We are ugly, and this is perhaps the most criminal aspect of our existence – because we’re told that it’s this ugliness that makes us so angry in the first place and causes us to lash out. In this reading of women’s anger, our exclusion from the system has not been caused by the system itself but by the insufficiency of our own physicality. If we were pretty on the outside, we would be pleasant on the inside. If we were thin, we wouldn’t have so much room inside us to harbour so much hate and toxicity. If we took more pride in our appearance, instead of being lazy, grizzly, fat, disgusting, ugly, angry old bitches, then men would want us. And if men wanted us, all our dissatisfaction and rage over being passed over would disappear and we would recognise just how wonderful this prison we live in really is.
From the time we are born until the time we die, girls and women are taught to be the simpering, smiling backdrop to the greater purpose of men’s achievements. Men rule the world, while women decorate it. We aren’t granted the flexibility of being able to play characters who can be complicated, messy, irreverent, assertive, admired and angry. These roles are reserved for men. We are expected to be their support in every way. We are the women they fight over, the women they lust after, the women who encourage them and the woman who applaud them. We are the stage on which they stand, the curtains that signal for silence or applause, the scenery that forms the backdrop to their adventures, the swelling music that heralds their success.
Why are you so angry?
I’m angry that this is even a question, because implicit in it is the suggestion that women have nothing to be angry about. It’s so easy to stand within a system that favours you so completely that your privilege can no longer even been seen, and yet still have the arrogance to argue that those burdened by it are behaving unreasonably. Instead of responding to the legitimate grievances of half the world’s population – the half that is marginalised, abused, discriminated against and oppressed – the responsibility to engage is shrugged off and once again turned into an issue of oversensitivity.
Why am I angry?
I’m angry because one in five girls over the age of fifteen will experience sexual violence, and yet the rape culture we raise them in leads them to believe this sexual violence is somehow their fault.
I’m angry because these same girls will hesitate to tell anyone what happened to them because if they don’t already believe they caused it to happen, they’re afraid that other people will.
I’m angry because girls and women are raped by groups of boys and men who colonise their precious bodies as a grotesque exercise in ‘bonding’, and yet are still later protected and defended by a community that wants to believe it’s women who set out to ‘ruin the lives of promising future leaders’.
I’m angry because entire sporting teams can decide that a woman who consents to sex with one of them is consenting to sex with the entire team, and that this entitlement is supported by a wider society that has no problem asking, ‘What did she expect?’
I’m angry because a circumstance of pack sex in which men exert their physical and social power over a teenage girl can be defended by their supporters as ‘consensual group sex’, even when the girl ends up with a documented case of PTSD and ongoing suicidal thoughts.
I’m angry because the concept of consensual sex is so poorly understood by a world that favours male sexual dominance to the point where rape is excused all the time, and yet some people still react to the proposition of further education around consent with conspiracy theories about how the bedroom is being overrun by red tape and bureaucracy.
I’m angry because women and children are trafficked into sex slavery all over the world and are raped every day to make money for men who think of them as nothing but holes. I’m angry because other women opt into sex work and are shamed for it, subjected to greater levels of abuse but treated as though the nature of their profession means they deserve less respect and protection.
I’m angry because women are groped on the streets or in bars and told that they have to accept these interactions as compliments.
I’m angry because women are raped every day in their homes, by their partners, family members or friends, and yet people still think that avoiding rape is as simple as just saying no.
I’m angry because when feminists talk about rape, men tell us that we’re just upset that no one wants to rape us. I’m angry because women who commit the egregious crime of being fat while raped are even more likely to be disbelieved, because ‘why would anyone rape a fat chick?’. I’m angry because women of colour, trans women and women with disabilities suffer significantly higher rates of male-perpetrated sexual violence than almost anyone else, yet are given significantly lower levels of support across the board.
I’m angry because there are men who exploit the suffering of women of colour in other nations not because they care about the liberation of these women but so they can justify the white colonialist feelings of supremacy they have towards the men of colour who also live there. I’m angry because I’ve experienced these same men telling me they would laugh if I was gang-raped by ‘a pack of Muslims’. I’m angry because it seems the real reason these men are upset is because they believe there are other men out there who are given permission to treat women the way they want to but can never admit to.
I’m angry because I have lost count of the number of women who have contacted me to tell me about the men who have raped them and got away with it. I’m angry because so many of these women are my friends.
I’m angry because rape and sexual violence is only one facet of how women are abused in this world. I’m angry because girls around the world are denied the right to education, to medical care, sometimes even to a fucking childhood. I’m angry at how so many of us are taught from so young to see our bodies as shameful and disgusting – nothing more than a dumping ground for men to unload their semen and insecurities into in equal measure. I’m angry at the fact we’re expected to see ourselves as ridiculous. To laugh at the sneering jokes made about us and our inferior state and to pipe up in defence of the men who tell them whenever a flabby-mouthed harpy complains. I’m angry at how little we’re valued as leaders and innovators. I’m angry that for thousands of years, men have taken credit for the work and discoveries of women to the point where we’ve been all but erased from history. Were we even there? As wives and mistresses, certainly. But all that other stuff we did? No one given the power to document matters of note saw us as important enough to bother with.
I’m angry that the sexist men who disregard women’s immense contributions to the world insist that our gender has been responsible for creating nothing, building nothing, inventing nothing and designing nothing – because to them, the complicated, difficult task of growing an entire human being from scratch and then giving birth to it isn’t considered that big a deal.
I’m angry that girls all over the world learn to hate themselves. Because we are taught that we are worth hating.
The examples I’ve given here are just a drop in the ocean of pain that some women spend a lifetime swimming through, just trying to find their way to safe land. These are real assaults and oppressions. This is a real culture of crime and degradation. If history did bother to document the lives of women, it would be written with the ink of tears that have flowed since the beginning of time.
These things aren’t real, feminism’s opponents will say to you, at least not in the way you pretend they are. Yes, this stuff sometimes happens but you’re exaggerating most of it. Men can be victims too. A lot of these ‘rape’ stories are really just women regretting it afterwards. What do you mean, that’s ‘victim blaming’? I don’t blame victims, not the real ones. And stop talking about ‘rape culture’. Rape culture doesn’t even exist; how can culture teach people to rape? Women just need to take more care, because there are bad people out there. No, of course you don’t have to take care and be safe around me, that’s absurd. I mean, how dare you? You’re basically accusing me of being a
rapist and that is so offensive. Don’t you know that 99 percent of men are good, decent men who would never hurt anyone? Having said that, women still shouldn’t wear short skirts and drink too much because you never know who might take advantage of you. Stop asking if that means around me as well – of course it doesn’t mean around me! You can drink around me; I’m not going to hurt you. But don’t get too drunk, because it’s not nice when women get too drunk. Also, it affects their ability to respond to danger. That’s why it’s best if they stay sober, because you never know who’s out there. NO, NOT ME! I already said that. No, he can’t have raped her if she went back to his house. Because why else did she go back to his house? She should have known what to expect. I’m not saying what he did was right, but she shouldn’t have been so drunk. Both people should take responsibility. Of course I can control myself around women, what kind of a question is that? Stop acting like women need to be on their guard around all men, as if we’re all rapists! This is just about your vendetta. Your problem is that you hate men, and you’re actually blinded by that. Yes, you’re blinded by misandry. You’re actually making the world more unsafe for women, because you refuse to let us issue practical advice about how they can protect themselves. Telling women to watch their behaviour isn’t excusing rape – it’s stopping it, if anything. God, why are you so fucking angry all the time? What happened to you that made you so fucking bitter and angry?
But anger is absolutely the appropriate response for women to have to a society that not only freezes us out of its core operations unit but seizes every opportunity to hurt and demean us. It is right that we be angry about our treatment as women in the world, because it means we still have control of our faculties and haven’t been sucked into the Stepford hell that patriarchal order has always tried to box us into. We should be angry. Because if we aren’t, we aren’t paying enough attention.
But the problem here is twofold, because compounding this anger is the epic condescension and mansplaining that women have to endure from irate men who love nothing more than to waffle on and on about how sexism doesn’t exist, misogyny is a myth and statistics about discrimination are all made up. It’s bad enough that we have to live with the reality of this shit, but is there anything more infuriating than being told that you lack the proper objectivity to be able to rationalise your experience of the world so you need a man to do it for you?
Put up your hand if you’ve ever sat and listened, gobsmacked, as a man told you that something you found threatening or sexist – let’s say, being yelled at from a car window – wasn’t actually threatening or sexist at all but was in fact a light-hearted expression of appreciation or even a compliment, and to behave as if it was anything more than that isn’t just a gross overreaction but actually an insult to the women who experience real oppression around the world. Right. Now, with that hand still raised, stand up and walk to the nearest window, open it and let out the bloodcurdling scream I know you felt building up inside of you as you read that sentence. Congratulations, that was the sound of the glass ceiling being shattered by thousands of angry women screaming at the same time.
It’s okay to be angry.
We need to get over the stigma of what it means to be an angry woman. We’ve been taught to fear the label and all that it represents, which is supposedly a kind of hyper-emotional femaleness that lacks perspective and rationality. But our anger is not irrational. It’s very concentrated and sensible, and it is a response to the pain of thousands of years of oppression and male supremacy. That doesn’t mean that we are blazingly angry all the time. I mean, even I give myself a break now and then to watch The Bachelor or Survivor. My anger is not always explosive. But it is always with me.
It means I’m paying attention.
When I was young, my father used to tell me that I would catch more flies with honey than I would with vinegar, because sweetness was the shortcut to getting things done. Yet I never heard him offer the same advice to my brother. For that matter, I have never heard of any man being advised to be sweet and compliant in order to get his own way. Charming, yes. Convincing, of course. Powerful, assertive, confident, absolutely. But never to be sweet and passive, to flatter the person who has power over you by appealing to their sense of superiority.
It isn’t for our own good that women are told to stop being so angry. This is the pretence, of course, but the objective isn’t to protect us from the frightening capacity of our own rage. How could it be? More to the point, why would we in particular need to have our personalities babysat like this? We aren’t delicate little flowers who need to be shielded from experiencing or expressing extreme emotions.
The truth is, women’s anger is pathologised as dangerous because it represents a threat to the stability of the gender inequality that relies on its absence. Imagine the magnificent things women could achieve if we allowed ourselves to truly give in to our anger – if we turned our backs on ‘sweetness’ and harnessed instead the palpable rage that is our birthright.
And where has all that sweetness got us? As a collective, not especially far. I’ve no doubt it’s helped individual women along the way, but even they must have had moments of frustration over how often they’ve had to fold themselves into a neatly pretty corsage just to get anything done. The truth is, our anger has been wrested from us using the same threats of isolation and rejection that have proved so effective against women trained to view our worth through the eyes of men. It isn’t nice for women to be angry, so we try not to be. It isn’t pretty for us to use our anger, so we don’t. It doesn’t recommend us to men to have anger within us, so we hide it away and pretend it belongs to those other kinds of women – the sexless, ugly, brutish ones whose hostility stems from being unappealing . . . or is it the other way around?
It is okay for you to be angry. You have a lot to be angry about.
And it’s okay if being angry about these things makes some men feel bad or indignant or ‘picked on’. It’s not your job to shield them from the things women have to deal with every day. This isn’t the same as forcing them to take personal responsibility for everything that happens, although a lot of guys will argue that this is exactly what you’re doing. They do this in order to justify blocking their ears against what you’re saying. A lot of them don’t want to know about it, because they want to believe it has nothing to do with them. But they don’t live outside the system. They can continue to do nothing within that system, but as I hope I’ve vehemently communicated in this book, doing nothing to change the structures of power that benefit you is just as bad as being part of the mechanism that keeps those structures in place.
Some of these people will tell you that this is all well and good, but your anger isn’t helping your cause. They’ll try to convince you that this anger is just pushing people away – people who would otherwise be interested in helping to create change, but who are put off because you make it so hard for them. Again, it isn’t your responsibility to cushion the blow here. Most of the people you’ll be having these conversations with are adults, so why are they expecting to be treated like children? Being angry isn’t the same as being hostile or erratic. You can be patient while you walk people through this information, but you don’t have to hold their hands and make sure their feelings are protected. All that does is give them permission to keep ignoring the gravity of the situation. If excessive care on your part encourages their belief that things aren’t really that bad, they’ll have all the excuse they need to refrain from doing anything about it.
Besides, why should women take it upon themselves to look after everyone else’s feelings when no one ever looks after ours? Instead, we hear endless variations of ‘you’re overreacting’ or ‘stop being so sensitive’ or ‘toughen up’ or (and I love this line, by which I mean it needs to be loaded into my magic desert sun cannon and blasted into space) ‘your experience of that event is incorrect, let me explain to you what actually happened even though I wasn’t there’.
The idea that
women are protected from the world by men better equipped than we are to withstand its reality is such a myth. No one is wrapped more tightly in cotton wool than those men who express hostility towards feminism and women’s rights. No one demands greater care when dealing with their feelings than the men who scream Not All Men! No one sets up parody accounts and trolling websites faster than the men whose entire argument is built on the back of the complaint that women are ‘too sensitive’. And if we’re going to talk about anger, hostility and extreme emotional overreactions, no one displays any of those things in greater quantities than the men who hate women, and feminists especially, so much that they dedicate hours every day to harassing us, abusing us and monitoring every single thing we say to use as ‘evidence’ of some greater conspiracy against men’s freedom.
This aggression is palpable and obsessive. The intention of the people who wield it is to silence and scare us. I’m angry about that. In fact, I’m not just angry about it – I’m furious. It’s as if a laser beam created from the testosterone, butt cheese and Mountain Dew sweat of Aggrieved Men is beamed all around the world to rally the troops whenever a woman opens her mouth. Amber alert! Amber alert! A woman is speaking about feminism! Quick, let’s find her home address and post it online so we can TEACH HER A LESSON.
These men are consumed by an anger so intense that it’s actually frightening. And that makes me furious too. The human race is thousands and thousands of years old, and yet there are some people so terrified of losing the marginal grip on power masculinity has given them that they devote their time and energy to telling women that if we don’t shut up, someone will find us, rape us, kill us and then gloat about the victory to teach other women a lesson.
Fight Like A Girl Page 25