Rage Becomes Her Quotes

“Anger is an assertion of rights and worth. It is communication, equality, and knowledge. It is intimacy, acceptance, fearlessness, embodiment, revolt, and reconciliation. Anger is memory and rage. It is rational thought and irrational pain. Anger is freedom, independence, expansiveness, and entitlement. It is justice, passion, clarity, and motivation. Anger is instrumental, thoughtful, complicated, and resolved. In anger, whether you like it or not, there is truth.

Anger is the demand of accountability, It is evaluation, judgment, and refutation. It is reflective, visionary, and participatory. It's a speech act, a social statement, an intention, and a purpose. It's a risk and a threat. A confirmation and a wish. It is both powerlessness and power, palliative and a provocation. In anger, you will find both ferocity and comfort, vulnerability and hurt. Anger is the expression of hope.

How much anger is too much? Certainly not the anger that, for many of us, is a remembering of a self we learned to hide and quiet. It is willful and disobedient. It is survival, liberation, creativity, urgency, and vibrancy. It is a statement of need. An insistence of acknowledgment. Anger is a boundary. Anger is boundless. An opportunity for contemplation and self-awareness. It is commitment. Empathy. Self-love. Social responsibility. If it is poison, it is also the antidote. The anger we have as women is an act of radical imagination. Angry women burn brighter than the sun.

In the coming years, we will hear, again, that anger is a destructive force, to be controlled. Watch carefully, because not everyone is asked to do this in equal measure. Women, especially, will be told to set our anger aside in favor of a kinder, gentler approach to change. This is a false juxtaposition. Reenvisioned, anger can be the most feminine of virtues: compassionate, fierce, wise, and powerful. The women I admire most—those who have looked to themselves and the limitations and adversities that come with our bodies and the expectations that come with them—have all found ways to transform their anger into meaningful change. In them, anger has moved from debilitation to liberation.

Your anger is a gift you give to yourself and the world that is yours. In anger, I have lived more fully, freely, intensely, sensitively, and politically. If ever there was a time not to silence yourself, to channel your anger into healthy places and choices, this is it.”
― Soraya Chemaly, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

“We are so busy teaching girls to be likeable that we often forget to teach them, as we do boys, that they should be respected.”
― Soraya Chemaly, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

“A society that does not respect women's anger is one that does not respect women; not as human beings, thinkers, knowers, active participants, or citizens.”
― Soraya Chemaly, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

“We minimize our anger, calling it frustration, impatience, exasperation, or irritation, words that don't convey the intrinsic social and public demand that 'anger' does. We learn to contain our selves: our voices, hair, clothes, and, most importantly, speech. Anger is usually about saying "no" in a world where women are conditioned to say almost anything but "no.”
― Soraya Chemaly, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

“Men learn to regard rape as a moment in time; a discreet episode with a beginning, middle, and end. But for women, rape is thousands of moments that we fold into ourselves over a lifetime.
Its' the day that you realize you can't walk to a friend's house anymore or the time when your aunt tells you to be nice because the boy was just 'stealing a kiss.' It's the evening you stop going to the corner store because, the night before, a stranger followed you home. It's the late hour that a father or stepfather or brother or uncle climbs into your bed. It's the time it takes you to write an email explaining that you're changing your major, even though you don't really want to, in order to avoid a particular professor. It's when you're racing to catch a bus, hear a person demand a blow job, and turn to see that it's a police officer. It's the second your teacher tells you to cover your shoulders because you'll 'distract the boys, and what will your male teachers do?' It's the minute you decide not to travel to a place you've always dreamed about visiting and are accused of being 'unadventurous.' It's the sting of knowing that exactly as the world starts expanding for most boys, it begins to shrink for you. All of this goes on all day, every day, without anyone really uttering the word rape in a way that grandfathers, fathers, brothers, uncles, teachers, and friends will hear it, let alone seriously reflect on what it means.”
― Soraya Chemaly, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

“Ask a man what his greatest fear is about serving jail time, and he will almost inevitably say he fears being raped. What can we deduce from the fact that jail is to men what life is to so many women?”
― Soraya Chemaly, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

“It took me too long to realize that the people most inclined to say “You sound angry” are the same people who uniformly don’t care to ask “Why?” They’re interested in silence, not dialogue. This response to women expressing anger happens on larger and larger scales: in schools, places of worship, the workplace, and politics. A society that does not respect women’s anger is one that does not respect women—not as human beings, thinkers, knowers, active participants, or citizens.”
― Soraya Chemaly, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

“One of the most powerful effects of learning to prioritize other people's perspectives above your own is that you lose the ability to see others as blameworthy, even when they are openly acting as aggressors.”
― Soraya Chemaly, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

“Anger is like water. No matter how hard a person tries to dam, divert, or deny it, it will find a way, usually along the path of least resistance. As I will discuss in this book, women often ¨feel¨ their anger in their bodies. Unprocessed, anger threads itself through our appearances, bodies, eating habits, and relationships, fueling low self-esteem, anxiety, depression, self-harm, and actual physical illness. The harms are more than physical, however. Gendered ideas about anger make us question ourselves, doubt our feelings, set aside our needs, and renounce our own capacity for moral conviction. Igrnoring anger makes us careless with ourselves and allows society to be careless with us. It is notable, however, that treating women's anger and pain in these ways makes it easier to exploit us—for reproduction, labor, sex, and idealogy.”
― Soraya Chemaly, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

“If #MeToo has made men feel vulnerable, panicked, unsure, and fearful as a result of women finally, collectively, saying "Enough!" so be it. If they wonder how their every word and action will be judged and used against them, Welcome to our world. If they feel that everything they do will reflect on other men and be misrepresented and misunderstood, take a seat. You are now honorary women.”
― Soraya Chemaly, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

“The first women we know are our mothers, and yet we sometimes treat them, especially when they are angry, with the least compassion. That becomes a model for how we treat other women.”
― Soraya Chemaly, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

“Rage became a layer of my skin.”
― Soraya Chemaly, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

“Anger has a bad rap, but it is actually one of the most hopeful and forward thinking of all our emotions. It begets transformation, manifesting our passion and keeping us invested in the world. It is a rational and emotional response to trespass, violation, and moral disorder. It bridges the divide between what “is” and what “ought” to be, between a difficult past and an improved possibility. Anger warns us viscerally of violation, threat, and insult.”
― Soraya Chemaly, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

“There is not a woman alive who does not understand that women's anger is openly reviled.”
― Soraya Chemaly, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

“How many times does a woman say, "I'm so tired," because she cannot say, "I am so angry!" How many times is women's anger deliberately miscast as exhaustion?”
― Soraya Chemaly, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

“Ask a woman if she has been harassed, or if she thinks about rape regularly, and she will almost always say "no" initially. Who wants to think about rape? Ask her, however, if she makes eye contact when she walks down the street, where and when she loiters for pleasure on a warm day, if she runs by herself at night, or if she pays for cabs instead of peacefully strolling home. Then ask her why. We are taught to fear rape but not to question its pervasive threat or doubt how "natural" it is or isn't.”
― Soraya Chemaly, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

“When a woman shows anger in institutional, political, and professional settings, she automatically violates gender norms.”
― Soraya Chemaly, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

“Age shame is also a problem primarily for women. As women approach and go through menopause, naturally gaining weight as fat-to-muscle ratios shift, they exhibit many of the same anxieties and symptoms that teenage girls do. The process of growing older makes women's 'flaws' more visible and acute, thus, aging, a natural process, becomes frightening, disorienting, and difficult for many women.”
― Soraya Chemaly, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

“Anger is a forward-looking emotion, rooted in the idea that there should be change. Resentment, on the other hand, is locked in the past and usually generates no meaningful difference in the situation.”
― Soraya Chemaly, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

“Every girl learns, in varying degrees, to filter herself through messages of women's relative cultural irrelevance, powerlessness, and comparative worthlessness. Images and words conveying disdain for girls, women, and femininity come at children fast and furiously, whereas most boys' passage to adulthood—even for boys disadvantaged by class or ethnicity—remains cloaked in the cultural centrality of maleness and masculinity.”
― Soraya Chemaly, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

“Women are just as motivated by the desire for power as men; it's just that our cultural ideas about power don't associate it with femininity.”
― Soraya Chemaly, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

“If there is a word that should be retired from use in the service of women's expression, health, well-being, and equality, it is appropriate - a sloppy, mushy word that purports to convey some important moral essence but in reality is just a policing term used to regulate our language, appearance and demands. It's a control word.

We are done with control.”
― Soraya Chemaly, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

“Why does anyone think that men who cannot say the word period and do not know that the vagina and the stomach are not connected are competent and trustworthy leaders?”
― Soraya Chemaly, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

“Shame infuses women's most intimate experiences, from menstruation to sex. Women who internalize objectified ideas about their bodies often feel intense disgust with bodily functions – even pregnancy. Objectification and self-surveillance also put women at higher risk of sexual dysfunction. Rather than enjoying sex or engaging with their partners to ensure sexual satisfaction, women, distracted by what their bodies smell, feel, and look like, become unable to think about their own pleasure.”
― Soraya Chemaly, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

“I have since learned that my rage is a critical part of my self, and it is a part of myself that I have grown to respect and love instead of suppress.”
― Soraya Chemaly, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

“Every woman has a rape story, whether she has been sexually assaulted or not.”
― Soraya Chemaly, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

“If we accept the interpretation of life as we know it, we make it acceptable. So I refuse, which makes me seem angry and aggressive simply by existing.”
― Soraya Chemaly, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

“In a study of children's toy and television preferences, researchers Isabelle Cherney and Kamala London found that, when left alone, half of boys ages five through thirteen picked "girl" and "boy" toys equally - until they thought they were being watched. They were especially concerned about what their fathers would think if they saw them. Over time, boys' interests in toys and media become more rigidly masculinized and codified, whereas girls' stay relatively open ended and flexible.”
― Soraya Chemaly, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

“In their 2001 study 'The Girl Who Cried Pain: A Bias Against Women in the Treatment of Pain,' Diane E Hoffmann and Anita J. Tarzian pointed out that women are 'more likely to have their pain reports discounted as 'emotional' or 'psychogenic' and, therefore, 'not real.' This invalidation parallels the invalidation of women's anger, which is similarly often reduced to proof of women's mental weakness. One study of postoperative pain relief for patients who had undergone coronary artery bypass surgery revealed that men in pain were given pain relief medication, but women were given sedatives. Sedatives aren't pain relievers, or analgesics. They're calming and dulling agents that 'take the edge off.' But for whom, exactly?”
― Soraya Chemaly, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

“Anger is usually about saying “no” in a world where women are conditioned to say almost anything but “no.”
― Soraya Chemaly, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger