Anger is a thing

This post should probably start with a disclaimer. 'The Anger' is not directed to a person in particular, but it's something I wanted to start writing about. It's something important and it's something we don't talk about enough (also, maybe there are a couple of things on my mind).

I have been thinking about writing for a while (I should stop starting my blog posts with that phrase – but in my defence, it’s always true). I know this blog is shifting. In fact, I’ve gone from writing about day to day life and travels (when I started my undergrad and was modelling and travelling a lot - literally, sometimes I would write on a plane or train or at a casting or whilst I was having makeup done). It then became a little more reflective and then I carried on writing through my counselling training and during my MRes – though not so much through the last year of my counselling training and my MRes because my thoughts were more centred around particular issues I was noticing more and more. Perhaps I didn't really know how to write about them. I still don't really know how to write about them, but I also know enough to know that silence never helps. By 'issues', I mean inequities, inequalities, discrimination, casual sexism, racism, ableism, the use and misuse of power within relationships, workplaces, and social structures and spaces. I mean the way in which some are automatically more privileged than others based on nothing more than race, gender and the circumstances they were born into. The way in which these intersections work with and through each other within societies to enable some privileges which others don't have access to. The list goes on. The list is one hell of an exhaustive (and exhausting) list of broad and specific (and very real) issues. The more I’ve understood my experiences and moved away from efforts to disconnect from life, these issues have become harder to write about in a way that means something. This has meant that I’ve simply written less and less (well, I wrote my MRes thesis and now I’m doing a PhD… I just mean that I’ve written about *these* issues in this blog much less than I’d like to, but I'm going to start writing about the things that matter, and not contribute to the silencing of them even more).

I recently read Sara Ahmed’s Living a Feminist Life, which helped me to make sense of what’s happened here. Sara Ahmed wrote quite a lot about her experiences as a diversity worker, explaining that the more you raise a problem and bring it into awareness, the more *you* are positioned as the problem – as disrupting the calm - as an inconvenience. Literally, as the problem. I think this isn’t too dissimilar to what’s happened here. I haven’t wanted to *be* the problem, even though I know I am not. I am even aware that now I am justifying why I have chosen to write about anger, instead of just writing. I’ve surprised myself with how quickly that feeling and expectation is internalised, but then reminded myself that it hasn’t happened quickly at all. It’s a product of 28 years existing as a female. Even though I understand that, it doesn’t reduce (even in the slightest) that small thing of what I think is feminist anger.  

There are some blog posts that I read and re-read (OK that sounds weird – it’s only when they come up on my Facebook memories). When I re-read them, I can track where I was, how my thinking was changing and the sorts of things that I cared about (note: the things I cared about in the past are mostly still things I care about now!). Though I can usually tell if I care about something by checking how angry it makes me when said thing/issue is compromised or restricted in some way. Actually, I'm talking about people and not things. And because people are important, I decided I should write about being angry. I decided I should write about realising that hiding the anger, ignoring its existence, even masking it as ‘nice and polite concern’, is part of the problem. As women, who exist in mostly male dominated spaces, we are socialised to swallow our anger. To take it to the toilets at work if you need to let it out and cry. To grin and bear it, or to politely address what bothers you, but don’t be TOO aggressive or TOO assertive. Because then you will disrupt the calm – and we’d best not disrupt that calm. Like it is somehow *our* responsibility to maintain that calm. To soothe it. To nourish it.

I’m OK with anger, at least in some contexts I am. But I know anger is something that isn’t just about emotions and isn’t something that exists in isolation. Disrupting the calm can be good. Anger is relational (nope - we don’t exist in a vacuum), it is political (yes – unfortunately we do exist in a world very much dominated by Trump. Please - no more. I can't.) and therefore anger is a feminist issue. I think it’s time to open my blog up to this and start writing more again. Sorry, PhD - I'll be writing in here a little more I hope.

Note: I write this with Orange is the New Black on next to me, glass of wine comfortably in hand, and a copy of my half-read Feminist Fight Club (I’ve just realised my Pretzel Legs are even a thing. Even my clients know it's a thing and point it out to me!)