Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger QUOTES

1 " Cursing numbs pain. The relationship between pain and cursing is not one-way (for example, stubbing your toe and letting out a stream of expletives in rage). Those expletives, in turn, affect our perceptions of pain. Through a series of creative experiments, scientists have found that the stronger the curse words people use while experiencing pain the higher their tolerance for that pain. Byrne notes, depressingly, that women who curse when in pain, however, are less well cared for by those around them. "

― Soraya Chemaly , Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

2 " Nice is something you do to please others, even if you have no interest, desire, or reason to. Kindness, on the other hand, assumes that you are true to yourself first. "

― Soraya Chemaly , Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

3 " But behind it all, we can't truly know which men are harmless. And the cost of being wrong is high. "

― Soraya Chemaly , Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

4 " According to system justification and what is called just-world theory, when evidence suggests that the world is not a just place, people with this orientation seek to reassert fairness either by ignoring dissonant information or by blaming people for the ills that befall them. Poor people are lazy and don't work enough. Black people are more likely to be criminals. Women who go out , drink, and have sex are culpable for their rapes. "

― Soraya Chemaly , Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

5 " If #MeToo has made men feel vulnerable, panicked, unsure, and fearful as a result of women finally, collectively, saying "Enough!" so be it. If they wonder how their every word and action will be judged and used against them, Welcome to our world. If they feel that everything they do will reflect on other men and be misrepresented and misunderstood, take a seat. You are now honorary women. "

― Soraya Chemaly , Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

6 " A meta-analysis of almost two hundred studies conducted in more than fifteen countries found that women are more physically and emotionally exhausted than men, accounting for their higher rates of burnout in many sectors, such as media. 'An awful lot of middle-aged women are furious and overwhelmed,' wrote Ada Calhoun in a 2016 article titled 'The New Midlife Crisis: Why (and How) It's Hitting Gen X Women.' 'What we don't talk about enough is how the deck is stacked against their feeling any other way. "

― Soraya Chemaly , Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

7 " In their 2001 study 'The Girl Who Cried Pain: A Bias Against Women in the Treatment of Pain,' Diane E Hoffmann and Anita J. Tarzian pointed out that women are 'more likely to have their pain reports discounted as 'emotional' or 'psychogenic' and, therefore, 'not real.' This invalidation parallels the invalidation of women's anger, which is similarly often reduced to proof of women's mental weakness. One study of postoperative pain relief for patients who had undergone coronary artery bypass surgery revealed that men in pain were given pain relief medication, but women were given sedatives. Sedatives aren't pain relievers, or analgesics. They're calming and dulling agents that 'take the edge off.' But for whom, exactly? "

― Soraya Chemaly , Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

8 " The summer my daughters were six and four, we were at the beach one day and went for a long walk. It was astonishingly hot, and the sun, bouncing off a clear sea and blinding sand, was relentless. Wearing bikini bottoms but no tops, my children alternated between making sandpiles and running into the sea to cool off. The beach was empty. Eventually a woman and her son appeared in the distance, moving lazily in our direction. The boy seemed to be around the same age. Eventually the children came together, playing in the water with on another but not talking. His mother and I, farther back in each direction, waved and smiled.
I thought we would just keep walking, but when we got close to the children, she said loudly, 'You really should put tops on them.' At first, I didn't understand her.
'Thanks,' I replied. 'They're covered in sunscreen.'
'They're girls,' she said. It wasn't until she was near my daughters that she'd realized this.
I was dumbfounded. She might have been equally dumbfounded if I had taken the time to explain that her statement was an overtly sexist sexualization. The four children were physically indistinguishable, physically active on a hot beach. When I made no move toward shielding her son from the girls' scary, tempting, and corrupting bodies, she pulled him out of the water by the arm. They rushed down the beach before it crossed my mind to whip off my own top. Aggression takes many forms. "

― Soraya Chemaly , Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

9 " The importance and visibility of women's collective anger can't be overstated. This anger takes determination, thoughtfulness, and work. It means respecting our own anger and being willing to respect the anger of other women. "

― Soraya Chemaly , Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

10 " Being indirectly aggressive is one way that many women navigate strong negative emotions and competition in the face of social prohibitions of displaying them more openly. "

― Soraya Chemaly , Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

11 " ... the reality and threat of male-perpetrated sexual violence is normalized in the lives of girls and women as a restrictive force. "

― Soraya Chemaly , Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

12 " Women often endure infertility, pregnancy, infant loss, miscarriages, and stillbirths in isolation, because while sadness is a socially palatable response to these often life-altering events, rage, frustration, jealousy, and guilt are not. "

― Soraya Chemaly , Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

13 " What my sister needed was not people urging her, as so many did, to get pregnant again as soon as possible, but acknowledgment of her loss and the violence that she experienced in that loss. She needed to know that this was not a failure or that she was a bad mother. She needed to be allowed to be not only sad but also, in her grief, to be angry. But as Gunther explained, 'Society does not like to hear from us castaway mothers. "

― Soraya Chemaly , Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

14 " One of the most astounding and telling features of the Women's March and the #MeToo movement is that they both illustrate how many angry women it takes to generate public response. "

― Soraya Chemaly , Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

15 " What my sister needed was not people urging her, as so many did, to get pregnant again as soon as possible, but acknowledgment of her loss and the violence that she experienced in that loss. She needed to know that this was not a failure or that she was a bad mother. She needed to be allowed to be not only sad but also, in her grief, to be angry. But as Gunther explained, "Society does not like to hear from us castaway mothers. "

― Soraya Chemaly , Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

16 " ... anger was washing through me like a tidal force. "

― Soraya Chemaly , Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

17 " Finding communities that validate and share your anger creates powerful opportunities for collective social action. "

― Soraya Chemaly , Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

18 " Women live their lives trying to create bodies of deference. And anger is not compatible with deference... In the "cosmetic panopticon," expressing anger is disobedient and rebellious, powerful and threatening, because it is the seed of aggression and collective action. "

― Soraya Chemaly , Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

19 " ... when women themselves perceive that they are being objectified, which happens every day to a visibly pregnant woman, they act more like objects, moving less and speaking less. "

― Soraya Chemaly , Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

20 " When a woman shows anger in institutional, political, and professional settings, she automatically violates gender norms. "

― Soraya Chemaly , Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger