by Vivek Shraya
* * *
—
WHEN I WAS A MAN, I too was obsessed with being a good man. And I too failed—not at masculinity but at achieving and upholding goodness.
When Shemeena’s grandmother died, I found myself in her parents’ kitchen with many of the women in her family. Here, there was no space to contemplate mortality or even to grieve. Heating the extra-large percolator of tea, washing the stainless steel pots, organizing the copious amounts of food brought by guests, and packing leftover beef pilau into Tupperware containers for guests to take home relieved the general feeling of helplessness invoked by death, if only temporarily. This strategy wasn’t a new one. I had learned it when I was coping with previous deaths in my religious community.
During this time (and in my previous experiences), the men never entered the kitchen. Instead, they congregated in the living room, where they chatted and joked while the women and I served them constantly—main course, dessert, chai, chai refill—before eating ourselves, if we ate at all. The men were happy to consume the food and the care we provided but were slightly unnerved by my alliance with women.
“Come sit with us!” one of Shemeena’s uncles coaxed.
“You don’t have to be in the kitchen,” another one added.
My labour only amplified their own laziness, and each of the men endeavoured to recalibrate me back to the couch. The idea of joining the men was distressing. I didn’t have a mental archive of statistics on the Oilers or the latest car models to pull from in conversation. I didn’t want to speak at all. I wanted my body to be in a constant state of silent movement, immersed in the illusion of short-term purpose, for fear that any inertia would remind me of death—or worse, of Shemeena’s sadness. Working in the kitchen was the only way I knew to show her that I was there for her.
And yet, back in our home, in the years before and after Shemeena’s grandmother’s funeral, I had no issue with sitting on our own couch while she cooked us dinner. My job was to wash the dishes, but I don’t know that this division of labour was ever as balanced as I had convinced myself it was. Although I pushed against traditional gender roles even when I was male, I still expected and accepted feminine labour even in my most intimate relationship.
Meanwhile, during the gathering after her grandmother’s passing, the women in Shemeena’s family celebrated me as exceptional for doing a mere fraction of the work they were doing. “You’re such a good son. Your mother must be so proud,” one of the aunties said to me as I placed a container of nan khatai on the dining room table.
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.
It is this low bar that also renders the experiences I’ve shared unexceptional and therefore so often unnoticed. Sexist comments, intimidation, groping, violating boundaries, and aggression are seen as merely “typical” for men. But “typical” is dangerously interchangeable with “acceptable.” “Boys will be boys,” after all.
If 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.”
* * *
—
IN ENVISIONING NEW FORMS of masculinity beyond notions of the good man, I inevitably return to my childhood.
When I would fight with my younger brother, my dad would seemingly defend me by telling him, “Leave your brother alone. You know he’s very sensitive.” Through repeatedly being admonished for being too sensitive, I learned that reporting unfair or wrong treatment (often from a man) to an authority figure (also often a man) was a waste of time.
It was always my fault for supposedly feeling too much. This was also how I learned to hate my emotions, to yearn to be a robot who would not reveal my weaknesses.
I now understand that my sensitivity and emotions are not deplorable. As an artist, feeling deeply is not only my job, it’s a blessing. Feelings are the fresh water I pull from when I create. I also hope that being attuned to the emotions of others makes me a better friend and lover. By relearning the power of emotions, beyond fear—the feeling I have been forced to bear the most—and recognizing how any display of feelings is often synonymous with femininity, I have come to realize that the ugly common thread linking my experiences with men is misogyny.
The common definition of misogyny is “the hatred of women.” Consequently, most men don’t think they’re misogynists, let alone think they have misogynist attitudes or engage in misogynist behaviours. Just as those who exhibit racist tendencies wouldn’t classify themselves as racist, few men would admit to hating women or believe they hate women.
* * *
—
IN GRADE THREE, I became fascinated with kissing. Seeing people kissing on TV and in movies aroused my curiosity and felt especially illicit when my parents were around. I wanted to know what it would feel like to press my face against someone else’s, and why doing so produced squishing and moaning sounds. But who would kiss me?
After assessing the available options, eventually I decided on Manpreet. Manpreet’s long single braid, fuzzy sideburns, and tucked-in madras shirts placed her on the unpopular end of the nascent status spectrum. Sporting a mint-green string to hold up my glasses (at my parents’ insistence), I was not much more popular than she was, but I sensed that she liked me, or at least looked up to me, since we were among the few brown kids in our split-grade classroom. She was also younger than me. She was the perfect target.
Every night in bed, I plotted how I would approach Manpreet on the playground at recess and somehow coerce her to kiss me, my hands holding either side of her head to prevent her from escaping.
The day I decided to make my move, I found her near the bike racks under the light rain. I bumbled on about class for a while, waiting for the opportunity to follow through with my plan, disarmed by the adoration in her brown eyes. Eventually the bell rang, marking the end of recess. Manpreet ran back to the school building.
Although, thankfully, I never pushed myself onto Manpreet, I’m afraid of myself—of the parts of me that even at a young age felt entitled to experiment with or even exploit a female body. Where and how did I learn that this behaviour was permissible? How might my adolescent—and later adult—sexual attitudes and behaviours have been different had I followed through on my plan to kiss Manpreet against her will—and liked it? How might a forced first kiss have influenced Manpreet’s future attitudes toward her own sexuality? Do these parts still exist somewhere inside of me with the capacity to be reactivated?
* * *
—
IN MY LATE TWENTIES, I wrote a song called “In/Out” that was about challenging a lover’s uncertainty over a new relationship, with lyrics that included “You shouldn’t have to wonder and I shouldn’t have to guess.”
When I played the demo for a close friend, eager for her opinion, I was shocked that she found the track misogynistic.
“What’s the line about beating someone?” she asked.
“‘I must have to just beat it out of you’? That’s not about literally beating a woman! It’s a play on the expression ‘beat it out of you.’ Plus the song is about a lesbian relationship.”
“But when you sing it as a man, the audience hears you singing about beating a woman. Even if you’re queer.”
Feeling defensive, I told myself that my friend’s critique was a symptom of her tendency to overanalyze, a leftover from her women’s studies degree. My strongest defence was that I adored women.
But my friend was right. The di
sdain for women and femininity is insidious, infecting even those who profess to love women, and it takes many forms (including scoffing at women’s studies programs). Using “sensitive” as a pejorative and a mechanism of restraint, as my dad did, is a form of misogyny. Being spit on because I was wearing my mother’s jacket was misogyny. The desire to attack me because I was a faggot who dared to make eye contact was misogyny. The eagerness to correct my walk was misogyny. The shaming of my skinniness and the pressure in gay culture to be muscular was misogyny. Men’s assumption that they are entitled to touch others’ bodies without consent and the dismissals of my boundaries were misogyny. The cab driver’s oversexualization of a young female passenger was misogyny. The irrational aggression toward me at the bus stop and at Pride was misogyny.
The theme of entitlement to space that emerges in many of my recollections of men, and in my own masculine development, is colonial code for claiming someone else’s space. Whether it’s through an emphasis on being large and muscular, or asserting power by an extended or intimidating stride on sidewalks, being loud in bars, manspreading on public transit, or enacting harm or violence on others, taking up space is a form of misogyny because so often the space that men try to seize and dominate belongs to women and gender-nonconforming people.
The history and current state of Western masculinity is predicated on diminishing and desecrating the feminine. Therefore, a healthier masculinity must be one that honours and embraces femininity, as many non-Western cultures have long prescribed. Indigenous playwright Tomson Highway said in a 1994 interview:
Man has dominion over women and everything else. And I would like to contribute to a move whereby men’s dominion over women is disproven. We don’t have to live in a world where mankind has to continually rape the earth. I think Indian philosophies and Aboriginal philosophies have something to offer us here: there is possibly a way to live in harmony with the earth and the elements whereby we understand it and we don’t destroy it for the future generations; which is why my plays talk so much—to put it as simply as I can—of the return of the goddess, the displacement of god as a man, and the establishment of god as a woman. It’s about the return of women’s dominion to women; I think “man” deserves to be put in his place.
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. To be ever conscious of and ever grateful to those whose sacred land I inhabit. To be mindful of the space and bodies of others, especially feminine bodies. To never presume that I am permitted to touch the body of another, no matter how queer the space. To give up or create space when I am afforded more than others.
I also wish I hadn’t surrendered colour in my wardrobe. Male aggression has often been linked to various kinds of repression, including of emotions and sexuality, but much of the misery I experienced in my twenties stemmed from feeling forced to wear only neutral colours, because even bright colours are associated with femininity. This might be why I wore a lot of plaid, seemingly the only sanctioned way for men in North America to wear a combination of colours or even a pattern.
Reclaiming my femininity in these small and large gestures has been a crucial part of my transness and my healing from the pressures I’ve faced to be masculine. But this celebration is now often tempered by a pressure to look and act more womanly, especially if I want to be seen and treated as a girl. How cruel it is to have endured two decades of being punished for being too girly only to be told that I am now not girly enough.
* * *
—
IN MY THIRTIES I began to work with a therapist to address my childhood trauma. In one of our visualization exercises, I recalled the incident of being spat on. When my therapist asked me to talk about what I noticed in my recollection, I was surprised that my focus wasn’t entirely on the boy. Instead, it was partly on his girlfriend, who laughed throughout the experience.
Those giggles reverberate in my ears as permanently as the boy’s spit blemished my mother’s jacket. Why did she encourage him with her laughter? Why didn’t she—or anyone who witnessed what was happening—tell him to stop? Why did my friend call my high school crush a “sweetheart” after he’d threatened to hurt me? Why hadn’t she told him that his intentions were vicious? Why didn’t my other friend tell me it was not okay for a stranger to grab me in the bar? Why hadn’t she tried to see who it was so she could tell him to stop on my behalf, or even just walk out of the bar with me?
And so, I’m also afraid of women. I’m afraid of women who’ve either emboldened or defended the men who have harmed me, or have watched in silence. I’m afraid of women who adopt masculine traits and then feel compelled to dominate or silence me at dinner parties. I’m afraid of women who see me as a predator and whose comfort I consequently put before my own by using male locker rooms. I’m afraid of women who have internalized their experiences of misogyny so deeply that they make me their punching bag. I’m afraid of the women who, like men, reject my pronouns and refuse to see my femininity, or who comment on or criticize my appearance, down to my chipped nail polish, to reiterate that I am not one of them. I’m afraid of women who, when I share my experiences of being trans, try to console me by announcing “welcome to being a woman,” refusing to recognize the ways in which our experiences fundamentally differ. But 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.
* * *
—
OUT OF THIS FEAR comes a desire not only to reimagine masculinity but to blur gendered boundaries altogether and celebrate gender creativity. It’s not enough to let go of the misplaced hope for a good or a better man. It’s not enough to honour femininity. Both of these options might offer a momentary respite from the dangers of masculinity, but in the end they only perpetuate a binary and the pressure that bears down when we live at different ends of the spectrum.
I wonder what my life might have been like if my so-called feminine tendencies, such as being sensitive, or my interests, such as wearing my mother’s clothing, or even my body had not been gendered or designated as either feminine or masculine at all. Despite the ways in which my gender felt enforced, I sometimes miss elements of my masculine past, like the thickness of my beard or the once impressive width of my biceps. Maybe this missing is actually mourning in disguise, for having to surrender aspects of my appearance I worked hard to achieve. Or maybe I’m mourning a life that I still don’t get to fully live because it’s one I continue to have to defend and authenticate. What if I didn’t have to give up any characteristics, especially ones I like, to outwardly prove I am a girl? What if living my truth now didn’t immediately render everything that came before, namely my manhood, a lie?
As a girl, I’ve grown to appreciate my chest hair—a black flame rising from my bra—more than I ever did when I was boy who regularly waxed and trimmed to adhere to the ’90s standard. Unfortunately, any ambiguity or nonconformity, especially in relation to gender, conjures terror. This is precisely why men are afraid of me. Why women are afraid of me, too.
But your fear is not only hurting me, it’s 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’t impose these designations on yourself, let alone on me?
What 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?
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book would not be possible without Trisha Yeo, Shemeena Shraya, Adam Holman, Rachel Letofsky (and the CookeMcDermid team), David Ross, Nicole Winstanley, Amber Dawn, Farzana Doctor, Brian L
am, Tegan and Sara, James Bunton, Morgan Vanek, and the countless trans and gender-nonconforming people whose histories, battles, and victories have paved my way.