“It’s okay for you to be angry because you are a woman and the world has given you a lot to be angry about. Inequality, violence, degradation, dehumanisation, misogyny” – Clementine ford (fight like a girl).
On a good day, I am called angry at least twice. No one can accuse me of pointing a gun to his head, raising my hands to threaten or even execute a slap, threatening to stab him while watching him bleed to death even in my most “angry” states. There’s nothing suggestive of a violent history, it’s just anger. So don’t be scared, yet.
I never thought being labeled angry and drinking it all in was ever going to become my reality. I was that sweet little girl who didn’t want to be disliked, I didn’t want to step on toes. Patriarchy taught me that being a girl meant you could be angry but you must always find ways from within to repress that anger. Yes! Susan, you are thinking what I’m thinking and no, Patriarchy has never liked us not now and certainly not when we were young.
I am called angry because in what people would tag a simple conversation, I boldly state that there is unfairness in gender pay and men are not at the receiving end of it. I am called angry because while in a gathering of supposed friends turned rape apologists , I am able to muster the courage to say that only about 2 – 10 % of rape accusations against men are false so we must not be quick to call a rape victim a liar. Google has done a great work when it comes to making statistical data readily available yet ‘You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink’. Showing statistics to prove my points never yields anything. I am always met with a weak argument “You are just too angry, you should calm down”.
It is almost always a constant that a man tries to grope me in public, private, anywhere (the thing is, as a woman you are never safe but most often than not, you are “angry”) and if it’s in instances where I am brave enough to look him in the eyes and tell him off, I am met with the irritating question “Is that why you are angry?” I wonder where it all went wrong. Men – in addition to enjoying favours from employers, the society at large and enjoying better pay in several parts of the world – also get to enjoy side attractions such as groping any woman of their choice and still having the guts to tag them “angry”.
Now here is the tea, if being loud enough to be heard is anger, I might as well be labelled an angry woman for life. I am not even half as angry as I should be so for future purposes, desist from telling other angry women and myself to calm down and chill out. We are tired of patriarchy’s age long tradition of repressing our rage, constantly challenging and questioning our feelings and reasons. It’s a whole new era and it’s laughable if men still think that calling women angry would keep us shut.
I won’t stop being angry if my anger keeps exposing societal flaws, injustices and prejudices against women. I won’t stop being angry If speaking out calls for review of salaries and employment criteria where the best person and not ridiculous ideologies like “the better gender “gets the job. Who crowned the better gender?. I won’t stop being angry if my having a better tomorrow is strongly tied to my anger. I am an angry woman and I intend to be fluent in my anger.