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As women (NB: to be understood as womxn), we are led to believe the fallacy that we can be anything we want, just like the boys – albeit with plenty of exceptions. We can’t be too loud. We can’t be too funny. We can’t be too smart. We can’t be too angry.
Out of the limited range of feelings available to us, women are nudged to remain within the constraints of so-called feminine emotions and behaviours: we can be upset, saddened (i.e. not depressed, as displaying unrelatable mental health symptoms is a big no-no – and will be the subject of another article), ditsy, scatter-brained, happy…basically nothing that would rock the status quo nor empower us.
If I had a penny for every time I got called angry, I wouldn’t be typing this on a seven year-old clunky laptop. I was raised in a violent, tense household, and so I have a natural predisposition to anger. It is the conflict-resolution I was taught at home. Hit now, maybe speak later. Or rather, don’t speak at all if you don’t want to get hit again. I was also told that physical blows were my relatives’ twisted way to show me their love, because they weren’t good with words like I was, you see. All of this violence and raw, uncontained anger were normalised to me from a young age. Flash-forward to 2022 and many therapy sessions later, and my innate response to triggers is still anger. It seems that I am hard-wired that way, although I am pleased to report that most times, the fury dissipates or mutates into something positive. I have learned that anger is not a dirty word.
But why does our society grapple with angry women? If you are angry and smart, it is worse. How many times a day do I have to dumb myself down as to not intimidate my interlocutor? God forbid I correct the erroneous facts they spout. God forbid I express how I truly feel in a genuinely unfair situation. God forbid that, if I get woken up in a panic with an unjustified alarm for 6 days in a row when there was no need for one, I get mad. “You’re so angry”, I am told. Never mind that such a rude awakening triggers a natural chemical response of adrenaline and cortisol pumping through my veins, so that anyone put in a similar situation would react accordingly. But seemingly because I am a woman, my anger comes as a surprise and is turned against me. Was anger not just an organic, chemical response to a stress-induced situation rather than an allegedly hysterical outburst? What do I mean, I am not going to be quietly compliant and maternally, unconditionally unbothered?
Damn straight I am angry. I am pissed off about a lot of things. Some stuff makes me down right furious; if you aren’t beside yourself when it comes to the 1% ruling the world, the UK government’s inaction in regards to the climate crisis, the cost of living crisis, or them clamping down on our freedoms of expression and of protest, if you are not pulling your hair out and screaming at the sky when you hear what is going on in Iran, in Pakistan, if you are not raging at all the unfairness and inequality we are facing in this world, then maybe there is something wrong with you, not angry women.
Over the years, I have learned to channel this anger into something more fruitful, constructive. So when I get called angry over petty things, these days, when I actually do control myself (point at hand: the alarm thing. Every single time, I made a superhuman effort not to shout, not to snap, but to politely ask if it could be turned off – ‘please’ included), when I contort myself to fit into the sexist mould engrained in our society, it makes me laugh. Damned if we do, damned if we don’t. So ultimately, I embrace the label whole-heartedly.
I am an angry, intelligent woman. Deal with it.
BASIC HUMAN WRITES 