Don’t Call It Bitchy
If someone could pay me for each time I was angry and the males in my family took it as a joke, my college tuition would probably be paid. Within my family, I am the only girl within my age group. I am constantly surrounded by males and am constantly ridiculed. I get angry with them once in a while but every time I get angry, they never take me seriously. They would say the reasons for me being angry were “dumb” and not worth being angry about. They were always allowed to express their anger towards me or to others, but when the roles were reversed, they acted, and still act, like it is unnecessary.
When it comes to expressing strong emotions, the feeling of sadness is a more appropriate feeling for women than anger, according to many. There is a notion that women are afraid to express anger because they “are afraid of hurting, that is, not being loving to the people whom they are angry” and sadness is a more selfless emotion as women are “holding the pain inside […] rather than making someone else deal with its blunt-force trauma.” From a young age, society has trained women to mute and eventually vanish their feelings of anger because showing such an emotion is “an invitation to mockery, shame, or shunning.” Therefore, creating the image that sadness is the only acceptable emotion women are able to employ, continuing the social ideology of women being victims and not being agents of their true emotions. Anger is seen as a gender faux pas, as it is only acceptable for men. Both sexes are human beings, are created equal, and should thus be allowed to feel every emotion on the spectrum.
Because of the stigma emplaced on women that they are essentially only able to carry out sadness, society as a whole, view women as incapable of being angry. They do not accept the idea of a woman being able to express anger, and therefore see it as “bitchy” — bitchy meaning “an adjective that’s supposed to be used to describe someone irritable, moody and whiny.” Leslie Jamison elaborates on this point in “I Used to Insist I Didn’t Get Angry. Not Anymore” when she mentions how “people are more likely to use the words like ‘bitchy’ and ‘hostile’ to describe female anger, while male anger is more likely to be described as ‘strong.’” The patriarchy in the United States, and even around the world, understand the strength and the impact that women can make when they are angry and want change. They want to find a way to continue the assumption that only males can feel anger and have the same frame of thought that “girls who burn with fury are a problem, and they need to be controlled.” Women do not need to be controlled, they do not have to stay in line with this patriarchal system. Women need to speak their minds, and if they are expressing it with anger in their voices, even better. Women are constantly mocked when they are angry — “if you stand up for yourself, […] if you raise your voice above a whisper, if you leave the house without a sweet smile slathered on across your face, some people will inevitably call you shrill, a nag, bitter, a bitch.” Men have always been put at a higher advantage when it comes to social aspects in comparison to women. However, these constructs should have never reached the point where women are disrespected when they want to express emotions that are considered to ONLY be “male.”
Women are angry, they have always been angry, but have come to only express this emotion in silence and away from the public eye. If more women start expressing their anger towards people instead of towards an inanimate object, society will start to change itself and take the emotion more serious when women are expressing it. As Jamison mentions, “Women have often embraced the right to their own anger as a ‘vindication of equality,’ part of a larger project of empowerment.” Women want to be agents of their emotions, and should have always been able to. Expressing anger is an advantage — it distinguishes the powerful from the weak and the defiant ones from those who are cooperative. Women have been seen as the “weak” and “cooperative” for too long, even though they have shown instances of the opposite. Women have to engrain into their brain that it is always okay to express anger as, “anger can be useful. It can keep you moving and working when you want to give up. It gives you courage when you need it. It can focus your attention on what has to change, in your life, in your community.” Expressing the mind is important for the overall wellbeing of a person. By changing the perception of how anger is expressed by a woman and being defiant towards social norms, the disadvantages that have been weighed on women will be erased.
Finding ambition to empower oneself to express anger towards anyone or anything can be hard to do, especially for women because they have a long history of being neglected of this emotion. Society uses every negative connotative adjective to degrade the anger that women express. By society changing, and officially validating that women are agents of anger and not just of sadness, it allows them to take accountability for their emotions. Women should not be ashamed or feel like their anger is invalid. They need to express their feelings instead of suppressing them, and by not fearing society’s opinions when they express their anger, the ultimate goal should be reached.
