“If [anger] is poison, it is also the antidote. The anger we have as women is an act of radical imagination. Angry women burn brighter than the sun.”
- Soraya Chemaly, ‘Rage Becomes Her’
“Maybe you don’t need to find peace. Maybe you need to release frustration. Smash shit up,” my friend C said to me lately, in response to my jaw locking shut from tension (see: my last newsletter). Therapists and doctors suggest grounding, yoga, meditation, counting my in breaths, extending my out breaths. None of that shit was working. Helping, yes, but not fixing me quite enough. Maybe I did need to release anger instead of swallowing it.
Harvard Medical School conducted MRIs on test subjects to try to better understand how anger is processed in women’s brains versus men’s. I found the results pretty annoying:
“Brain imaging also shows that the hippocampus, one of the major memory centers in the brain, is larger in women. Men, on the other hand, have bigger amygdalas, the part of the brain that processes fear and anger, which may be why men often release those emotions in a crisis.
With their larger prefrontal cortex (the area of the brain used to control anger and aggression), women are better at keeping strong negative emotions in check, research shows - possibly due to their ability to read others’ emotional cues and defuse tense situations.”
As a woman, I have first-hand experience in keeping my strong negative emotions in check - but I’ve always done it as an instinctive act of self-preservation because being a woman is often dangerous. So I don’t hold anger back (anymore) because I think I should put other people’s emotional needs above my own. I’ve done that all my life, after all. Why should my feelings come last? Why do we keep telling women and girls that’s how it should be?
“Study after study has shown that anger among men is perceived as strong, decisive, credible, and, of course, powerful, while women who express that same emotion are perceived as “difficult” or “shrill.” Anger and rage clash with our feminine ideal and as such must be suppressed, the cultural narrative tells us. The persistent double standard infiltrates not only our psyches, but also our politics.” - Psychology Today
Not to mention that there’s a double whammy for women of colour, for example the racist ‘angry black woman’ stereotype, the ‘feisty latina’ stereotype, etc etc. They literally put women in danger because their real feelings are dismissed as irrational, not real. Perhaps that’s part of why more women of colour die in childbirth, receive inadequate and sometimes life-threateningly negligent healthcare, why they’re turned down for jobs. It’s why very young black and brown girls are often seen and treated as grown-ups by white people, according to many studies [see: adultification bias]. Treating ethnic minority children as grown-ups subjects them to life-threatening consequences.
It lends a part to the bigger picture, for example when it comes to colonialism and war; why women in the Isr**li army who are over 18 years old are referred to as ‘girls’, but Palestinian children are referred to as ‘minors’, ‘young ladies’... but never children. We are not afforded the shield of innocence. And so for us, our anger is seen as an extension of the colonial idea of our ‘barbarianism’.
What is the phrase? “Anger is a poison that kills the vessel that holds it.” Well, you know what, I don’t want to hold it anymore. Why should women have to bottle it up?
Perhaps this is ending on a random note, or perhaps it’s perfectly fitting - but I just finished watching Griselda on Netflix. There’s a scene where she picks up a gold-plated machine gun and starts just shooting up the place. Shooting up her husband’s car. Screaming in her delicious Colombian accent. Everyone runs. Taking away the context of her being an awful person fuelled by crack and paranoid as fuck in that moment, she was wronged by men her whole life. Men who called her a housewife and a bitch when all she ever wanted to be was respected as the boss she was. So I think, yeah, you know what, I feel it. I get it.
“Anger is like water. No matter how hard a person tries to dam, divert, or deny it, it will find a way, usually along the path of least resistance. Unprocessed, anger threads itself through our appearances, bodies, eating habits, and relationships, fueling low self-esteem, anxiety, depression, self-harm, and actual physical illness. The harms are more than physical, however. Gendered ideas about anger make us question ourselves, doubt our feelings, set aside our needs, and renounce our own capacity for moral conviction. Ignoring anger makes us careless with ourselves and allows society to be careless with us.”
- Soraya Chemaly, ‘Rage Becomes Her’
Sources of interest: