Women Behaving Courageously: Why it’s OK for women to acknowledge their anger
I thought long and hard about even posting this extract from my book. It IS about anger; women’s anger; my anger. And I could have not posted it, but then this chapter is actually at the heart of the entire book. So often as women we think ‘Oh I shouldn’t say that’ or ‘Oh no, I mustn’t post that – what will people think of me?’ So here it is in all it’s rage and frustration and exhaustion. Not knowing how to express anger also became one of the single biggest reasons women asked me to start running workshops: to teach them how to say “That is NOT OK’ to whoever they needed to say it to: boss, partner, sister son, daughter, mother, friend.
‘I’d gone through years of counselling after serious abuse by my stepfather and I truly thought I was sorted, cured, healed. I was getting on with my life; I had a fabulous career, I was now in a long-term relationship with a man I really cared about, and both my kids were grown up and doing well. I had beautiful grandchildren and my new partner and I had just built a gorgeous home near the beach.
Life was good. And then Donald Trump, who from this page forward shall be known as HWSBN (he-who-shall-be-nameless), came down the escalator.
Everything I thought I’d dealt with as a child rose to the surface again. If I could have been waiting at the bottom of the escalator on that fateful day, I think I would have dragged him off the escalator with my bare hands and stuffed him bodily into the nearest waste paper bin.
How dare he run for POTUS especially after we had experienced such an amazing man in President Obama? When did it become okay for a serial womaniser and a serial bankrupt to even enter the fray? Surely there should be some pretty tight criteria for giving someone access to the nuclear codes? Clearly not.
For the next three years I was seriously angry that this odious man took over from Obama, a man of grace and dignity. I called HWSBN out on Facebook every day; I wrote two books about him and still I was angry. My friends kept telling me to chill. To move on. To let it go. But I couldn’t.
I tried self-talk: ‘You’re not really angry, you are concerned.’ ‘No, I’m angry.’
‘You’re not really angry, you are scared.’ ‘No, I’m angry.’
Nothing eased the rage inside. Writing the two books helped a bit; raging on Facebook alongside others who were as concerned as I was helped. I learned to deal with all manner of ‘others’ — the people who adored him and could see nothing wrong with the terrible things he said and the horrible things he did.
I felt as if I could see a massive tidal wave on the horizon and I was frantically trying to alert people to the danger and they just didn’t want to know. I simply couldn’t believe it.
I came at my anger from a different angle because I needed to; people were starting to look at me as if I was some sort of mad woman.
I researched what anger is and in particular, I looked into why it seems to be okay for men to get angry but not okay for women.
The Encyclopedia of Psychology describes anger as ‘an emotion characterized by antagonism toward someone or something you feel has deliberately done you wrong’.
It goes on to say that ‘anger can be a good thing, it can give you a way to express negative feelings, for example, or motivate you to find solutions to problems’, however, it cautions that ‘excessive anger can cause health problems’.
I was certainly dealing with blood pressure issues. I was waking several times a night battling with this odious man because every day he seemed to get worse. His bullying and name-calling drove me nuts. His need to undo everything Obama had put in place, in particular all the environmental protections, made my hair stand on end.
My rage was making it difficult for me to think straight. Every day I was incensed by the things he said: by the way he treated people and by the never-ending lies he told, even when he didn’t need to lie.
We are frequently told that anger doesn’t hurt the other person, it only hurts us, which doesn’t help when you don’t know what to do with the anger.
I even understood the root cause of my anger: a hideous stepfather – an absolute Trump clone.
My challenge was harnessing the harmful energy and putting it into a positive framework. I knew absolutely that my physical and mental health were being adversely affected, and I also knew that the concern my friends and family were feeling for me was actually justified.
Undeterred, I continued my exploration of what anger is for us as women, and what use it is, if any.
I discovered an article that suggested there were three types of anger:
1. Passive aggression (the ‘poor me’ syndrome interspersed with bouts of loud rage)
2. Open aggression (pure and simple loud rage)
3. Assertive anger (productive action as a result of the feelings).
Back to more self-talk:
‘You’re not angry, you are feeling a sense of injustice.’ ‘You’re right, I am feeling that.’
‘You’re not feeling angry, you are feeling powerless.’
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‘Ah, you are so right, that’s exactly what this is about for me. Got it.’
I was powerless as a 10-year-old being abused by a stepfather. Seeing HWSBN coming down that escalator brought my sense of powerlessness back to the surface with a vengeance. But I wasn’t a 10-year-old now, I was a feisty grandmother and I needed to turn that negative energy into positive behaviours before I had a stroke, or someone sent for a little white van to cart me away.
So I did. I followed up the first two HWSBN books with this book ‘Women Behaving Courageously’ and I felt so much better.
Leslie Jamison, in an article called ‘I used to insist I didn’t get angry. Not anymore’, suggests that ‘If an angry woman makes people uneasy, then her more palatable counterpart, the sad woman, summons sympathy more readily. She often looks beautiful in her suffering: ennobled, transfigured, elegant.
Angry women are messier. Their pain threatens to cause more collateral damage. It’s as if the prospect of a woman’s anger harming other people threatens to rob her of the social capital she has gained by being wronged.’
Jamison on Hillary Clinton: ‘In What Happened’ - Clinton describes the pressure not to come across as angry during the course of her entire political career — “A lot of people recoil from an angry woman”.’
Post her election loss, Clinton talked about how hard it was to keep her cool that day in the debates when HWSBN was pacing behind her, invading her space, intimidating her in whatever way he could. She imagined what would have happened if she had stood up to him right there and then. Imagine that?
The tragedy for her on that occasion was that she was damned if she did call him out and damned if she didn’t, so she did the only thing she could: she ignored him.
We must remember that we women are not powerless; we are incredibly powerful once we learn how to tap into that rage and energy and use it in a way that isn’t destructive to ourselves and will be productive for others. It’s no mistake that one of the very first stories in the book featured The Suffragettes. Look at what their rage did for the women that came after them.
Who can ever forget the sheer number of women who had won seats and then wore white in honour of The Suffragettes as they were inducted into American politics after the 2018 mid-term elections? These women were mobilised by their anger and determination to deal to the man in the Oval Office.
So women’s anger isn’t wasted if it’s harnessed and put into affirmative action.
‘Before, if you were to ask me why I was crying, I would probably tell you that I was sad or tired. It turns out, more often than not, I was tired and angry and specifically, tired of being angry. If I cry, people are more likely to respond to me with kindness, or at least, to respond at all. They are less likely to fire me, deny me a raise, ignore my police report, forget to write down my illness symptoms, or threaten me with physical violence. Even if I say “I am angry at you” in my calmest and softest voice, I am still likely to be met with fear, anger, and resentment. I am in the process of opening up to my own anger instead of going to extreme lengths to avoid or hold the anger of others.’ Leslie Jamison
If you are a woman OR man reading this and want to know more about my 25 Female Warriors and how you can encourage any female in your family to know it’s OK to say ‘I feel really angry right now’ and to give her space to explain why, then grab a free electronic copy of the book right here
Ann Andrews, CSP. Author, speaker, profiler, Life Member PSANZ
Author of:
Women Behaving Courageously: How gutsy women, young and old, are transforming the world