I'm Afraid of Men.

by Vivek Shraya

I’M AFRAID OF MEN because it was men who taught me fear. I’m afraid of men because it was men who taught me to fear the word girl by turning it into a weapon they used to hurt me.

As important as it is to make these incidents visible by reporting them, sensationalizing and digesting these stories is also a form of social control, a reminder that I need to be afraid and to try to be as invisible as possible.

Exclamation marks soften my message, modifying my tone so that my words convey the requisite submissiveness to communicate effectively with a man, to avoid agitating or offending him. I am not allowed to be assertive or direct.

I realized only after I began transitioning that my lifetime of independence and self-reliance had been largely a result of male privilege. 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.

I especially can’t afford to be choosy. My brownness turns out to be a form of queerness in and of itself and makes me too queer for gay men.

quickly learn that gay men will find me desirable only if I’m muscular. Simultaneously, I learn that it’s partly my skinniness that makes me appear gay to straight men. In both instances, my thinness amplifies my femininity, which is consistently seen as a loathsome quality that needs to be eradicated.

Consumption is a key to masculinity.

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?

queerness is associated with freedom from boundaries. Thus, any boundary is inherently un-queer.

I have always been disturbed by this transition, by the reality that often the only way to capture someone’s attention and to encourage them to recognize their own internal biases (and to work to alter them) is to confront them with sensational stories of suffering. Why is my humanity only seen or cared about when I share the ways in which I have been victimized and violated?

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 behaviour is more often unnoticed, forgiven, or even celebrated—hence our cultural fixation with bad boys.

The men were happy to consume the food and the care we provided but were slightly unnerved by my alliance with women. “Come sit with us!” one of Shemeena’s uncles coaxed. “You don’t have to be in the kitchen,” another one added. My labour only amplified their own laziness, and each of the men endeavoured to recalibrate me back to the couch.

Sexist comments, intimidation, groping, violating boundaries, and aggression are seen as merely “typical” for men. But “typical” is dangerously interchangeable with “acceptable.” “Boys will be boys,” after all.

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.

Using “sensitive” as a pejorative and a mechanism of restraint, as my dad did, is a form of misogyny. Being spit on because I was wearing my mother’s jacket was misogyny. The desire to attack me because I was a faggot who dared to make eye contact was misogyny. The eagerness to correct my walk was misogyny. The shaming of my skinniness and the pressure in gay culture to be muscular was misogyny. Men’s assumption that they are entitled to touch others’ bodies without consent and the dismissals of my boundaries were misogyny. The cab driver’s oversexualization of a young female passenger was misogyny. The irrational aggression toward me at the bus stop and at Pride was misogyny.

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.

When I was learning to be a man, I wish that instead of the coaching I received to take up space, I had been taught to be respectful of space. To be ever conscious of and ever grateful to those whose sacred land I inhabit. To be mindful of the space and bodies of others, especially feminine bodies. To never presume that I am permitted to touch the body of another, no matter how queer the space. To give up or create space when I am afforded more than others.

I’m afraid of women who have internalized their experiences of misogyny so deeply that they make me their punching bag. I’m afraid of the women who, like men, reject my pronouns and refuse to see my femininity, or who comment on or criticize my appearance, down to my chipped nail polish, to reiterate that I am not one of them. I’m afraid of women who, when I share my experiences of being trans, try to console me by announcing “welcome to being a woman,” refusing to recognize the ways in which our experiences fundamentally differ. But I’m especially afraid of women because my history has taught me that I can’t fully rely upon other women for sisterhood, or allyship, or protection from men.

It’s not enough to let go of the misplaced hope for a good or a better man. It’s not enough to honour femininity. Both of these options might offer a momentary respite from the dangers of masculinity, but in the end they only perpetuate a binary and the pressure that bears down when we live at different ends of the spectrum.

But your fear is not only hurting me, it’s hurting you, limiting you from being everything you could be. 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?

What if you were to challenge yourself every time you feel afraid of me—and all of us who are pushing against gendered expectations and restrictions? What if you cherished us as archetypes of realized potential? What if you were to surrender to sublime possibility—yours and mine? Might you then free me at last of my fear, and of your own?