Crews.

I was already a fan of Terry Crews, but this interview left me in awe and sold me on reading the book. 

In Nickle and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich makes it very clear early in the book that she is not claiming that she is speaking for the working class. She states that she cannot entirely know what their lives are like, and what she is presenting is her own experience, and stories she was told by others. But just because she works the low-paying jobs, that does not give her a monopoly on what life is like for those who do the same.

This specificity benefits that book greatly, as it is almost always from her own experience, and stories told by her coworkers, backed up by literature on the subject. But she is always careful not to claim too much authority, not to claim that what she experienced gives her ownership over the minimum wage experience.

Norah Vincent, unfortunately, does no such thing. And that is the irritating thing about this book. When she is specific, talking specifically about what she experienced and the stories she is told by the men she interacted with, it's pretty darn good. But then, every time, she extrapolates from that to tell us about how what she experienced is what all men experience. Keep it small and personal, and let your readers draw their own conclusions. Because many of those grand philosophical statements were based on pretty shaky anecdotes.

Vincent passes for a man for over a year (on and off), and writes about her experience. Fair enough, participant journalism, all that jazz. But over and over, she'll say something along the lines of "I, as a woman in drag, experienced this reaction, and therefore, all men have this reaction." There's a whole set of assumptions in that that may or may not be founded, but the sheer uncriticalness of that stance drove me crazy.

I would be very interested to hear what male readers make of this book, what she makes of their experiences, how she says men feel. I'm guessing some of it is on point, some of it is not.

(I was, with eyebrows raised, telling my husband about her revelation that when she was dressed as a man waiting for a date, she felt very small and insignificant, and then drew the conclusion that not only do all men feel that way in all circumstances relating to dating, but that that was why R. Crumb drew large women, to show how women make men feel insignificant. My husband looked back at me, eyebrows equally raised, and informed me that R. Crumb drew large women because he had a sexual fetish for them.)

But here's my real issue. And it's certainly not one that is hers alone, it's a fairly common one. (You'll have to bear with me, I'm in the middle of writing a chapter of my dissertation on masculinity in the 19th century.) It's the idea that there is One. True. Masculinity. And that it is ahistorical.

This is not an uncommon notion. It's actually fairly prevalent. It's also bullshit. There are always competing masculinities, some with more cultural recognition than others. Some are class-based. Some are sexuality-based. Some are race-based. Some, like the men I study, are based on religion and associational culture. But what they all have in common is that they are used to see if others measure up to the standards they set, and that they are not static. And they are not singular.

In this case, she uses the term "Real Men" quite a lot. And what she means by that is a fairly traditional idea of working-class white American masculinity. But by conflating class and gender, she entirely ignores class as part of a masculine identity. This is not new. (I'm trying not to be pedantic here, I'll try to move on, but if you're at all interested, Gail Bederman's [b:Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917|5679|Manliness and Civilization A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917|Gail Bederman|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1328874344s/5679.jpg|9087] is a really good look at how working-class and black masculinities have historically been fetishized and sometimes held up as the only masculinity worth aspiring to.)

So there's that, and that's one of my pet peeves, this One Masculinity crap. As is the idea that what masculinity is is eternal and doesn't change of time. Bullshit.

The other problem is her sample sizes. Again, if she'd been more specific, this would have been fine. If she'd told these stories, and let them stay right there, that would have been very powerful. But no. She keeps using these fairly small sample sizes to make grand universal ahistorical proclamations. She uses a bowling league to tell us about how all men interact with each other in all social situations. She uses men who go regularly to strip clubs to tell us about how all men experience their sexuality in regards to women. She uses door-to-door salesmen to tell us how all men experience work.

Keep it smaller, keep it simpler, and this would be a very good book. As it is now, there are some really good stories, some really good hints of something more, but they are overshadowed by this desire to make a definitive statement on masculinity.

It's frustrating, because I don't disagree with her basic premise - that all is not sweetness and light for men, that gender boundaries and policing can be be restrictive and difficult for men to negotiate too. But she argues more than she is able to support, and falls into that trap of believing there is one true masculinity, and she's experienced it.

Crossposted to Smorgasbook

So, delving into the personal for a moment; yesterday when I started this book I was having a particularly difficult parental day. My youngest (who is never the easiest child to motivate to dress or brush teeth or shoe and head off to school) was particularly difficult. I finally got the kids in the car only 6 minutes late and dropped at school only a minute late (lots of time can be made up if one is willing to drive 10-15 miles over the speed limit) and then came home and bawled to my husband about how I cannot, absolutely cannot take the stress of the responsibility of getting them off to school. Really, I recognize that I have very few real problems and am more than anything one of the luckiest people I know (in love, finances, work, and children for the most part) BUT the passive aggressive tendencies of my youngest can make me (at times) wish not only that he was never born but that I had the where withall to just abandon the whole shebang and live in a studio apartment over a sleazy coffee shop and wait tables for a mere $20K annually. And then I settled down and did some work and picked up this book and felt not only okay for my selfish desires, but downright normal.

Clearly, I'm not a guy and while I welcome the term nerd (as in mathnerd, booknerd, foodnerd), I have never considered myself a geek (sci fi just does not do so much for me) and so could not relate to all of his stories. However, the parenthood stuff was amazingly refreshing and funny and poignant (especially for me yesterday) and touching. He is self deprecating and hopeful and hard working and optimistic and best of all WITTY.

The title is worth a comment; he spends quite a bit of time defining the term "amateur" as something along the lines of "fan" or "geek" or better yet "enthusiast". An amateur is someone who is willing and interested in a topic; as such rather than the potential self-deprecation that I had assumed "manhood for amateurs" to be I have to re-interpret it as "manhood for those of us who strive to engage life." Overall, the book's moral is simply to do your best and try to enjoy the moment...pretty good stuff.

I have a few great comments below, just gems out of context:

"I define being a good father in precisely the same terms that we ought to define being a good mother--doing my part to handle and stay on top of the endless parade of piddly shit."

"Marijuana could intensify the sunshine of a perfect summer day, but it could also deepen the gloom of a wintry afternoon; it had bred false camaraderies and drawn my attention to deep flaws and fault lines when what mattered--what matters so often in the course of everyday human life--were the surfaces and the joins."

"Adulthood has always carried a burden of self-denial, of surrendering pleasures, of leaving childish things behind."

"Like all obvious questions, none of these can be answered. All human endeavor is subject to cracking."

"The true scarcity we face is of practicing adults, of people who know how marginal, how fragile, how finite their lives and their stories and their ambitions really are but who find value in this knowledge, even a sense of strange comfort, because they know their condition is universal, is shared."