I'm Afraid of Men

A personal and often painful essay about the amount of fear and anger driving our understanding of gender. Though it is short and the writing is not as dense as some nonfiction, it is a lot to process because many points are made and dots connected.

I was fascinated by how Shraya took on the overlapping binaries of male/female and good/bad. Sometimes we punish people for subverting stereotypes, but other times we commend people because we deem them to be unlike those of their gender (e.g., a “good man” is one more likely to help with dishes).

I have lots more thoughts about this book, some conflicting and most half-formed. Despite its short page count, it leaves the reader with a lot to mull over and is very contemporary.