I'm Afraid of Men.

by Vivek Shraya

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.

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.

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.

Why is my humanity only seen or cared about when I share the ways in which I have been victimized and violated?

In order to reimagine masculinity, the quest for a good man—for an anomaly, an exception—must be abandoned. The good man is a fiction. Instead of yearning for a good man, what if we made our expectations for men more tangible? What if, for example, we valued a man who communicates?

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.

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.”

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.

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.