Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger Paperback – May 21, 2019

Great explanation on womens anger. A little textbooky but still good

<blockquote> <i> "Anger is memory and rage. It is rational thought and irrational pain. Anger is freedom, independence, expansiveness, and entitlement. It is justice, passion, clarity, and motivation. Anger is instrumental, thoughtful, complicated, and resolved. In anger, whether you like it or not, there is truth... Anger is a boundary. Anger is boundless. An opportunity for contemplation and self-awareness. It is commitment. Empathy. Self-love. Social responsibility. If it 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." </i> </blockquote><i> Soraya Chemaly </i>RAGE BECOMES HER, by Soraya Chemaly was as diverse and powerful in its telling as the author notes anger itself can be. At times, I felt myself feeling simultaneously validated, frustrated, and emboldened. Chemaly's thoughtful and personal anecdotes about her life (unafraid in their admissions of her own imperfections) backed by statistics and studies had me flipping from enlightened to saddened to overwhelmed to defiant and back again.I was, however, at all times angry. A good thing for me, and all women, to be, as Chemaly reminds us. Too long we've been denied this powerful emotion. Society has been gaslighting us in ways most of us are all too familiar with and others that (to me, anyway) felt brand new.That desire to double, triple, quadruple check my work when a man says something contrary to what I <i> know </i> to be the truth? That hard bite on the insides of my cheeks while I screw on a smile after being interrupted, yet again, by a male colleague? That long, long blink and slow inhale before turning to apologize for how delinquent I've been on the dishes after working yet another 70 hour work week?It's not just me. Or you. We aren't alone in our anger. That's what this book has to say in a thousand beautiful ways that will appeal to and speak to women from multiple different races, ethnicities, cultures, histories, economic backgrounds, sexual orientations, and gender identities. Our commonality across it all is this: Rage Becomes Us All.

It's not true that this book made me angry. What IS true is that it showed me: anger is a healthy, reasonable response to all the crap I, and all other women, have to put up with.And I was already angry."Anger has a bad rap, but it is actually one of the most hopeful and forward thinking of all our emotions. It begets transformation, manifesting our passion and keeping us invested in the world. It is a rational and emotional response to trespass, violation, and moral disorder. It bridges the divide between what 'is' and what 'ought' to be, between a difficult past and an improved possibility. Anger warns us viscerally of violation, threat, and insult."Women are continually attacked - sexually, via medical professionals who don't LISTEN to us, by being paid less in the workplace, by taken less seriously... Everywhere."When a man becomes angry in an argument or debate, people are more likely to abandon their own positions and defer to his. But when a woman acts the same way, she’s likely to elicit the opposite response.""Girls, admonished to use 'nicer' voices three times more often than boys are, learn to prioritize the needs and feelings of people around them; often this means ignoring their own discomfort, resentment, or anger."This exhaustively documented work looks at many different viewpoints, from Rosa Parks, who said she wasn't especially tired that day, just tired of being treated as lesser (i.e. ANGRY) to Tarana Burke and the #MeToo movement, to the ways racism and ableism impacts misogyny. It and takes on the many different angles from which women are silenced, told to be nice, from in-your-face rape and death threats, to benevolent sexism. We are supposed to be GOOD victims, not angry and standing up for ourselves. (Even though women who buy into benevolent sexism, in the name of "being protected," are still raped, abused, killed.)It's not an easy read - if you can read it without getting rage-filled, on behalf of yourself and your sisters, or on behalf of women that you love... Please stay far away from actual living women."In the coming years, we will hear, again, that anger is a destructive force, to be controlled. Watch carefully, because not everyone is asked to do this in equal measure. Women, especially, will be told to set our anger aside in favor of a kinder, gentler approach to change."No, I won't. How about you?