I am thinking about feminine rage and the anger I feel every time I go on social media and see another file outlining the horrors a woman went through at the mercy of evil men. The cruel injustices women everywhere face, their stories of abuse reduced to “allegations.”
I don’t want young girls to grow up in a world where powerful men are not held responsible for their actions. Where a man who has sexually abused women and is a proud pedophile can ascend to the highest office in the country and tell a reporter to “smile” when questioned about it. Where transparency is optional and justice is political.
Does truth even matter anymore, or is it negotiable? Are there no repercussions for objectively evil actions?
I am a woman and I am angry.
How can any woman not be? This is a time of reckoning. The cracks we have all known are there, that men have so smugly stepped over, are showing. While women have been living in the depths of them.
Women are not even close to being viewed as equal to men in this society. We are still objects in too many of their minds; less than, meant to be manipulated and entered and violated and then tossed aside. Left voice-less because no one will listen, even if we are brave enough to speak.
The system protects these men in their high castles. These disgusting pigs who offer nothing to society but their own greed and consumption, running the world into the ground. They don’t care about our precious earth and its limited resources, only about extracting everything they can for profit and hoarding their wealth. They destroy everything in their path, not *just* women’s bodies, but our planet as a whole.
I am a woman and I am angry.
I watched the Me Too movement unfold almost ten years ago. I saw firsthand the unraveling of the entertainment industry and the exposure of what women had endured since the conception of filmmaking in Hollywood and beyond. And still, in my opinion, it wasn’t enough. It is never enough.
Because I’ve been in dark rooms with scary men since then. I’ve experienced what it’s like to be violated, to go on dates with “educated” men who have no concept of consent. Almost every one of my friends has too. That is not coincidence, it is culture.
I grew up learning the atrocities of history, and now I watch them repeat in real time, the crimes against women reshaped and repackaged, men trying to rebrand the atrocities and distract us.
And still, like the woman I am, I hope “it will get better.” I lead with empathy, keep my eyes down and my head strong and try to protect my body. Because that’s what women know to do, even in a privileged upbringing in a Western country.
My pen moves faster, I start to perspire. The taste in my mouth turns metallic. I feel the anger bubbling up. What would people do if they heard me scream in this quiet coffee shop?
If I pounded my chest with the primal agony consuming my waking hours and bleeding into my dreams. Every night this week I’ve woken up in a cold sweat, this rage taking over me. It is not abstract, it lives in my body, both biological and accessible and shut the fuck up if you diminish me and this feeling.
I am a woman and I am angry. Am I repeating myself too much?
The notion of “too much”, only something a woman would say in the midst of her piece on rage!
Men, maybe you should be angry too. After all, I know it’s in your bones to feel it when you don’t get something you believe you’re entitled to. But can you be angry for me? For us? Can you admit the ways you’ve aligned yourselves with constructs built by the very men who harm us?
There is no solution for me right now but to write and to speak the glaring truth. I am sick of being a woman in a man’s world.
How about you learn what it means to be a man in a woman’s world?
Come. Take a front row seat to the show that’s about to begin. Now presenting: “Feminine Rage”, center stage.
Here’s what you can come to expect (described in detail in your Playbill), though I’ve outlined it here in 10 simple terms since your vocabulary, based on thousands of leaked emails, seems somewhat limited. In this culture:
Reverence replaces entitlement.
Creation is valued more than destruction.
Strength includes restraint.
Leadership requires emotional literacy.
The ability to carry life is not politicized.
Power doesn’t mean access to our bodies, but protection of them.
You listen to survivors, even when it implicates you.
Violence is not the first solution; in fact, it’s not a solution at all.
Domination does not equal competence.
Truth will not be buried to preserve your makeshift throne.
Oh, you thought feminine rage meant hysteria? No, it’s clarity and competence, welcome. The stage is not too small to hold my rage. The world is.
Photo by Michael Starkie on Unsplash
