I’ve been contemplating this month’s column for a while, going back and forth in my head trying to decide whether I can write about what has really been on my mind. I’ve been struggling with the suitability of writing about anger, particularly women’s anger.
An unscientific survey of many of the women in my life indicates that we are mad as hell much of the time and it’s exhausting. This is the reality I’ve been living with and yet I struggled with the idea of writing about it.
This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to anyone who is female. By and large the world has a hard time dealing with women’s anger. We’ve been socialized to “play nice,” to “calm down,” because our anger makes us seem “hysterical” or “bitchy.” None of us wants to be stereotyped in these ways. This is why when I started thinking about writing about anger I had to overcome my own socialization to feel like it was OK to write about it publicly. I had to get past my own question, “How will people judge me if they read about my struggles with anger?”
Men have been socialized to display anger. As boys, they are often encouraged to work out their anger by expressing it with fists or harsh words. No one tells them not to get angry and even if their outlets for anger are not always productive, they are at least accustomed to focusing their anger externally.
Girls and women, on the other hand, have been socialized to suppress their anger, lest they seem unfeminine. When we internalize our anger it often ends up hurting us. Better that, I guess, than inconveniencing someone else with it. What do we do with our anger when we can’t figure out how to make it productive? We overeat, we drink more than we should, we get anxious and depressed, we yell at our kids. Anger is making many of us sick.
A 1993 study by psychologist Sandra Thomas investigated the origins of women’s anger and found three common sources: “powerlessness, injustice and the irresponsibility of other people.” This study may be 25 years old but its results still ring true. When I think about the current state of U.S. politics, much of what I see is injustice and the irresponsibility of other people (particularly the President and the older, white, male senators who saw fit to confirm a new Supreme Court Justice who was accused of sexual assault while completely dismissing the claims of the woman who was assaulted).
Our status as women makes it hard for us to express anger because not only are we told, “Don’t be angry!” but we are also told that our anger is not justified. Anger is even more hazardous for women of color who are afforded even less power, and experience more injustice than white women but who are NEVER allowed to get away with expressing anger. The stereotype of the angry black woman is powerful in the way it silences women who speak up for themselves – just ask Serena Williams.
Typically I have a call to action at the end of my columns but I am at a loss here. I want to say that we don’t have to be ashamed of our anger, that it is justified, that we can and should express it, process it, and use it to make change. The problem is that because most of the things we are angry at are so much bigger than we are as individuals, we have to find ways to channel our anger into collective actions – voting and urging others to vote, speaking up for each other, standing up for what we know to be just. We can work these things but many of us are so tired and demoralized from the constant onslaught of the injustices and irresponsibility of our “leaders” that it leaves us with little energy left to organize.
The other night I found myself singing along to Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know.” As I listened to it, I could feel the raw anger in her voice. Of course I had noticed this before but this time it resonated with me more than it had before. It wasn’t so much the song’s lyrics that got me – it’s been a long time since I was pissed off about a breakup – but her palpable emotion as she told off her ex in that song. It felt liberating. Hearing her express that anger made me feel fantastic and almost energized. Find your song and sing it loud, then get out and make some noise for a cause that you care about.
Jackie Brousseau-Pereira, of Easthampton, is the academic dean and director of first-year seminars in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.