Reclaiming our righteous rage collectively
How to make sense of rage in a poetic and feminist way.
Last week, a wave of rage sparked one of the most incredible uprisings led by women in Iran. The match that lit the fire after years of oppression and economic decline was the death of Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish woman who was detained by the Moral Police for not wearing a hijab properly. What resulted was ten days of rage, euphoria and utter outpour of anger. The image of women dancing next to a fire and burning their hijabs was a perfect example of what a poetic antidote is: a display of beauty and joy in a context of awareness. Rage is powerful, but I wonder: how many actions of violence stem from unhealthy processing of rage?
I am not a psychologist or anthropologist, but I am a human, and I want to attempt to grapple with this emotion together with you. Anger, after all, is the main source of many of my works.
Borrowing from some of my older writing about rage, I hope this piece serves to channel your rage in a way that creates community, and is unapologetic and beautiful. 🌻
Embodiment Exploration:
Today’s (optional) ritual: Stand with your feet hip-width apart, put this song- or any song that makes you want to move- and begin shaking. You can shake simply by bending the knees slightly and moving up and down, or shaking however feels good. You can also make roaring sounds, and just release any emotion or anger you may have inside. Do it until it feels like it’s enough.
Violence and Judgement have been the forever dance partners of this emotion, but I dream of anger that can be equalled to that force that the radicle needs to push the seed out of the earth to become a plant. This is anger that can coexist with love, joy, sadness and pain.
According to psychologists, anger is one of the primary sources of violence; when grappled with unhealthily, it leaves people embarrassed at best, and killed or injured at worst.
As a woman, I have many reasons to be angry. I am angry because I see old white men making decisions about women’s bodies, because the first female president of my birth country, Italy, is spreading fascist rhetoric, in coalition with a sex offender and a racist, and is against abortion and LGBTQ rights. I am angry because my sisters in Latin America get killed like their life has no meaning, because women are still misdiagnosed and we don’t hear about it enough, I’m angry because sexism is rampant, because women are judged on whether they become mothers or not, amongst many other things, I’m angry at racism, at colonialist legacy, at climate change denial and at homophobia. Need I say more?
When I get angry, I have a few methods that I use to channel that anger. One of them involves putting Eminem full blast — I have an Anger playlist- and punching a mattress with my forearms, in order not to injure myself, sometimes I through pillows at the wall with all the might I have, and other times I stick my face in a pillow and scream bloody murder.
One summer, I used the sea as my pillow and asked the water to take my screaming rage. It was so beautifully silent under there, and I felt unjudged. A few centuries ago, I probably would have ended up in a psychiatric institution with my arms tied in a straitjacket.
While I can express it today, I repressed my anger for many years, and it felt like I was burning from the inside. There are many reasons for this, but let’s consider the historical one; until recently, women’s anger was unacceptable, and often diagnosed as a mental disorder. For centuries we have been told to smile even when we did not want to, and the anger of a woman always provokes a societal reaction that leads to her shame (see Serena Williams).
Porsha O’s incredible portrayal of righteous anger.
“If and when rage becomes a dam to creative thought and action, then it must be softened or changed,” says Clarissa Pinkola Estes wisely.
Anger is an emotion that is innate in human beings, it comes out when we feel wronged, or see someone else being wronged, it has roots in injustice. Being unable to channel anger in a conscious and healthy way can be detrimental and lead to violence. We don’t honour anger because we don’t know its true name, its true colour. So, it’s time to get to know her and recognise her fire.
There are a few types of anger that I have experienced and observed and I hope you can relate too. Ancestral anger is a type of anger that comes from a collective trauma that goes back generations. The abuse witnessed by the people in my family, both women and men, has been carried down to me. This is an anger that is instinctual and comes from the injustices seen by myself and my ancestors, big and small.
Collective anger stems from systemic issues like white supremacy and sexism. It usually is an anger that is born from an event that reinforces a systemic injustice we all know about but tend to suppress. In the last years, we have seen countless examples of this kind of anger: during the #MeToo movement, the Black Lives Matter protests after George Floyd was murdered, and Iran today.
This anger is driven by a hope that things can be different, it is infused with awareness, community and imagination. It is a revolutionary tool, a silent rebellion.
There is a lot of trauma and anger in political movements because many people who join collective movements have been victims of systemic issues. This anger is not to be ignored but acknowledged and worked with. Something I say to men who come to me complaining about being scared to talk to feminists because they feel attacked is to simply recognize and accept that this anger exists.
“We have spoken about women’s rage often deriving from the situation in her family of origin, from the surrounding culture,” says Pinkola-Estes, “and sometimes from adult trauma. But regardless of the source of the rage, something has to happen to recognize it, bless it, contain it and lease it”.
But this is not only about reclaiming women’s rage, this restoration needs to be collective.
To give an example, I will attempt to replace the word woman with a human in one of Pinkola’s texts (my changes in italics).
“In their instinctual psyche, a human has the power, when provoked, to be angry in a mindful way- and that is powerful. Anger is one of their innate ways to begin to reach out to create and preserve the balances that they hold dear, all they truly love. It is both our right and in certain circumstances, a moral duty”.
This emotion that roots its flowers in the soil of injustice can bloom into a life force. It is time that we reclaim this emotion in a healthy way, and that rage ceases to be the elephant in every room.
Tenderly,
Vi
A beautiful exploration of an emotion that is so rarely acknowledged or given the stage to be expressed