(Women’s) Anger Management
I realized I’m angry about anger these days.
We all know the drill when it comes to women: We are to suppress our anger – at least in public forums – or risk being vilified as hags, harpies, or harridans. We may shrug off these labels with a “sticks and stones…” retort, but think what so often happens as a result: Our urgent messages, our critical testimonies, are nullified, smothered, or lost in an overwhelming tide of pejoratives.
Go for it anyway, urge the writers of a number of newly released books: Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger by Soraya Chemaly, Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower by Brittney Cooper, Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger by Rebecca Traister. These authors point out that women’s anger has so often been the unacknowledged force to bring about major social and political reforms to our world (Think Carrie Nation, Rosa Parks, Gloria Steinem, Emma Gonzalez, to name a few) and can certainly, if channeled properly, do so again.
Illustration by Golden Cosmos (The New Yorker)
Hold on, think a minute, argues another author, Martha Nussbaum, in The Monarchy of Fear: A Philosopher Looks at Our Political Crisis. The appeal of anger is forceful, but its side effects could be deadly to the future success of any mission. It can erode focus, cloud over judgement and darken motives. It can also decrease effectiveness because those who feel wronged or have lost power are usually angrier than those seeking to preserve it and, therefore, more apt to fail to distinguish justified from unjustified, wise from unwise responses.
I want to cheer us on anyway, especially us women, in our angry responses to the Church’s suppression of us as people and of our gifts. I cannot help but think such a reaction is more than justified. But I am seduced by the argument that perhaps the better tactic might be to work to deactivate anger – and the irrationality and judgmentalism it produces – in those who have, throughout the history of the Church, been rewarded for it rather than embrace it as a tactic ourselves. We don’t want to be destroyed by energy we need to use to build and create and prevail.
As Casey Cep in an article in The New Yorker commenting on the above books pointed out:
“Anger is an avaricious emotion; it takes more credit than it deserves. Attempts to make it into a political virtue too often attribute to anger victories that rightfully belong to courage, patience, intelligence, persistence, or love.”
These are the virtues of community, of civil, reasonable people.
Alas, that does not sound fiery or passionate or dramatic at all, and I’m angry that, once again, the wronged and neglected and oppressed, i.e. all of us who are denied full inclusion in the Church, may, once again, have to tame and re-direct our own anger for the good of all. But as Cep reminds us: “What is powerful isn’t so much women’s anger as their collective action…that is what has changed most radically….” And that is the tool, the tactic, the inspiration that will finally create “a revolution of lasting consequence.”
And for that revolution to happen in our own Church, by our own women and all genders who support them, I can only say – without anger – amen!
3 Responses
Ellie, you have literally taken the words right out of my mouth!! I had started an essay or blog post with that quote from Casey Cep about collective action – and I, too, have been meditating all this month about anger and its effects and use. I was in Rome at the demonstration outside the Synod on October 3 and one news report had a picture showing Kate McElwee and I with a caption about “angry women”. I recoiled from that description, but later felt that I needed to come to terms with it. As women we have been conditioned to think of anger as “bad” but there is a place for righteous outrage. Perhaps anger at a situation or condition (exclusion, oppression etc.) is so radically different from personal anger that we need another name for it? In any case, as we mull all this over, let’s stay focused on making that revolution happen in our Church, one way or another. Thanks for adding to the discussion –
Sheila Peiffer
Dear Ellie,
The important thing is to channel your anger to the best effect!
My grandfathers’ sister in 1912 along with 150 others smashed windows in London’s Oxford and Regent Street in support of votes for women. She was sentenced to 2 months hard labour in Holloway Prison.
Kate McElwee and some 20 others staged a Prayer Vigil at the entrance to the Youth Synod in Rome on 3 October 2018. Their prayers and chants were disrupted by a large consignment of Italian police (including 2 on horseback).
Both actions received extensive media coverage and gathered huge support.
Best wishes,
Colm
Holy anger never seeks revenge and is never violent, but engenders resolve to seek the glory of God and the good of souls. One way to channel holy anger is to focus on deconstructing patriarchal gender ideology as currently enshrined in some laws and doctrines of the church. Canon 1024 is the most blatant example of the patriarchal culture still deforming the body of Christ. Catechism 1577 reduces the personal priesthood of Christ to the male priesthood of patriarchal Israel. We need to expose these cracks in church law and doctrine, because it is the best way to foster understanding that the ordination of women is not about changing anything essential but about removing the patriarchal scaffolding that has obscured our Catholic faith for 2000 years.