RE-BLOGGED
WRITTEN BY
Soraya Chemaly
Writer, expert on gender in culture & politics. Author of the just released Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger.
While we experience anger internally, it is mediated culturally and externally by other people’s expectations and social prohibitions. Roles and responsibilities, power and privilege, are the framers of our anger. Relationships, culture, social status, exposure to discrimination, poverty, and access to power all factor into how we think about, experience, and utilize anger. Different countries, regions — even neighboring communities in the same state — have been shown to have anger profiles, exhibiting different patterns of behavior and social dynamics. So, for example, in some cultures anger is a way to vent frustration, but in others it is more for exerting authority. In the United States, anger in white men is often portrayed as justifiable and patriotic, but in black men as criminality, and in black women as threat. In the Western world, anger in women has been widely associated with “madness.”
Of course, everyone feels anger. Studies show that differences between men’s and women’s experiences of feeling angry are virtually nonexistent. But while women and men feel anger similarly, there are stark differences in how we respond to those feelings and how they are received by the people around us. At home, children still learn quickly that for boys and men, anger reinforces traditional gender expectations, but that for girls and women, anger confounds them. It’s as children that most of us learn to regard anger as unfeminine, unattractive, and selfish. Many of us are taught that our anger will be an imposition on others, making us irksome and unlikeable. That it will alienate our loved ones or put off people we want to attract. That it will twist our faces, make us ugly. This is true even for those of us who have to use anger to defend ourselves in charged and dangerous situations.
WRITTEN BY
Soraya Chemaly
Writer, expert on gender in culture & politics. Author of the just released Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger.
The truth is that anger isn’t what gets in our way — it is our way. All we have to do is own it.
More at the link below
https://medium.com/s/story/rage-becomes-her-why-women-dont-get-to-be-angry-b2496e9d679d
Continue reading “Why Women Don’t Get to Be Angry”
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