Vivek Shraya

"A powerful meditation on the damaging effects of masculinity from a trans girl--a writer with celebrated indie roots and a knack for dismantling assumptions and challenging the status quo. Toxic masculinity takes many insidious forms, from misogyny and sexual harassment to homophobia, transphobia, and bullying. Vivek Shraya has firsthand experience with nearly all of them. As a boy, Vivek exhibited "feminine" qualities. The men in her life immediately and violently disapproved. They taught her to fear the word girl by turning it into a weapon used to hurt her. They taught her to hate her femininity, to destroy the best parts of herself. In order to survive, Vivek had to learn to convincingly perform masculinity. As a girl, she's still afraid. Having spent years undoing the damage and salvaging her lost girlhood, she is haunted by the violence of men, seldom dressing the way she wants in public. As a result she is often still perceived as male, stirring feelings of guilt and self-doubt: Am I not feminine enough? Is this my fault for striving to be the perfect man and excelling at it? I'm Afraid of Men is a culmination of the years Vivek spent observing men and creating her own version of manhood. Through deeply personal reflection, she offers a rare and multifaceted perspective on gender and a hopeful reimagining of masculinity at a time when it's needed more than ever."--

I'm Afraid of Men

Stas

I'M AFRAID OF MEN because it was men who taught me fear. 

Maybe you would treat me too. Instead of asking me to fill out standardized forms where I list my ailments and shade in the parts of the human outline where I have pain, you would simply and sincerely offer, “I'm sorry."

Although this exchange lasts less than a minute, you effectively jolt me back into my trained state of fear, my rightful place. Trans people aren't afforded the luxury of relaxing or being unguarded. Mere steps away from "the world's largest trans march," trans people are still seen as perverts who touch strangers at crosswalks.

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

Lindsay

"I know that many men, and even women, are afraid and angry when women do speak. Because in this barbaric society, when women speak truly, they speak subversively. They can't help it. If you're underneath, if you're kept down, you break out, you subvert. We are volcanos. When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains."

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. I'm afraid of men because it was men who taught me to hate and eventually destroy, my femininity. 

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

When I walk to lunch and hear a man walking behind me, I move to the edge of the sidewalk so that he can pass. I used to speed up, but no matter how much I quickened my stride, I couldn't escape my anxiety. Men tend to drag their feet on the concrete, asserting their presence both spatially and sonically. But when I check over my shoulder, no one's there. I've grown fearful of any rustle behind me.

My fear of men is a fuel that both protects my body as a survival instinct and erodes it from overuse. 

I'm also afraid of the ways in which the threat of 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?

Touching in gay bars is generally seen as an acceptable form of cruising and supposedly pushes against the repressiveness enforced by heterosexism. I've also witnessed gay men grabbing women's breasts many times on the dance floor. When asked to stop some have responded 'don't worry, I'm gay! I'm not into girls' Not being into girls, however, is sometimes less about sexual preference and more about disdain. Is grabbing women's breasts a way to make women feel unsafe, and therefore keep them out of gay bars?

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