I’m Allowed To Be Angry

Trigger warning: Brief mention of rape in reference to misogyny

This post was inspired by two things this week. The first was a feminist post which was shared by a Facebook page I follow which had an image with the words “I’m a feminist and NO I don’t hate men.” The second thing was a post by atchka, “World’s Tinist Violin —,” and the reaction that it got on reddit.

As to the first. I’m a feminist. This shouldn’t really surprise anyone who reads my posts regularly. However, I’m not overly fond of men in general. Unfortunately, I’ve been in a position my entire life of being abused by men. I’ve been physically abused, I’ve been sexually abused, and I’ve been emotionally/psychologically abused. Eventually, a distrust of your abuser and your oppressor becomes a learned response. In other words, you become wary of men, not intentionally, but because of an almost Pavlovian response to systematic oppression and abuse. I said as much on this image and the response I got was decidedly aggressive, abusive, and misogynistic (I should add that the response did come from a man).

I’ll say this right now. You have the right to be angry at your oppressors and the privileged group(s) that they belong to.

On Atchka’s post on reddit, many people called him names and curse words for standing up against his abusers and oppressors. One person said that being an asshole, even to another asshole, just makes you an asshole. One response stood, shining, in the midst of all of this though. As Cyranothe2nd said:

Its vastly unfair to expect an oppressed person to always be nice and sweet to their oppressor and educate them on oppression, rather than get angry and/or expect their oppressor to educate themselves.

Furthermore, insults are a perfectly valid rhetorical choice. If someone is arguing stupidly, sometimes they need to be told that they are being stupid. I don’t feel that I should sacrifice accuracy in argument to civility. ESPECIALLY because civility tends to maintain the status quo and let people remain blissfully ignorant about oppression. Fuck. That.

Tone trolling is often a force of privileged silencing.

So can we just talk about the trope of the angry feminist, the angry fat person, the angry black woman, and on and on and on? Bigots very often use the oppressed person’s anger to delegitimize their arguments. If you search, you can find posts and articles on why it’s not our jobs, as the oppressed, to educate the privileged. There are resources for that and we have the weight of the world on our shoulders already. If I don’t have the spoons to be a teacher to a bigot, then I shouldn’t be obligated to do so.

Above all else, I, we, have the right to be angry at our abusers, at our oppressors and we have the right to react accordingly. We do NOT always have to be civil, we do NOT have to hide our emotions or be emotionless, we do NOT have to always be tolerant of the intolerant. It does not make you a better person than me just because you never get angry. In fact, anger and, well, finally being fed the fuck up, has been a driving force in a lot of change throughout history and all over the world. Anger, whether you like it or not, gets shit done. And you can’t even use the excuse that anger doesn’t help people become more tolerant because I have absolutely won arguments with bigots through anger where they have come around to my point of view.

It’s true that many bigots will become defensive (boy, you should see the comments in /r/TumblrInAction which Atchka’s post was cross-posted) and will respond with anger and sometimes it’s just a shouting match. But that’s okay… sometimes it’s cathartic and sometimes it’s justified. It’s okay to become fed up and to become so disgruntled and so frustrated that you are just about to burst. Being oppressed is not easy. There is no wrong way to be oppressed. You can be a calm oppressed person, an activist oppressed person, an angry oppressed person, an apathetic oppressed person, or any combination thereof. Everyone reacts differently.

I read a great article this morning on Psychology Today called “Must You Forgive?” which essentially argues that refusing to forgive your abuser is sometimes healthier than forgiveness, which is something that the abused are pressured into. Not forgiving is often seen as a moral failing, but it may in fact be the healthiest and most logical thing at that moment.

In the same way, believe that being angry at your abuser is justified and legitimate. When someone gets upset or tells someone that they’re not allowed, or shouldn’t get their point across in a certain way, it’s called tone policing. It’s yet another way of shutting down someone whose opinions you disagree with. Worse is when you tone police someone you actually agree with; when you believe that your brand of activism is the right one and everyone else’s is flawed or flat-out wrong because they choose to go about it differently from you. For instance, when a feminist tells another feminist, “Shhhh, don’t get so angry! Don’t yell so much! Don’t use angry words! They’ll think we’re all like that and they won’t listen to us anymore!” while wringing their hands worriedly.

The fact that our point can only get across if we’re acting as we’re expected to is part of the underlying problem to begin with. The fact that we’re only allowed to be submissive to our oppressors is a problem. And this is exactly what the reaction has been to anger against our abusers and oppressors — to be submissive. Well, I’m telling you right now that with a lot of us, that shit just ain’t flying.

Call me whatever you want, but I’m mad. I’m really mad and I don’t have enough spoons in the day to tolerate all of people’s bullshit as they rant and rave and call me names, and then have the audacity to tell me to keep calm and to blast me for getting upset? I don’t fucking think so, thank you very much. No one gets to silence my voice.