Oh, crumbs, you tell me.

For personal reasons, I guess, I think about these questions every morning about 5 a.m. ... But then again, I seem to have had "personal reasons" to think about how I "express" myself, and the practical problems that that seems to give much of the outside world, through my entire adult life (now approaching four decades).

This topic bubbled up for me while I was reading some of our most empathetic brothers, whose first response to this forum was to remind us that the world has changed suddenly for them and that the first sign of our good faith has got to be our understanding and empathy for the pickle they're in ... *wryly smiling smiley*

We start when we're young and not completely sure ourselves so we're willing to accept that we must be gentle with our thoughts or feelings or anger.

Pretty soon though it becomes a way of life. We become so solicitous that our own real and deep feelings are no longer allowed to be expressed. Everything is filtered to ensure we arent' hurting anyone, alienating anyone, and have all our facts in order before we speak.

Men speak with passion, women are bitchy

men must be handled with care, women need to get it the first time

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Gaining power seems to be a tenet of feminism

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Where on earth did this come from?

To be fair, there may be some feminists who find power interesting, although I seriously doubt that any of them would be spending time on babble. What I know of the pin-striped brigade I mainly know from reading, eg, Margaret Wente, who has obviously learned a few things about approved ways of expressing herself.

But that seems to me another topic. To me, power is pretty obvious, brutal, and therefore boring. I recognize that we have to think about it elsewhere, because it is the context in which many women, many people, are trying to invent another context for living. But here, I thought, we could forget the given, the brutal boring context of the status quo, and think about the human places where we stand right now, from which we start, from which any attempt at creating a new context must start.

Simply having the options is power, but not the kind that most men are talking about.

And we do play too nice, we're conditioned to it from infancy. There's more pressure on girls to follow the rules, be sweet and cooperative, and to swallow our anger. Boys are taught that aggressive play is okay, you can push the limits, it's expected.

Consequently, I have found myself in a male-dominated industry wondering why we women are the only ones following the rules instead of sniffing out (or creating) loopholes.

I have an impediment that really bothers me. When I get REALLY angry, my eyes water. I can't control it, and it bugs the hell out of me, because people always say, "oh, I see you're upset" -as in hurt of distraught, which is not the case at all. I'm not "crying", but I can't stop my eyes from leaking when enraged. As a woman it's sometimes seen as being manipulative I think, "turning on the water works", but that again is not the case.

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When I get REALLY angry, my eyes water. I can't control it,

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Yes that happens to me too. It isn't that I'm trying to cry or want to cry it just feels like there is so much rage inside me that words arent enough to release it.

I know what you mean about speaking up, Trinitty, I was considered a very strange creature in high school. I had no compunction about calling out a misinformed teacher. I soon had a reputation for being an unknown quantity... I have to admit that I grew to like it.

Anyway, it's extremely difficult for me to validate and express my own anger and being the mother of 5, it's something I am challenged on frequently. My son's violent and over-the-top expression of anger is part of that, too.

[ January 14, 2002: Message edited by: Loretta ]

When there's anger, there's thirst for an elemental, rudimentary justice, for an immediate gratification of a grievance. When I say to myself: You've waited too long for the world to change itself and give you a break, I'm angry. And some action is about to ensue.

For me, the problem is effectiveness. I think because, like so many of us (and many men too, I know, I know), I was trained to hold back the anger for so long, so long, by the time I erupt it's messy, rhetorically overblown, and doomed to fast collapse into tears. Loretta, I know exactly the situation you're describing; I've had that job evaluation ("breaks under pressure"), where a male colleague in the very same pickle, and responding in much the same way (except no tears), drew admiration ...

I know that one source of my pathology was the intensifying contrast between me and my older brother when we were kids. Zoot Capri, he did cool anger, ever cooler and cooler the more spluttery and heated I got -- and that in itself, of course, used to make me splutter more. I had a real tendency to aim too fast for the rhetorical heights -- which, in my experience, makes one less articulate, not more. He said far less, but it always came out, eventually, in perfectly controlled sentences ... That used to drive me wild. Often, it still does.

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Feeling angry and rebelious is politically useful, while melancholy makes me passive. When there's anger, there's a plan, an idea of a change, there's moving, and danger, and we always have something to do.

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Absolutely. Really, it's the same feeling, you're hurt, but anger is more active than sorrow. Many people choose anger to feel empowered, myself included. Took a little time, some hard work and a really good counsellor to untangle that knot!

Skdadl, I think the cold anger thing that I do is that I have actually been mad enough to frighten myself. As a teenager, I once lost it on a fellow who was selling my 14 yr old (and emotionally/mentally unstable) sister drugs... He was twice my size and I left him bleeding on the floor. I'd never hit anyone before, nor have I since. I don't ever want to be that angry again.

On the up side, controlled anger and a big vocabulary make you very articulate, and very convincing....

Take my example of being angry above -- What made me angry and aggressive enough to hit that man? Two things: 1. Fear that he was going to destroy someone I loved; 2. Hurt that he laughed in my face and didn't take me seriously. Out of those two helpless and fairly passive emotions, I reacted with aggression. Most people will, in similar situation, to varying degrees.

For people who have difficulty with anger, it is very effective to learn to name the underlying emotion, thereby learning to be less aggressive in the reaction.

I felt a couple of times in my life like physically attacking.

Oh, this is such a complex issue, I can only stutter. Like, when is it more productive to channel one's anger and when is it more productive to vent at the spot and continue venting whenever the memory of the event is activated.

I guess it depends on the audience.

There's a woman that I know who's been a Nova Scotia MLA during the eighties and who's been insulted daily (the word chosen by chroniclers of that age is 'savaged') in the Legislature by her sexist male colleagues from other parties. Anything from 'fly away on your groom from this House' to 'don't you have children waiting at home.' But nowadays, when you ask her about that period, she wouldn't say a word. I couldn't quite fathom it: well, don't you want to expose sexist oppression, don't you want to name it, point your finger at it, say this is how it operated and this is who did it? No. She'd just say she doesn't want to play the victimization game. She doesn't want to make anybody's day by doing that. And plus, she has "channels for expressing her anger."

What I see is that she built seven armours in addition to her skin. I don't think anybody ever saw her crying or 'losing it.'

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In June 1971, Douglas stood before 200 psychologists at the annual conference of the Canadian Psychological Association at the Hotel Newfoundland in St. John's. As the second female president, she was delivering the presidential address. This was the year metric conversion was introduced in Canada and a male colleague, trying to be funny, introduced Douglas by referring to her bust, waist and hip measurements in metric. "We put up with a lot of guff in those days," she says.

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When Douglas arrived, McGill's main faculty dining room was off-limits to women who were relegated to the "tea party" in the ladies' dining room, which was decorated in chintz and velvet. Meanwhile, in the main dining room "there was always informed, interesting talk -- people from biology, Russian and music at the psychology table -- and we were supposed to be left out of all of that."

Douglas and her female colleagues decided to start turning up at the main dining room, and finally won admission after the matter was put to a vote. Even so, one-third of the men voted against the change, stating their resentment about having to "watch their language" and rising when a woman joined the table.

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Douglas found the children lovable. "A lot of them are bright. They're spontaneous and honest. They have a sparkle." At times, she almost envied their directness. "You sometimes wish you could get away with what they get away with," she says.

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So I guess my question is: What do we do with injuries and scars for which expressing anger is simply not enough? And what if oppression is sometimes so cumulative and invisible that you can't find one particular point from which to freak out. Could there's be a feminist politic of anger of historical proportions?

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Heady questions, Tress.... I dunno if I have anything approaching an answer... Unlikely, anyway...

The one thing that I have learned from my life so far (not that I am very old or very wise, but I'm working on both) is that "losing it" doesn't work. Anger, yes, but controlled and directed anger. If you're a loose cannon, if you complain, you're damaging yourself, and feminism in general (and here's the disclaimer, this is ONLY my opinion).

I think we need to be firm and assertive, ie: Don't take any shit. But at the same time, cussing somebody out, while it may feel good and right in the moment, is counterproductive in the long run.

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What do we do with injuries and scars for which expressing anger is simply not enough? And what if oppression is sometimes so cumulative and invisible that you can't find one particular point from which to freak out. Could there be a feminist politic of anger of historical proportions?

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Oh, Tres (and vaudree, and anyone else who's come to these questions through those kinds of stories), you put it like that, and it feels as though nothing short of erecting the barricades today! will do ...

I realize that I have spent years living with the assumption that the only effective way to express the anger you describe there is through history or art -- the very very careful, rigorously truthful, factual testimony to things as they were, as they often still are -- no fear, no favour, just testify, to the facts, and assume that one day the fair-minded will feel what those who lived those experiences felt.

But you tell me: am I falling back too easily on academic bromides? I am accustomed to taking a very long view of history: for eg, I think we are only now beginning to have, in the new, beautiful, and careful social histories of this continent (Ronald Wright, Stolen Continents, and a mass of work done on the American South), the beginnings of a retelling of what life in North America has been, what it could have been, and how racism derailed us all -- and told in a way that no faithful, modest reader could resist (if only we could convince large numbers of people to be faithful, modest readers) ...

Is it fair to ask younger, angrier women to wait that long? To ask anyone who is suffering today to wait for the judgement of the ages?

[ January 16, 2002: Message edited by: skdadl ]

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Is it fair to ask younger, angrier women to wait that long? To ask anyone who is suffering today to wait for the judgement of the ages?

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Yes, isn't that interesting, how the owl always comes at dark. And how intellectual finesse looks frail in the face of unrestrained force.

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A board member raised his voice to me tonight

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Now, there it is. More than my own anger, it is a certain tone of voice that provokes a Pavlovian response in me.

I don't have to be angry myself in the first place, and the Voice doesn't necessarily have to be coming from someone who's angry with me -- although it is probably at least condescending, patronizing.

But it is the Voice of a particular kind of Authority. And suddenly, I am five years old again, and I feel as though I'm going to wet my pants and cry at the same time. Only then do I get angry.

Pretty obviously this goes back to childhood, although after years of thinking about this, I don't think it's my father, or just my father, traditional though he was in some ways (adoring and adored he also was), who first flicked this switch in me. I really think that the source is more diffuse than that -- it has something to do with understanding propriety well enough but hating it at the same time -- and maybe being fearful of being found out as a secret subversive -- something like that.

When you hear an insult or a disparaging remark concerning your charactor from a person who just repeats the same message without answering any of your questions - know that you are winning and feel your power.

[ January 17, 2002: Message edited by: Trespasser ]

Skdadl may be right, it may have been the tone that gets me going as opposed to the actual situation.