{"id":425,"date":"2025-01-03T14:50:01","date_gmt":"2025-01-03T19:50:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/transmemoir\/?post_type=chapter&p=425"},"modified":"2025-01-15T12:29:22","modified_gmt":"2025-01-15T17:29:22","slug":"vivek-shrayas-im-afraid-of-men-and-the-fear-of-femininity","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/transmemoir\/chapter\/vivek-shrayas-im-afraid-of-men-and-the-fear-of-femininity\/","title":{"raw":"Vivek Shraya\u2019s I\u2019m Afraid of Men and the Fear of Femininity","rendered":"Vivek Shraya\u2019s I\u2019m Afraid of Men and the Fear of Femininity"},"content":{"raw":"

Introduction<\/h2>\r\n\"Excuse me, this is the women\u2019s bathroom\u201d is a phrase I often hear as a six-foot-tall cisgender woman with a barbered fade and button-up shirts. While this amounts to a moment of discomfort for someone like me, for too many trans women, these encounters escalate into a matter of safety and survival as patriarchal standards of femininity and womanhood exclude and dehumanize them through the overlapping and compounding factors of misogyny, sexism, and femmephobia. The following analysis of Vivek Shraya\u2019s aptly titled memoir, I\u2019m Afraid of Men<\/em><\/a>, is both an exploration of Shraya\u2019s reflections on being a feminine-presenting trans woman, as well as a probe into the ways in which she is writing about broader systemic issues facing anyone expressing femininity. In this essay, I will discuss the three core perspectives through which Shraya does this, beginning with femmephobia \u2013 which I will also use as a theoretical framework throughout my discussion. Next, is the overlapping and compounding effects of transphobia and misogyny, known as transmisogyny. Finally, the ways in which masculinity is constructed in opposition to femininity, making it a delicate identity in need of constant reaffirmation. By exploring these topics in Shraya\u2019s memoir, I aim to unpack how our patriarchal construction of a gender hierarchy marginalizes and threatens those whose gender expression challenges rigid binaries, especially trans women.\r\n

Femmephobia<\/h2>\r\n[h5p id=\"8\"]<\/code> \u201cI\u2019m afraid of men because it was men who taught me to hate and eventually destroy my femininity\u201d (Shraya, 2018, p.1). With this striking opening, Vivek Shraya introduces the central concept of her memoir: femmephobia<\/em>. As defined by Hoskin (2020), femmephobia refers to the devaluation and subjugation of femininity, distinct (though not unrelated) from the marginalization of women as a gender class. Femmephobia forms the infrastructure upon which Shraya\u2019s memoir is built, as each vignette offers glimpses into her experiences navigating a patriarchal society that harbours deep disdain for femininity.\r\n
\r\n\r\nSex<\/strong>: refers to your biological sex, assigned at birth (male, female or intersex).\r\n\r\nGender identity<\/strong>: refers to the gender you psychologically align with or embody (man, woman or nonconforming).\r\n\r\nGender expression:<\/strong> refers to how you align your outside appearance with your identity (masculine, feminine or androgynous).\r\n\r\nEach of these has an oppositional and marginalizing force.\r\n\r\nSex: sexism<\/strong> is the societal belief that maleness is inherently more valuable than femaleness.\r\n\r\nGender identity: misogyny<\/strong> is the societal belief that women are less valuable than men.\r\n\r\nGender expression: femmephobia<\/strong> is the societal belief that femininity is less valuable and less aspirational than masculinity.\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_444\" align=\"alignleft\" width=\"240\"]\"\" Vivek Shraya[\/caption]\r\n\r\nShraya recounts large-scale observations, such as the powerful correlation between her increasing femininity and the sharp decline in her desirability to men during the early days of her transition, as well as smaller, more personal moments, like the fear and discomfort of wearing lipstick in public, knowing that existing as a visibly feminine person makes her vulnerable to ridicule, threats, and violence. These anecdotes underscore the pervasiveness of femmephobia as a lived reality for women and gender-nonconforming individuals like Shraya. Building on this, Hoskin et al. (2023) argue that a critical tenet of femmephobia is the inextricable link between femininity and women. This conflation creates opposing pressures for women: to embrace femininity due to socially imposed gender norms while simultaneously rejecting it to gain respect in a culture that devalues the feminine. Shraya\u2019s experiences exemplify these pressures, particularly as she encounters how femininity is weaponized against her, notably by other women who want to let her know that she is not one of them. It is in these moments that we see the function of femmephobia as a mechanism of maintaining a gendered hierarchy wherein masculinity is respected and dominant and femininity is subordinate and weak (Hoskin, 2018). This hierarchal and binary view of gender is so deeply steeped in our culture and our art that we can see it unknowingly and unintentionally perpetuated in some more traditional trans memoir styles, such as the format that Jacob Tobia (2019) referred to as the \u201cMad Lib\u201d memoir in which the stories follow the same linear path from being born in the \u201cwrong body\u201d, to the eventual medical transition from \u201cone\u201d to \u201cthe other\u201d. These stories, while valid, can reinforce a traditional masculine\/ feminine binary for their cis audiences and further marginalize women like Shraya, who do not strictly adhere to traditional gender norms. Using the format of her own memoir to push back against these expectations, Shraya places the devaluation of femininity at the center of her memoir, externalizing much of the conflict and turmoil and challenging the sometimes femmephobic norms of trans life storytelling. Shraya\u2019s memoir is, above all, a reflection on society\u2019s pervasive devaluation of femininity\u2014an unseen force shaping her interactions with men, dictating the choices she makes to stay safe, and manifesting as the internalized fear and shame she must ultimately confront and overcome.\r\n

The Role of Femmephobia in Transmisogyny<\/h2>\r\n\u201cHow cruel is it to have endured two decades of being punished for being too girly only to be told that I am now not girly enough\u201d (Shraya, 2018, p. 80). As Shraya highlights throughout her memoir, trans women\u2019s expression of femininity comes under greater scrutiny and faces more violent and dangerous rejection because femmephobia underpins the disproportionate policing of their identities through transmisogyny.\r\n\r\nIn her seminal work, Whipping Girl<\/em> (2007), <\/em>Julia Serano explains that \u201c[w]hen the majority of jokes made at the expense of trans people center on \u2018men wearing dresses\u2019 or \u2018men who want their penises cut off,\u2019 that is not transphobia - it is transmisogyny\u201d (p. 15). Much of Shraya\u2019s memoir are vignettes of transmisogyny, from being spat on for wearing her mother\u2019s coat to experiencing violence while marching at a Toronto Pride event; her reflections on being punished for both embodying femininity and failing to meet social standards illuminates a larger, historical pattern: the policing of femininity as a tool of control. As I touched on earlier, a patriarchal society\u2019s rigid construction of the categories masculine and feminine serves to maintain and reinforce a hierarchal gender binary, and any transgressions from that binary are viewed as threats to established power structures. Throughout history, these threats have been met with violent suppression; as historian Jules Gill-Peterson (2024) highlights in A Short History of Trans Misogyny,<\/em> European colonizers systematically targeted gender-diverse Indigenous people \u2013 asserting a Western binary and using the perceived transgressions as justification for violence and erasure.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_447\" align=\"alignright\" width=\"300\"]\"\" Transgender Pride Flag, Foreign and Commonwealth Office[\/caption]\r\n\r\nThese exact mechanisms of control persist today, as evidenced by the disproportionate rates of violence against trans women. Contemporary transmisogyny has recycled colonial tactics of punishing transgressions of the binary through both overt violence and systemic discrimination. Perry (2001 [as cited by Colliver, 2021]) refers to these attacks as \u201cmessage crimes,\u201d which suggests that much like the colonizers, modern-day violence against trans folks is meant to enforce conformity, signalling that deviation from gender norms will not be tolerated in a patriarchal society. Shraya\u2019s personal accounts of violence and rejection as a trans woman illuminate the broader systemic forces that render femininity\u2014particularly trans femininity\u2014a target of pervasive discrimination. Notably, rather than presenting these experiences as things that happened to her and are on the page for the reader to absorb and feel absconded of any responsibility, Shraya ditches a traditional trans memoir format for the powerful and intimate use of second-person narrative. This places the reader in the position of the perpetrator during each vignette and calls on the audience to evaluate their own complicity in femmephobia and transmisogyny (Shraya, as reported by Jivran and Pedram, 2018). By presenting her experiences to the reader through her second-person narrative, Shraya demands a reckoning not only with her story but with the ongoing societal complicity and acceptance of transmisogyny. In this way, her work weaves lived experience with a broader social critique and situates her narrative within a continuum of systemic violence against trans women in the form of transmisogyny.\r\n

Masculinity as a Rejection of Femininity<\/h2>\r\nhttps:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=wh69_WJOGa4\r\n\r\nIn the memoir, Shraya describes an incident she experienced while waiting for the bus in her mother\u2019s jacket. While she buries herself in a book to avoid confrontation with a boy from school, she begins to feel small flecks hitting her back and hearing the boy, and a young woman with him, laughing. When she arrives home, Shraya confirms what she had feared while standing at the bus stop \u2013 that the young man had been spitting on her and the jacket. \u201c\u2026I will never wear her jacket again\u2026 it was to blame for what happened. But I am also to blame. Had I, a boy, not worn it, I wouldn\u2019t have been sullied.\u201d (Shraya, 2018, p. 21) Having examined Shraya\u2019s experiences of femmephobia and transmisogyny, I want to finally focus on the internalized dimension of this fear. For several formative years, Shraya was socialized to embody masculinity \u2013 which taught her to not only reject her femininity but also to despite it. Kimmel (1997) argues that traditional masculinity is largely constructed as a reaction against femininity and homosexuality, which in turn makes masculinity a tenuous and fragile identity requiring constant validation through the rejection of anything deemed feminine or weak. Halberstam (1998) builds on this, noting the paradoxical nature of masculinity in society. Observing that while it can be challenging to clearly define it, society has no problem identifying it and devoting resources and effort to endorse and sustain the forms we value and trust. Both of these works underscore how unstable masculinity is on its own, requiring both individual performances of rejection (such as a young man spitting on a boy wearing a woman\u2019s coat) and larger social systems of reinforcement to maintain its narrow definition and socially dominant role.\r\n\r\nThe notion of a hegemonic masculinity was popularized by Connell (1995) as \u201cthe configuration of gender practice which embodies the currently accepted answer to the problem of the legitimacy of patriarchy, which guarantees (or is taken to guarantee) the dominant position of men and the subordination of women\u201d (p. 77). Which is to say, masculinity is shaped as a justification of the existence and maintenance of the patriarchy by reinforcing men\u2019s power and women\u2019s subordination. \"\"While much of the memoir is written to \u2018You\u2019, the reader of the book, the final 35 pages belong to a section titled \u2018Me\u2019. In a powerful narrative turn, Shraya excavates her own participation in these systems of harm and in a sense, aligns herself with the audience to whom she eventually issues a call to action. Turning inward and confronting the \u2018oppressor within\u2019 Shraya can clearly explore the ways in which we define masculinity as a narrow, singular type through her own personal experience. Through her reflections in I\u2019m Afraid of Men, <\/em>Shraya illustrates how the fragile nature of the accepted masculinity harms not only those who embody femininity, but also those socialized to enforce its narrow ideals. \u201c[Y]our fear is not only hurting me, it\u2019s 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\u2019t impose these designations on yourself, let alone on me?\u201d (Shraya, 2018, p. 85). Shraya\u2019s work reckons with our collective construction of masculinity and reveals how the rejection of femininity lays the foundation for both individual acts of harm as well as the broader systems that sustain patriarchal masculinity.\r\n

Conclusion<\/h2>\r\nShraya\u2019s memoir, while a deeply personal account of the experiences that have shaped her fear of men and masculinity, is also a profound critique of the patriarchal society\u2019s subjugation of the expression of femininity. Using personal insight, social commentary and subversive formatting, I\u2019m Afraid of Men<\/em> transcends our expectations for a personal memoir, serving as a compelling interrogation of the patriarchal systems that devalue femininity, enforce transmisogyny, and sustain the fragile yet oppressive construct of masculinity. Her innovative use of subversive narrative structure and second person writing transform the work into a call to action, urging her readers to not only assess their complicity in these systems of harm, but to dismantle them and envision a world where femininity is not subjugated and masculinity need not be feared. \u201cWhat 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?\u201d (Shraya, 2018, p. 85)\r\n
\r\n

Author Positionality Statement \u2013 Lindsay J.<\/h2>\r\nI am a third-year psychology major with a family studies minor who returned to school in my mid-thirties after spending over a decade working in factual and reality television. My passion for using narrative techniques to explore broader systemic issues has fueled much of my late-in-life academic career, and this project was the perfect embodiment of that.\r\n\r\nAs this memoir deals with the real-life experiences of a trans woman of colour, I feel it necessary to place myself in the context about which I am writing. I am a cis-gendered, visibly queer, white, able-bodied woman working and studying on the unceded traditional territories of the x\u02b7m\u0259\u03b8k\u02b7\u0259y\u0313\u0259m (Musqueam), S\u1e35wx\u0331w\u00fa7mesh (Squamish), and s\u0259lilw\u0259ta\u026c (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.\r\n\r\nI am writing this essay with no lived experience of transphobia or transmisogyny; however, I stand in allyship with my trans siblings as a member of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community. My allyship means I am dedicated to listening to, learning from and elevating the voices of trans writers and their stories and leveraging my privilege as a cis woman to do so.\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

References<\/h1>\r\nColliver, B. (2021). \u201cNot the right kind of woman.\u201d Misogyny as Hate Crime<\/em>, 213\u2013227. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.4324\/9781003023722-11<\/a>\r\n\r\nConnell, R. W. (1995). Masculinities. Berkeley: University of California Press.\r\n\r\nGill-Peterson, J. (2024). A Short History of Trans Misogyny<\/em>. Verso.\r\n\r\nHalberstam, J. (1998). An Introduction to Female Masculinity. In Female Masculinities<\/em> (pp. 1\u201343). essay, Duke University Press.\r\n\r\nHoskin, R. A. (2018). Critical Femininities: The development and application of femme theory <\/em>[Unpublished doctoral thesis]. Queens University\r\n\r\nHoskin, R. A. (2020). \u201cfemininity? it\u2019s the aesthetic of subordination\u201d: Examining femmephobia, the gender binary, and experiences of oppression among sexual and gender minorities. Archives of Sexual Behavior<\/em>, 49<\/em>(7), 2319\u20132339. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/s10508-020-01641-x<\/a>\r\n\r\nHoskin, R. A., Serafini, T., & Gillespie, J. G. (2023). Femmephobia versus gender norms: Examining women\u2019s responses to competing and contradictory gender messages. The Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality<\/em>, 32<\/em>(2), 191\u2013207. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3138\/cjhs.2023-0017<\/a>\r\n\r\nJivraj, N., & Pedram, A. (2018, November 12). Vivek Shraya: \u201cI\u2019m coming for everyone, including me.\u201d<\/em> The McGill Daily. https:\/\/www.mcgilldaily.com\/2018\/11\/vivek-shraya-im-coming-for-everyone-including-me\/#close-modal<\/a>\r\n\r\nKimmel, M. S. (1994). Masculinity as homophobia: Fear, shame, and silence in the construction of Gender Identity. Theorizing Masculinities<\/em>, 119\u2013141. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.4135\/9781452243627.n7<\/a>\r\n\r\nSerano, J. (2024). Whipping girl: A transsexual woman on sexism and the scapegoating of femininity<\/em>. Seal Press.\r\n\r\nShraya, V. (2018). I\u2019m afraid of men<\/em>. Penguin, an imprint of Penguin Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited.\r\n\r\nTobia, J. (2019). Sissy: A Coming of Gender Story <\/em>. G.P. Putnam\u2019s Sons.","rendered":"

Introduction<\/h2>\n

“Excuse me, this is the women\u2019s bathroom\u201d is a phrase I often hear as a six-foot-tall cisgender woman with a barbered fade and button-up shirts. While this amounts to a moment of discomfort for someone like me, for too many trans women, these encounters escalate into a matter of safety and survival as patriarchal standards of femininity and womanhood exclude and dehumanize them through the overlapping and compounding factors of misogyny, sexism, and femmephobia. The following analysis of Vivek Shraya\u2019s aptly titled memoir, I\u2019m Afraid of Men<\/em><\/a>, is both an exploration of Shraya\u2019s reflections on being a feminine-presenting trans woman, as well as a probe into the ways in which she is writing about broader systemic issues facing anyone expressing femininity. In this essay, I will discuss the three core perspectives through which Shraya does this, beginning with femmephobia \u2013 which I will also use as a theoretical framework throughout my discussion. Next, is the overlapping and compounding effects of transphobia and misogyny, known as transmisogyny. Finally, the ways in which masculinity is constructed in opposition to femininity, making it a delicate identity in need of constant reaffirmation. By exploring these topics in Shraya\u2019s memoir, I aim to unpack how our patriarchal construction of a gender hierarchy marginalizes and threatens those whose gender expression challenges rigid binaries, especially trans women.<\/p>\n

Femmephobia<\/h2>\n

<\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/code> \u201cI\u2019m afraid of men because it was men who taught me to hate and eventually destroy my femininity\u201d (Shraya, 2018, p.1). With this striking opening, Vivek Shraya introduces the central concept of her memoir: femmephobia<\/em>. As defined by Hoskin (2020), femmephobia refers to the devaluation and subjugation of femininity, distinct (though not unrelated) from the marginalization of women as a gender class. Femmephobia forms the infrastructure upon which Shraya\u2019s memoir is built, as each vignette offers glimpses into her experiences navigating a patriarchal society that harbours deep disdain for femininity.<\/p>\n

\n

Sex<\/strong>: refers to your biological sex, assigned at birth (male, female or intersex).<\/p>\n

Gender identity<\/strong>: refers to the gender you psychologically align with or embody (man, woman or nonconforming).<\/p>\n

Gender expression:<\/strong> refers to how you align your outside appearance with your identity (masculine, feminine or androgynous).<\/p>\n

Each of these has an oppositional and marginalizing force.<\/p>\n

Sex: sexism<\/strong> is the societal belief that maleness is inherently more valuable than femaleness.<\/p>\n

Gender identity: misogyny<\/strong> is the societal belief that women are less valuable than men.<\/p>\n

Gender expression: femmephobia<\/strong> is the societal belief that femininity is less valuable and less aspirational than masculinity.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\"\"
Vivek Shraya<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Shraya recounts large-scale observations, such as the powerful correlation between her increasing femininity and the sharp decline in her desirability to men during the early days of her transition, as well as smaller, more personal moments, like the fear and discomfort of wearing lipstick in public, knowing that existing as a visibly feminine person makes her vulnerable to ridicule, threats, and violence. These anecdotes underscore the pervasiveness of femmephobia as a lived reality for women and gender-nonconforming individuals like Shraya. Building on this, Hoskin et al. (2023) argue that a critical tenet of femmephobia is the inextricable link between femininity and women. This conflation creates opposing pressures for women: to embrace femininity due to socially imposed gender norms while simultaneously rejecting it to gain respect in a culture that devalues the feminine. Shraya\u2019s experiences exemplify these pressures, particularly as she encounters how femininity is weaponized against her, notably by other women who want to let her know that she is not one of them. It is in these moments that we see the function of femmephobia as a mechanism of maintaining a gendered hierarchy wherein masculinity is respected and dominant and femininity is subordinate and weak (Hoskin, 2018). This hierarchal and binary view of gender is so deeply steeped in our culture and our art that we can see it unknowingly and unintentionally perpetuated in some more traditional trans memoir styles, such as the format that Jacob Tobia (2019) referred to as the \u201cMad Lib\u201d memoir in which the stories follow the same linear path from being born in the \u201cwrong body\u201d, to the eventual medical transition from \u201cone\u201d to \u201cthe other\u201d. These stories, while valid, can reinforce a traditional masculine\/ feminine binary for their cis audiences and further marginalize women like Shraya, who do not strictly adhere to traditional gender norms. Using the format of her own memoir to push back against these expectations, Shraya places the devaluation of femininity at the center of her memoir, externalizing much of the conflict and turmoil and challenging the sometimes femmephobic norms of trans life storytelling. Shraya\u2019s memoir is, above all, a reflection on society\u2019s pervasive devaluation of femininity\u2014an unseen force shaping her interactions with men, dictating the choices she makes to stay safe, and manifesting as the internalized fear and shame she must ultimately confront and overcome.<\/p>\n

The Role of Femmephobia in Transmisogyny<\/h2>\n

\u201cHow cruel is it to have endured two decades of being punished for being too girly only to be told that I am now not girly enough\u201d (Shraya, 2018, p. 80). As Shraya highlights throughout her memoir, trans women\u2019s expression of femininity comes under greater scrutiny and faces more violent and dangerous rejection because femmephobia underpins the disproportionate policing of their identities through transmisogyny.<\/p>\n

In her seminal work, Whipping Girl<\/em> (2007), <\/em>Julia Serano explains that \u201c[w]hen the majority of jokes made at the expense of trans people center on \u2018men wearing dresses\u2019 or \u2018men who want their penises cut off,\u2019 that is not transphobia – it is transmisogyny\u201d (p. 15). Much of Shraya\u2019s memoir are vignettes of transmisogyny, from being spat on for wearing her mother\u2019s coat to experiencing violence while marching at a Toronto Pride event; her reflections on being punished for both embodying femininity and failing to meet social standards illuminates a larger, historical pattern: the policing of femininity as a tool of control. As I touched on earlier, a patriarchal society\u2019s rigid construction of the categories masculine and feminine serves to maintain and reinforce a hierarchal gender binary, and any transgressions from that binary are viewed as threats to established power structures. Throughout history, these threats have been met with violent suppression; as historian Jules Gill-Peterson (2024) highlights in A Short History of Trans Misogyny,<\/em> European colonizers systematically targeted gender-diverse Indigenous people \u2013 asserting a Western binary and using the perceived transgressions as justification for violence and erasure.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Transgender Pride Flag, Foreign and Commonwealth Office<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

These exact mechanisms of control persist today, as evidenced by the disproportionate rates of violence against trans women. Contemporary transmisogyny has recycled colonial tactics of punishing transgressions of the binary through both overt violence and systemic discrimination. Perry (2001 [as cited by Colliver, 2021]) refers to these attacks as \u201cmessage crimes,\u201d which suggests that much like the colonizers, modern-day violence against trans folks is meant to enforce conformity, signalling that deviation from gender norms will not be tolerated in a patriarchal society. Shraya\u2019s personal accounts of violence and rejection as a trans woman illuminate the broader systemic forces that render femininity\u2014particularly trans femininity\u2014a target of pervasive discrimination. Notably, rather than presenting these experiences as things that happened to her and are on the page for the reader to absorb and feel absconded of any responsibility, Shraya ditches a traditional trans memoir format for the powerful and intimate use of second-person narrative. This places the reader in the position of the perpetrator during each vignette and calls on the audience to evaluate their own complicity in femmephobia and transmisogyny (Shraya, as reported by Jivran and Pedram, 2018). By presenting her experiences to the reader through her second-person narrative, Shraya demands a reckoning not only with her story but with the ongoing societal complicity and acceptance of transmisogyny. In this way, her work weaves lived experience with a broader social critique and situates her narrative within a continuum of systemic violence against trans women in the form of transmisogyny.<\/p>\n

Masculinity as a Rejection of Femininity<\/h2>\n