Home > Work > Burn It Down: Women Writing about Anger
1 " When she looked down at me, though terrified, I felt more seen than I'd ever felt under another person's gaze. I have since learned that recognizing the invisible parts of oneself in another person can feel like a radiant kind of love. "
― , Burn It Down: Women Writing about Anger
2 " Everything I've learned from the time I was born is essentially some form of control. Basic lessons: how to control my hands, my body. Advanced lessons: how to control my volume, my appearance. Having control over myself allows me to choose. I can present myself as loudly or as softly, as boldly or as meekly, as wildly or as calmly as you wish. "
3 " My anger signals the presence of injustice. His tends to flare in the presence of personal insult. Rather than being shameful, my rage is noble. "
4 " There is too much beauty in being alive to silence my intuition, to ignore my body, to not sing its needs and demand that they be met. As it turns out, my anger has become my savior. "
5 " I’m angry that we’ve been taught to swallow our pain to save you. "
6 " That night, I began to understand that there’s a difference between someone actively trying to harm you and someone’s specific constellation of shortcomings being harmful to you. It’s the difference between an earthquake, inescapable and unanticipated, tearing everything you’ve built down and stepping into the path of a tornado even as the sirens ring out their warning. "
7 " Anger in a woman is akin to madness; it felt like madness inside of me, it looked like madness to others. Maybe if they let us be angry, we wouldn’t go mad. "
8 " I’ve been raised to be a nurturer, continually cognizant of others, devoted to the collective harmony. When I’ve felt—when I feel—anger, it is spurred by witnessing and experiencing injustice. "
9 " Just as women who are so often reduced to sexual objects or babymakers, caregivers, mothers, virgins, and whores, deserve to be considered as whole individuals on their own terms and for their own sakes, I wanted to give their anger space to exist solely for itself, without being packaged and used for someone else’s "
10 " The truth is, if the pain wasn’t as severe as it was, I may have just cowered and ignored my instincts. I may have just accepted that I was being paranoid, hysterical, overly sensitive. Why does it take so much to make them see? "
11 " I already knew that art was a way to articulate one’s loneliness, but I hadn’t known it was also a way to articulate anger. Or that the roiling energy inside a woman’s body could be used to express her rage instead of poisoning her. "
12 " As sure as she is becoming a woman, she is also being indoctrinated into a system I recognize- one that rewards female martyrdom with adoration and gratitude but leaves little room for her to air her frustration. I told her its as ok to be angry and to say so. "
13 " I decided to work at happiness, to unlearn self-hatred. Inspired by that chance moment of appreciating my own reflection, I decided I would learn to love myself by saying four things I liked about myself out loud, every day. "
14 " I am a lighthouse to myself. "
15 " The silencing and the invisibility lead to anger, and the anger leads to sickness. Poverty and ignorant employers lead to anger, and the anger leads to sickness. Insurance bureaucracy and the lack of social and community accommodation lead to anger, and the anger leads to sickness. The whole cycle is broken; the body learns to lean into that constant surge of stress hormones and negativity, and the body stays ill. "
16 " The human body creates three types of tears: basal tears, which keep your eyes lubricated and functional; reflex tears, which are produced in response to a physical stimulus like dust in the eye in order to remove the irritant; and psychic tears, which are emotionally responsive tears. Other animals make the first two kinds; human beings are the only animal known to make psychic tears. "
17 " My anger signals the presence of injustice. His tends to flare in the presence of personal insult. "
18 " Rage was the dominion of men, who seemed to have unlimited social safety. My mother showed me how to respond to an angry man: lowered head, those tight lips, and attending to every detail that might end this particular tantrum or ward off the next. Be meek. Get small. Stay busy. Men emitted. Women absorbed. "
19 " Bellowing, howling anger has been written on top of my DNA. It’s how I want to respond to frustration. But because I was also taught to be a good girl and keep it to myself, my anger feels warped into something even more unnatural than hateful. I resent that, too. "
20 " The phenomenon of female anger has often been turned against itself, the figure of the angry woman reframed as threat—not the one who has been harmed, but the one bent on harming. "
