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dread every time I see a notice on my door, expecting it to say FAGGOT.
Being a girl has required me to retrain myself to think of depending on others or asking for assistance not as weakness or even as pathetic, but rather as a necessity.
To this day, if I hear someone cough or clear their throat behind me, my body tenses up, shoulders raised, expecting to be a target.
avoid our hallway for the rest of high school, and even now I avoid making eye contact with other men, even if they’re colleagues or peers, never again trusting that visual communication provides a reliable clue (or is even permissible). What might be cruising can also be contempt.
violence from men has shaped, or even damaged, my sexuality. How many sexual desires and fantasies are formed out of potential or actual male violence? Or rather, to what extent is sexuality shaped and constrained by childhood experiences of male violence? What might desire feel like if the construction of sexuality didn’t take place in tandem with childhood experiences of violence from men?
My brownness turns out to be a form of queerness in and of itself and makes me too queer for gay men.
What would my body look like if I didn’t want affection from gay men and protection from straight men? What would my body look and feel like if I didn’t have to mould it into both a shield and an ornament? How do I love a body that was never fully my own?
Why is being touched by strangers—strangers who refuse to identify themselves—a form of flattery? Being brown, bisexual, and feminine, I have longed to feel seen and desirable in gay bars, and as a teenage brown fag, this kind of random touching felt like all I deserved, all I could aspire to. But when the momentary visibility fades after someone conveys their interest by pinching me, I inevitably feel devalued and dehumanized.
My friendship with you marks the first time in my adult life when a man not only makes me feel that I can offer what I’ve chosen to offer, but also that it will be welcomed.
“Oh. I didn’t say ‘I love you’ because I wanted you to say it back.” “You didn’t?” “No. It kind of bothers me that ‘I love you’ is treated like the destination in a relationship. I told you because that’s how I feel and I wanted you to know.”
I’M AFRAID OF MEN not because of any singular encounter with a man. I’m afraid of men because of the cumulative damage caused by the everyday experiences I’ve recounted here, and by those untold, and by those I continue to face.
Why is my humanity only seen or cared about when I share the ways in which I have been victimized and violated?
The pressure to be “good” is not exclusive to one gender, nor is it applied equally to all genders. To be clear, the stress on girls to be
“good” far surpasses any stress men might feel to be “good.”
This disparity is perhaps best exemplified by the fact that when a girl does something “wrong,” few mourn her goodness. We rarely hear, “I thought she was one of the good girls.” Women who behave “badly” are ultimately not given the same benefit of the doubt as men and are immediately cast off as bitches or sluts. Men might be written off as “dogs,” but their reckless behavio...
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This praise highlights another problem with the idea of the “good man”—the bar is ultimately a low one, and men are heralded every day for engaging in basic acts of domestic labour like washing dishes.
If we want masculinity to be different, we must confront and tackle the baseline instead of longing for exceptions. Loving your mother, holding a door open for a woman, being a good listener, or even being a feminist doesn’t make a man an exception. Experiencing oppression—including racism, homophobia, and transphobia—doesn’t make a man an exception. If we are invested in perpetuating and glorifying the myth of the “good man,” we are also complicit in overlooking, if not permitting, the reprehensible behaviour of the “typical man.”
The common definition of misogyny is “the hatred of women.” Consequently, most men don’t think they’re misogynists, let alone think they have misogynist attitudes or engage in misogynist behaviours. Just as those who exhibit racist tendencies wouldn’t classify themselves as racist, few men would admit to hating women or believe they hate women.
The theme of entitlement to space that emerges in many of my recollections of men, and in my
own masculine development, is colonial code for claiming someone else’s space. Whether it’s through an emphasis on being large and muscular, or asserting power by an extended or intimidating stride on sidewalks, being loud in bars, manspreading on public transit, or enacting harm or violence on others, taking up space is a form of misogyny because so often the space that men try to seize and dominate belongs to women and gender-nonconforming people.
The history and current state of Western masculinity is predicated on diminishing and desecrating the feminine. Therefore, a healthier masculinity must be one that honours and embraces femininit...
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rape the earth.
How can you share a quote that uses this word flippantly
Unfortunately, any ambiguity or nonconformity, especially in relation to gender, conjures terror.
Consider how often you have dismissed your own appearance, behaviours, emotions, and aspirations for being too feminine or masculine. What might your life be if you didn’t impose these designations on yourself, let alone on me?
