“I’m afraid of men because it was men who taught me fear,” Vivek Shraya writes as the opening line of her memoir, *I’m Afraid of Men *(2018/Penguin Canada). The short memoir, at just under 100 pages, tackles one interconnected topic after the other—love, fear, identity, the performance of gender… In her pursuit of answers, the Canadian multimedia artist and filmmaker sketches a reimagining of manhood that is neither binary nor an alibi. Instead, the story deconstructs the restraints of manhood that inherently impact everyone from the sheer weight, expectations, and fear that has propped up a patriarchal-centered portrayal of manhood. The seven-time winning Lambda Literary Award finalist released her memoir in 2018, in the midst of the rapidly intensifying cultural and legal debates around trans rights. Nearly ten years later, the discussions raised from the text are just as pertinent. Shraya’s memoir doesn’t focus on the political aspects of transness, but the social.…