I'm Afraid of Men Book Review

by Catalina Bonati

4.75/5 stars

I’m Afraid of Men (2018) by Vivek Shraya is a non-fiction creative essay that details parts of her life growing up queer as a person of color in Toronto and later in adulthood coming out as trans and the many emotional journeys which this entailed. This is a short read of less than 100 pages that is a personal narrative more than it is a memoir.

Shraya touches upon many important points in this essay. She mentions how as an adult and teacher, her own personal fear of men inclines her male students towards preferential treatment, as she tries to cater to what she thinks they want in order not to be judged or potentially assaulted. Shraya reflects on her high school experience and her relationship to bullies: she regards them with sympathy and with envy because they have managed to assimilate into fabric of high school, foregoing personal preferences in order to fit in. Shraya examines her experience of brownness within gayness—she faces ostracization within an already marginalized community; she mentions “my brownness turns out to be a form of queerness in and of itself and makes me too queer for gay men.” She also examines femininity as a “loathsome quality” as regarded by males: in this case, her thinness was a duality to thickness which was inherently masculine. She touches upon a big problem within the gay community, which is misogyny. She reflects that misogyny is overly prevalent in society and comes to take form from a very young age regardless of sexual orientation. Within gay spaces, she thinks that groping women is a way to express hatred and to make women feel unsafe and therefore unwelcome in places such as gay bars. This is no more permissible when done by gay men than by straight men. She argues that transness does not dismiss misogyny.

“Trans people aren’t afforded the luxury of relaxing or being unguarded” is a powerful statement that she makes in relation to being discriminated against and harassed by a straight person within a safe space, which is Pride. Her experience with confronting sexual discrimination, racism, violence, and overall hatred extends to every single aspect of trans life—within the queer community, this also applies. The importance of uncomplicated gay friendship is important to Shraya, because it fortifies boundaries between friendship and romance which are often dismissed within the gay community. She speaks on transitioning within a relationship and the problems that this begot for her, like cheating because of yearning for a differently gendered body.

This book is self-reflective in both personal ways as well as general community, the community of maleness and of queerness. Shraya reflects on womanhood and transness, which are “experiences which fundamentally differ” because by conflating them, the enormous differences in victimization and privilege are erased. She is critical of women who have internalized misogyny and make transness their punching bag. Importantly, she is critical of trans and queer allies in general when they become outraged or sympathetic only when confronted with discrimination. “Why is my humanity only seen of cared about when I share the ways in which I have been victimized or violated?” she asks of her reader, an important statement on the ways in which queerness and otherness is presented in media and in our general discourse.

This book speaks upon a variety of subjects which revolve around the violence of men. As she states in the first page of the book, “I’m afraid of men because it was men who taught me to fear” and to hate femininity and therefore herself. She speaks of the prevalence of misogyny within us and around us and how the denial of femininity because of wanting protection from straight men leads us to hate ourselves as women and as queer: “how do I love a body that was never fully my own?” Her experiences of being queer in high school and searching for validation in the hardest of places is relatable. Shraya herself, however, falls into patterns of objectifying other gay men as potential sexual partners, which is something that she herself criticizes of the gay community in general. This book is a critical view on straightness and queerness, masculinity and femininity. Shraya’s refreshing takes comes from a deeply personal and deeply reflective viewpoint; it’s a tense yet gratifying read. I highly recommend this book to all those who wish to self-examine and reflect upon the deficiencies of the queer community, of masculinity, and of allyship, and to those who wish to examine and celebrate friendship.