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What is the role of women's anger now?
It is impossible for me to think about my childhood without recalling the misogyny and threats of sexual violence. I was 5 years old when the church janitor lured me into the men’s bathroom and exposed himself. By the time I was 12, I understood that anything I wore could solicit a sexual appraisal from random men — overalls, gym shorts, school picture-day dresses with long sleeves and a high collar. When I was 15, I biked down gravel roads in my eastern Washington rural town to visit a friend. I was miles from any house when a man began following me on a motorcycle. I’d stop, get off my bike, stare him down. He stopped when I stopped, kept his helmet on and folded his arms. When I rode on, he followed me. I understood instinctively that I would be in more danger if I acted like prey; after all, I was being hunted. Finally, he roared past me, my heart racing with adrenaline.
These experiences intimidated me, as they were intended to. But they also made me angry. They informed my understanding of the role of anger in the formation of feminism as a personal and collective politics. In the wake of Trump’s reelection, it makes sense to consider the role of anger in the campaign and its aftermath.
In 2016, after the “Access Hollywood” tape revealed Trump bragging to host Billy Bush that “when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything … Grab ‘em by the pussy,” many presumed women would not vote for him. Although the majority of women voted for Clinton, 47% of white women voted for Trump.
After Trump was elected the first time, women’s anger led to the Women’s March, the single largest single-day protest in U.S. history. This global show of support set the stage for the #MeToo movement later that year. Several books highlighting the historical, political and cultural power and persistence of women’s righteous anger gained millions of readers. These works joined a legacy of contemporary feminist writing about the power of anger, going back to Audre Lorde in the 1980s. Lorde, a Black queer feminist, described how anger arises as a response to the racist oppression of women, including by white women. The majority of Lorde’s essay on the uses of anger is devoted to examples of white women demanding that they be spared the discomfort of Black women’s anger. The tendency of many white women to identify their interests with those of white men illustrates that anger alone is not a reliable basis for solidarity. Indeed, as Lorde insisted, it takes more than anger to transform structures of dominance and oppression.
But then, as now, many women are wary of feminism. They are wary of the perceived loss of status they fear comes from affiliating themselves with those who are vulnerable. Wary of their own vulnerability to a loss of economic or social status. Many see their interests best served by aligning with men. And for some of those women, it’s the allure of dominance; the very thing Sylvia Plath diagnoses in her poem "Daddy,” with these chilling lines: “Every woman adores a Fascist/The boot in the face, the brute/ Brute heart of a brute like you.” I can’t hear Trump’s voice without recalling Plath’s words.
Anger is the signature feeling of feminism. Anger that women’s lives matter so little in the balance. Anger that women can be collateral damage in a political campaign designed to appease (mostly white) men who feel left behind. Anger can spur renunciation and offer moral clarity. On its own, the emotion is unsustainable — but anger is the right response to the subordination of women’s personhood to men’s.
Too many men and women are comfortable demeaning women as a group sport.
Yet, women who express their anger are often demeaned in caricatures of “man-hating lesbians” or diminished as “cute when you’re mad.” As the scholar Lacy M. Johnson writes: “Girls are taught that to show anger, to yell, or to fight back … is undesirable and unattractive; and if we are undesirable, we have no worth.” But feminist anger does not demonize groups of people. It targets the power that subjugates on the basis of sex.
Trump’s “Make America Great Again” message promises a return to the golden age of American greatness. But that greatness is defined neither by increased prosperity and safety at home or abroad, nor the spread of democracy’s promise of fundamental rights. Instead, it redefines greatness, in part, for (again, primarily white) men by what they can do to women and get away with.
As Trump grew more disinhibited at his rallies in the final weeks of the campaign, I began to believe he would be reelected. It will take time to sort out the many factors that contributed to Harris’s defeat, but the frenzy of woman-hating on display in Trump’s campaign is an important factor to consider. To me it was a clear sign that too many men and women are comfortable demeaning women as a group sport. That’s how the culture feels now: clotted with the presumption that men can do whatever they want. Because when you throw in with Trump, “they let you” and “whether the women like it or not.” We are all at a Trump rally now.
There was a road sign I drove by with my family on our way to church every Sunday. It advertised the John Birch Society, a group I’d never heard of before the billboard declared their existence. The Birchers, were a far right American-grown extremist group animated by fear and hatred of “enemies within” who they deemed communists. As scary and up for a purge as they seemed, I remember that their roadside sign was paired with another, smaller sign located on the adjacent fence line. Its hand painted blue letters, and arrow pointing at the Bircher billboard, declared: “Not Our Sign.”
Those adjacent signs (then and now) illustrate our divided nation. Like the Birchers, MAGA conservatism marries its fear and hatred of the other – the immigrant, the racial other, the elite – to a pitch for patriarchal hierarchy. Men in charge, women to the back. Feminism always represents a “Not Our Sign” message to the retrograde and violent actions of patriarchy.
I know many women who have had experiences similar to those I had as a girl – of men trying to turn us into prey. In too many of these situations, there was no escape from a violent confrontation. I think of the women I know who were assaulted in the back seats of cars or on public transportation. Who were abused by teachers, coaches, religious leaders, their brother’s friend, or their own family members.
For many, anger was a resource in the moment and in the aftermath of violence. Anger, especially when mixed with grief, care, and the desire for solidarity, can guide us. My anger alerted me to sources of danger and helped me navigate to places of relative freedom and joy. I’ve not only made peace with anger over the years — it is, after all, a high alert warning system — I learned to welcome its insights and wisdom.
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