I'm Afraid of Men
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I'm Afraid of Men
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Narrated by:
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Vivek Shraya
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Written by:
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Vivek Shraya
About this listen
Named a Best Book by: The Globe and Mail, Indigo, Out Magazine, Audible, CBC, Apple, Quill & Quire, Kirkus Reviews, Brooklyn Public Library, Writers’ Trust of Canada, Autostraddle, Bitch, and BookRiot.
Finalist for the 2019 Lambda Literary Award, transgender nonfiction
Nominated for the 2019 Forest of Reading Evergreen Award
Winner of the 2018 Alcuin Society Awards for Excellence in Book Design - prose nonfiction
"Cultural rocket fuel." (Vanity Fair)
"Emotional and painful but also layered with humour, I'm Afraid of Men will widen your lens on gender and challenge you to do better. This challenge is a necessary one - one we must all take up. It is a gift to dive into Vivek's heart and mind." (Rupi Kaur, best-selling author of The Sun and Her Flowers and Milk and Honey)
A trans artist explores how masculinity was imposed on her as a boy and continues to haunt her as a girl - and how we might reimagine gender for the 21st century.
Vivek Shraya has reason to be afraid. Throughout her life she's endured acts of cruelty and aggression for being too feminine as a boy and not feminine enough as a girl. In order to survive childhood, she had to learn to convincingly perform masculinity. As an adult, she makes daily compromises to steel herself against everything from verbal attacks to heartbreak.
Now, with raw honesty, Shraya delivers an important record of the cumulative damage caused by misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia, releasing trauma from a body that has always refused to assimilate. I'm Afraid of Men is a journey from camouflage to a riot of colour and a blueprint for how we might cherish all that makes us different and conquer all that makes us afraid.
©2018 Vivek Shraya (P)2018 Penguin Random House CanadaYou may also enjoy...
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 7
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 5
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Vivek Shraya knows this to be true: people change. We change our haircuts and our outfits and our minds. We change names, titles, labels. We attempt to blend in or to stand out. We outgrow relationships, we abandon dreams for new ones, we start fresh. We seize control of our stories. We make resolutions. In fact, nobody knows this better than Vivek, who’s made a career of embracing many roles: artist, performer, musician, writer, model, teacher. In People Change, she reflects on the origins of this impulse, tracing it to childhood influences from Hinduism to Madonna.
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 49
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 41
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 41
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- Written by: Alok Vaid-Menon
- Narrated by: Alok Vaid-Menon
- Length: 1 hr and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 70
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 64
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Story5 out of 5 stars 63
Pocket Change Collective is a series of small books with big ideas from today's leading activists and artists. In this installment, Beyond the Gender Binary, Alok Vaid-Menon challenges the world to see gender not in black and white, but in full color. Taking from their own experiences as a gender-nonconforming artist, they show us that gender is a malleable and creative form of expression. The only limit is your imagination.
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Written by: Alok Vaid-Menon
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Hijab Butch Blues
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 9
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 9
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Story5 out of 5 stars 9
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5 out of 5 stars
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Cheffe d'oeuvre
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What the critics say
“Vivek Shraya transforms her long-festering fears of men into cultural rocket fuel.... Shraya’s dispatches from the frontlines of life as a queer, trans woman of color are frequently illuminating, painfully honest, and, in spite of everything, hopeful.” (Vanity Fair)
“Shraya crafts each of her memories in prose made poetic with touches of metaphor. She writes with honesty and vulnerability, all the while asking challenging and personal questions that inspire deeper reflection. This crucial addition to shelves offers the vital and often ignored perspective of a trans woman of color. A book to carry with you.” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review)
“Anyone who has ever looked behind them when walking at night, avoided eye contact with strangers or wiped off a lipstick for being too bold - so, all of us - should read this mini-manifesto.” (Elle Canada)
“Viscerally powerful...creating tectonic fissures into antiquated beliefs around gender identity.” (Toronto Star)
What listeners say about I'm Afraid of Men
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- ms
- 2022-11-26
Thoughtful
Great insight into the way others can be forced to live in fear of of aggressive, male dominant society. As a woman I also grew sympathy for the unique trans experience, and understood the harassment, fear, and displacement experienced in society. Short, but articulated well.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- chelle
- 2023-06-22
Thought provoking
What if?
What if instead of fear we become more curious. I am grateful to be able to hear Vivek’s story.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Anynomous
- 2018-09-04
amazing, must read feminist text
Liike everything Vivek does, this book is mind blowing. She offers a critical and thoughtful discussion of what it means to be masculine/a man (from the POV of a trans* women of colour who used to be identified as a queer femme man of colour who was living in white Alberta) and how women and femme people navigate spaces and their bodies out of a fear of men and masculinity. Does a fantastic job. Vivek is a wonderful poet, intellectual and writer.
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Megalocephalous
- 2020-08-22
A wonderful insightful compassionate book
Shraya has written a moving, thoughtful, must-read book. It’s very short, and I probably could have spent even more time in her world, but I can’t recommend this enough.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Dream Fractal
- 2024-03-19
The Tyranny of Toxic Masculinity
Vivek Shraya talks about her experiences with men—with straight men, with gay men—and how the performance of masculinity under patriarchy is fundamentally a performance of power over others and violence towards women, and how this holds true even among queer men. It's a thought-provoking piece. Listening felt a bit like hanging out with Vivek, a fireside chat dissecting gender of the kind I have with other trans women daily. Mainstream feminism would benefit considerably by paying more attention to our perspectives.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- lavegetaliana
- 2019-10-28
beautiful and heartfelt work
I am grateful to you, Vivek Shraya, for sharing your experience. I've learned a lot from you in this short work and I look forward to learning more. I want to be better, too. Much love and respect and admiration. You and your work and your insight and perspective and humility are beautiful and wonderful and needed in this world. This should be required reading by all. Thank you.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Meghann Hubert
- 2023-09-21
Revealing and heartbreaking
This was an incredible read. I learned so much about Vivek and her experiences but also gained a new and broader perspective of other trans lives. Thank you for writing this book Vivek.
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