Exploring Feminist Anger and Therapy

Becoming more popularized now. We see it also in the wake of the

Lindsey Clancy trial, a lot of reels about

women being very angry. They're making these scream

circles that look like this.

This is apparently therapy.

Right now, I feel... What do you feel?

I feel free.

I know you feel free.

So scared right now.

Give it to them. What did they try to take?

"What did they try to take?" she's screaming.

"What did they try to take?" And they're beating the

ground with sticks. Oh, my world. And

over at Michigan State University, they're funding

feminist rage rooms with student fees.

Look at this.

This is awesome.

Oh, my

God. Isn't this great?

Yes.

And according to this source, some rage room

businesses report that around 90% of their

customers, uh, are women, and no wonder.

And there seems to be evidence that women are reporting being

more angry. A Gallup polling, uh, over

recent years has found a gender gap in reported anger in a

number of countries, with women being much more likely

than men to say they've experienced anger during the previous

day. Their anger seems to be increasing.

But I'm less interested in whether women are more

angry than what we are increasingly telling women that their

anger means. That is the more important thing.

Feminist rhetoric from

the early suffragette militancy through

the later writers like Simone de Beauvoir, Andrea Dworkin,

Robin Morgan, and Mona Eltahawy, they're telling women

that rage is not just understandable, but that rage is

evidence of injustice, that rage is evidence of

consciousness. Emmeline Pankhurst said in

1913, "Deeds, not words. It is through

property that we shall strike the enemy.

The argument of the broken window pane is the most valuable argument in

modern politics." Simone de Beauvoir said in

1949, "The first time we see a woman take up

arms or take up her

pen or take up her stance, we see a woman who has decided to cease

being an

object." And Robin Morgan said in 1970, "I want a

woman's revolution like a low-intensity explosion in the brain.

I am a woman, and I am furious. My rage is not a symptom.

It is the cure. My anger is my sanity." And

Andrea Dworkin, she said in 1983, "Only when

women confront the reality of their situation with an

uncompromising anger will they be able to change it.

You can't be neutral on a moving train, and you can't be calm

about the systematic destruction of women's lives.

Anger is the expression of our value for human life.

I want to see women wild and angry. I want to see women taking

back their lives." And Mona Eltahawy said in

2019, "I want us to unleash the seven

necessary sins: anger, attention-seeking, ambition,

power, profanity, force, and lust. I want us to be angry.

Patriarchy conditions women to be gentle, accommodating, and agreeable.

Anger is a refusal of that conditioning.

Anger is an assertion of our humanity."

I want much more than just equality. Equality is no longer enough for me.

We saw this in The Handmaid's Tale.

That is the feminist id, like we talked about in that episode.

So you had the handmaids and the wives.

The handmaid-maids were always angry, and the wives

were either psychopaths or stupid.

And once they were made to understand the, the plight of

women, how women were treated, they also became equally angry.

So that is the feminist logic. So take this

feminist paper that w- one of the ones that Jim sent me.

Thank you so much. Uh, this is from the Journal for Cultural

Research, "Come Scream with Me" on feminist stories

and

screaming into the void.