Reviewing this book has been difficult, as I’ve had to fight "knowing" what I was going to write about it before I’d read it, the entire way through the book. The premise of the book is engaging for Alpha Omega members. A man tries living and working as a woman for six weeks to understand the difference in the sexes. He is motivated in part by a woman’s simple declaration, "You can’t understand me!" He comes back from the experience changed or not. I remember back when I was in graduate school wanting to live as a woman for 6 months. Back when I was younger, thinner, and yes, prettier. Sort of a junior semester abroad. But resources and will were lacking, so looking over Mr. Reynolds’s shoulder as he undertook this project became very interesting.

After over a year of preparation starting with creating a back history, a resume, buying a wardrobe, taking herbal treatments to emulate estrogen effects, having laser hair removal for his beard and mustache, even getting a driver’s license, Mr. Reynolds becomes Lisa Anne Weber, an out of work writer/PR woman, searching for job in the New Haven, CT area. Lisa has many deficits as a woman, being 6’1" (oh how I sympathize), overweight, broad shouldered, big nosed and needing a wig. Lisa keeps a daily diary, noting her wardrobe, the weather, her job hunting and social activities, her interactions with all she encountered and her feelings about those interactions. Quite a lot to do.

This book attempts a very important purpose. I’ve noted in another article how vital to many people what we write in our newsletter and post on our website is. So many people in our communities wonder about what it would really be like to be a woman or just to step outside. Mr. Reynold’s book is an important addition to seeing things from another point of view. There are so many illusions that Mr. Reynold’s book dispels and much that I agree with based on my own experiences; how women are treated, passing as a transsexual rather than as a woman, how women relate to each other, being a woman in public space. Most of all I appreciated the sense of bonding with women as a woman, and the alienation, the loss, the impossibility of doing that as a man. What Mr. Reynolds describes is vastly, and to this reviewer refreshingly different from writings about time spent at CD outings such as Holiday En Femme or the Lake Erie Gala (for something closer to home). Perhaps, then, with these positive remarks in mind you should stop reading and buy a copy of the book and read it. Or read this recently published interview and review in the New Haven Register: http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=8253379&BRD=1281&PAG=461&dept_id=517539&rfi=6.

After you’ve read it the rest of my comments might be more useful. But for those of you curious enough to read on:

I put the book down for a while, hoping that the passage of time would lessen my concerns, but found, alas that they remain. What concerns me is what is missing from the book, the feeling that important parts of the story are being left out, and the feeling that the author had and has no sense of connection with any thing anyone else has written in the area, or well known conflicts.

One of the seminal books of the civil rights era was a book called "Black Like Me". John Howard Griffin undertook UV and chemical treatments to make his skin dark enough for him to pass as black, and then wrote about what it was like to be treated as black in the segregationist south. He died of skin cancer that resulted from his experiment in racism in 1980. For more information about Mr. Griffin and his work see: http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/GG/fgr99.html,

and http://www.angelfire.com/or/sociologyshop/BLM.html#blm2

In many ways Black Like Me is the unacknowledged predecessor in style to "The New Girl". "Black Like Me" raised important questions about racism in American Society and the role people played in maintaining that institution. I found it disappointing that Mr. Reynolds didn’t frame his task in this context, and take cues from the questions asked and answered. For example, as southern white men maintained racism, how do men maintain sexism? It’s not that he doesn’t observe it happening to him, but he doesn’t chose to see it as a system or it seems reflect on his own actions as a man as a part of that system. Even rejection of the notion of sexism as a system would be preferable to not addressing the question at all.

Another problem I noticed is that while his motivation is claimed to be to investigate the statement "you just don’t understand me!" Mr. Reynolds calls himself a transgender activist. Some of his activities during his 6 weeks as a woman were involved in gathering material for profiles of transgendered people. There is no clear statement about how Mr. Reynold’s interest in transgender issues came about. There is no reference to any work by Mr. Reynolds being published or in preparation. What is a straight person, with no interest in crossdressing per se, no claim of alienation from his expected gender role doing being a transgender activist? What forms has his activism taken? We aren’t told.

As Lisa Weber, Mr. Reynolds enrolls in a women’s empowerment workshop. He is later challenged as being a man. He does not ‘fess up’, but continues the charade. The next day he gets a phone call from the police department telling him to stay away from the women’s center and that group. I found Mr. Reynold’s account of this episode and his insisting that he himself was a victim of sexism less than satisfactory.

Apparently Mr. Reynolds was unaware of the problems a post-op transsexual, Kimberly Nixon faced attempting to become a counselor at a rape crisis center in Vancouver, Canada and the context his actions might be seen in. While a Canadian civil rights panel headed by a woman eventually backed Ms. Nixon’s claims for damages, there was a strong case made for women being able to define their own safe space as they see fit. Mr. Reynolds could not insist, as Ms. Nixon could, that as a post-op transsexual she was legally a woman. Mr. Reynold’s identification was fraudulent. My reading of the final, hostile encounter was a woman sensing a man invading her space, intuitively knowing she’s being lied to, and acting on that intuition even if she can’t prove a thing at the time. We readers know she’s right. Mr. Reynolds seems unable to put himself in her shoes, despite his own experiences in how women are treated by men. This section is a major disappointment in the book, making Mr. Reynold’s quest look less genuine and more self-indulgent.

The last unanswered questions raised by the book have to do with relationships. We know that Mr. Reynolds now feels cut off from the ability to bond with women, once he presents as a man again. And we know that the whole experiment created a strain in his relationship with his girlfriend. What happens to that relationship? The book doesn’t tell us, but we do learn from the New Haven Register article that they will soon be wed. Does what he learned during his 6 weeks as a woman have any effect on this relationship? What does his girlfriend say about his experience, what he has taken home? As a teacher, does Mr. Reynolds now relate to his female students any differently that before? It seems somewhat perverse that he keeps score about one thing that happened in business, noting that 85% of his sales come from women while not articulating the effects on deeper and more durable bonds.

While the desirable experiences of bonding with women were demonstrated to be reproducible even a year later, I can’t help feeling that the author ended where he started, with a list of women’s issues, some intellectual understanding of them, but not much sunk into the gut. So while I’m glad that someone has attempted this book and this experience, and I recommend the book, I also wish for more than what the book delivered.

My partner also read the book and similar reactions except for a few:

1. She thinks I'm being a bit hard-nosed about relating "The New Girl" to "Black Like Me", especially in terms of sexual politics. 
2. She does like the sections about bonding with women, but felt the emphasis on clothing was too typical of crossdressers. I disagreed with this point, saying that from my perspective, the clothing was simply a constant problem of insecurity about wearing the right outfit for the exact circumstances, without years of experience to fall back on.

We both recommend the book. The strengths of the book lie in the details of the experiences and the emphasis on the role other women have in women’s lives are what matter most. Those are things rare and precious when compared to most other offerings.

We are listing the book in our bookstore- Click here to see the link.