Powerful look at how words hurt in the #MeToo era
Multi-talented, interdisciplinary artist Vivek Shraya has honed a unique perspective as a queer trans woman of colour
Before Vivek Shraya and her brother Shamik Bilgi toured across Canada with
Angry, the latest album from their electro-pop duo Too Attached, the siblings assumed audiences eager to dance wouldn’t want any stage banter. They were wrong. “We want to hear your message,” fans would consistently tell Shraya. “Your voice is important.”
Shraya’s voice and the size of her audiences extend well beyond the reach of her microphone. Now the Calgary-based interdisciplinary artist, performer and author should prepare to add bestseller to her lengthy resumé, thanks to her viscerally powerful new book, I’m
Afraid of Men. Shraya’s publisher, Penguin Canada, is so confident in the title’s reach it has transformed its downtown Toronto bookshop into a branded pop-up for the month, carrying not just I’m Afraid
of Men, but other books and music that complement the themes Shraya explores in her long-form essay.
I’m Afraid of Men was inspired by a song with the same name that Shraya wrote for her 2017 EP, Part-Time Wom
an, a collaboration with the Queer Songbook Orchestra that landed on the longlist for the Polaris Music Prize. The book further illuminates the themes behind the song, detailing through personal vignettes how Shraya navigates life as a queer trans woman of colour, while creating tectonic fissures into antiquated beliefs around gender identity.
“I’m afraid of men because it was men who taught me fear,” Shraya writes in the book’s first line. “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.” Shraya, who came out as a trans woman in 2016, writes about how this fear and constant stress has an impact on every aspect of her life, from her relationships to her mental health. Fear dictates how she handles even seemingly mundane daily routines. She chooses clothes for work that aren’t too tight or too feminine, lest they attract unwanted attention. Any physical contact with men on public transit is avoided by contorting her body into the narrowest of spaces. Even Uber pickups — supposedly a safer form of transportation — come with self-preserving routines and anxiety.
Although Shraya hesitates at calling the book a manifesto because she’s intimidated by the word’s power, but it is a powerful statement, and not just for men to rethink their actions in this #MeToo era. Shraya also points out how some women have been complicit bystanders while she was the target of directed attacks, and even her own past internalized misogyny.
“One of the things that was really important for me was to not let anyone off the hook,” Shraya says. “It’s really easy to point the finger at men and be angry, and a lot of that is valid, but for me it always feels important to think about the role that people beyond the oppressor have in giving power to masculinity.”
Growing up in Edmonton, singing was second nature to young Shraya. Writing came later, as the award-winning author of four other titles, including a picture book for young readers. Trisha, a touring art exhibition in which Shraya poignantly replicates 1970s photos of her mom as a young immigrant, just closed at New York’s trendy Ace Hotel. Then there’s her teaching gig at the University of Calgary as an assistant professor of creative writing and her VS. Books imprint with Vancouver’s Arsenal Pulp Press, where Shraya provides mentorship and publishing contracts to emerging writers of colour.
A self-described workaholic, Shraya’s prodigious artistic output is connected to I’m Afraid of Men. As a teen experi- encing homophobia and gender phobia, she never imagined living past the age of 16, and so treats time like a gift. “Most people don’t really obsess about their mortality in the way that people who have experienced trauma and violence at a young age might,” Shraya says. “Part of this fuel to do many things is that I don’t trust I’ll be here tomorrow, so I have to make the best of the time I have right now.”
Despite the support Shraya is receiving from the many intersecting communi- ties she belongs to, she is still rightfully nervous about how men will react when she reads from the book at events, having already received hateful comments about its title. Back when Shraya first told her mother about the project, her mom’s initial reaction was to gasp, and then ask, “What are men going to do to you when they see this book?” But that, says Shraya, is why I’m Afraid of Men should exist. “My fear and my mom’s fear may prove its necessity.”