I've been mulling over this article, and wasn't sure where to start in tackling the relationship I had with Jezebel back in its hey-day, and also the relationship I had with myself, growing into...
I've been mulling over this article, and wasn't sure where to start in tackling the relationship I had with Jezebel back in its hey-day, and also the relationship I had with myself, growing into my acceptance and understanding of womanhood (not sure if worth clarifying, but I say this as a white, cis-het woman): Coming of age trying to navigate the complicated pop-cultural messaging broadcast to girls/women in the 2000s (while also having grown up more or less lacking a mother-figure or close, consistent woman-figure in my life, for whatever it's worth mentioning here).
Into my early 20s, around when I discovered Jezebel, I think I held the idea that sexism was 'solved'. From my young perspective, (Western) women had all the big-ticket things: freedom, work, sexual liberty, girl power, yada yada. Yea, pay-gap, but I wasn't in the work force yet and surely it was being solved.
Jezebel offered me a place to learn about the different experiences of women, and it was funny, sarcastic, and entertaining, too. It was a perspective I craved, but I also scoffed at it: if sexism was 'solved', was it even necessary? Was the website just a bunch of angry/emotional women yelling into the internet, a critique I'd heard so often of it?
Only as I've gotten older have I noticed and reckoned with the more insidious ways sexism/misogyny has in fact impacted me. First, elephant in the room: all that aforementioned negativity and complexity I had felt toward the very concept of 'womanhood'. As well, the ways I realized I was perceived by others when acting/reacting in certain ways (while being a woman), but also the ways I was taught to behave. The comments from evye + sparksbet speak better to the perception of angry women than I could hope to repeat, so I'll just say: their comments resonate with me.
In hindsight, I'm still not sure if some of my life experiences were simply due to an unlucky circumstance or differential treatment as a woman. Were certain careers not suggested to me because a girl wasn't perceived as being a 'good' fit for them, or were certain guidance counsellors/teachers just bad at their jobs? Did I not negotiate strongly enough for pay because of my specific experiences regardless of gender, or because of a wider trend in the way women are taught to weigh they work experience?
To help contextualize these types of experiences, I've come to deeply value story-swapping with (everyone of course, but especially) the women in my life. Sometimes those stories are shared with anger, because other women understand the source of that anger and it can be cathartic in the right dose. Sometimes they're also shared with sarcasm and humour, or confusion and frustration, or sadness. In that sense, when I was younger and didn't really have a way to voice these stories myself, Jezebel helped me find at least some context. And, if the commenters were so 'angry' and passionate, doesn't that speak also to a need other women had to be heard?
Not sure why I felt so compelled to share this much: I suppose in the hopes that it maybe resonates with someone, or gives someone something valuable to think about. :)
I have a question to throw out there after reading this article. Especially to the female readers out there who have in the past clicked with the type of articles and comments on Jezebel. What do...
I have a question to throw out there after reading this article. Especially to the female readers out there who have in the past clicked with the type of articles and comments on Jezebel.
What do you think of the idea of anger being learned as a (perhaps unhealthy) coping mechanism for anxiety?
One of my concerns is that the question comes off as minimizing due to our society's dismissal of things such as anxiety, and mental health. When instead I, personally, hold the exact opposite view of those two things. It's easy for me to say, as a man, that my voice is heard louder when I am not angry; that my voice is heard louder when I say "X makes me anxious". But I fear we, as a society, are stuck in a cycle of passive and then aggressive communication. One where it is expected that only if we are angry will we get what we want, and the other will become passive. Where, women especially, have been taught that they can not be heard, and can not make a difference in the world unless the things that make them anxious are instead sublimated into anger. And you have a lot of very valid things to be anxious about!
There's a couple of key points in the article that I think skirt up against this question, so I'd like to point them out here:
...
“I think that anger was part of it, yes, but I don’t think it was uncontrollable,” I replied. “I’d say it was very controlled, actually, because that was the way women learned they should express it.”
...
It also makes some people uncomfortable—in part because it involves women expressing their anger in public and sustained ways. “Every woman has a well-stocked arsenal of anger,” Audre Lorde wrote in 1981, which can act as a “powerful source of energy serving progress and change.”
I'll jump in. I think there needs to be a distinction made between anger as a result of society, and Anger (which I'll identify with a capital A) as a means to drive clicks - they are two very...
Exemplary
I'll jump in.
I think there needs to be a distinction made between anger as a result of society, and Anger (which I'll identify with a capital A) as a means to drive clicks - they are two very different things with distinct nuclei and distinct pathways. In the former case, I think anger is a result - it's a byproduct of having to live every moment of our lives in a system that demeans us, commodifies us, restricts us, thinks of us as weak and in need of protection while simultaneously seeing us as too powerful, too reactive, too angry, too pushy. That anger is earned, and I think that finding healthy ways to let that out is a good thing. That can look like discussing and complaining with friends to explore ideas and solutions; it can look like writing a scathing play or blog post to raise awareness; it can look like influencing public policy and systemic change; it can look like jiu jitsu classes or hovering over a pottery wheel as acts of self and community care.
One important note: We as women are NOT heard when we are angry, I want to make that very clear - we are more likely to be called unflattering names and dismissed if we engage in discourse while angry. This is exponentially more true for BIPOC women - I speak from experience as an Indigenous woman. I will also mention that we are unlikely to be heard if we say X makes us anxious - we are waved off as hysterical, as over-sensitive, as frightened little things that need to be protected. Our anxiety, as legitimate and real as it is, is held up as proof that we don't belong in such-and-such place or such-and-such role.
I also want to point out the pile-on principle, which I have mentioned before on Tildes, which occurs when a marginalized person experiences several instances of discrimination or hostility (overlapping or in sequence) - the result being that the impact increases as time goes on such that what could be a very small slight feels like a very big blow. The learned behaviour that results in us being heard is the repression of our anger, and I don't need to tell you that repressing anger is itself unhealthy! I'm pointing this out as I think it contributes to both the anxiety and the anger that you are discussing and should be worked into the calculus of understanding.
Anger (capital A) is manufactured to drive clicks. It is intentionally over the top, provocative, and is meant to get people to engage in order to make a case for advertising dollars. The more ludicrous the better. This Anger - whether it is based in a truth or not, whether it is based in identified concerns from our communities as women or not - exists to get people riled up without any concern for what happens next, as long as engagement is involved. This kind of Anger creates hostile environments where anger and anxiety flourish, and takes no responsibility for the fallout. It's a petri dish in an unscrupulous lab where conversations are swabbed on, encouraged to develop into something dangerous, and then thrown out with the kitchen trash to infect the rest of the world.
Now, I am not just speaking specifically about Jezebel or women's communities in these examples. I am speaking about online discourse specifically, and discourse in popular media generally (e.g. lumping in network news and their ilk). We are only stuck because the loudest and most broadly available voices are not always the most balanced or the most responsible. "Anger" (capital A) is at least partially artificial and as a means to an end; "anger" is earned, caused, and a natural reaction to existing in an unbalanced system.
This bit in particular needs emphasis -- those perceived as women are caught in a no-win scenario. We're told to be more aggressive and less apologetic and to speak up... but we are not rewarded...
One important note: We as women are NOT heard when we are angry, I want to make that very clear - we are more likely to be called unflattering names and dismissed if we engage in discourse while angry. This is exponentially more true for BIPOC women - I speak from experience as an Indigenous woman. I will also mention that we are unlikely to be heard if we say X makes us anxious - we are waved off as hysterical, as over-sensitive, as frightened little things that need to be protected. Our anxiety, as legitimate and real as it is, is held up as proof that we don't belong in such-and-such place or such-and-such role.
This bit in particular needs emphasis -- those perceived as women are caught in a no-win scenario. We're told to be more aggressive and less apologetic and to speak up... but we are not rewarded for such behavior. We're seen as bossy or hostile or bitchy when we behave this way -- and as you point out, this is only exacerbated for women of color. But when we don't do these things, our failure to do so is blamed for any lack of raises and promotions and other special treatment when compared to male colleagues.
I think in @arch's comment, this portion stuck out to me:
But I fear we, as a society, are stuck in a cycle of passive and then aggressive communication. One where it is expected that only if we are angry will we get what we want, and the other will become passive. Where, women especially, have been taught that they can not be heard, and can not make a difference in the world unless the things that make them anxious are instead sublimated into anger.
This portion honestly feels more applicable to men than it does to women (at least beyond the extent to which it's applicable to all humans). Men are socialized to believe that it's unacceptable to express any emotion other than anger, and thus must sublimate all negative emotions (including anxiety) into anger. Women are raised in ways that much more strongly discourage any expression of anger, for the same reasons that they're punished for expressing anger as adults in the workplace even when their male colleagues are rewarded for doing so. Of course this doesn't stop women from being angry, but I think the different ways that anger is framed as acceptable from men but unacceptable from women heavily influences how people relate to the emotion.
You've given me a lot to think about with your reply, as did the person above you. I want to thank you both for that, and for taking the time to respond to me. I am doing my best to hear you, and...
You've given me a lot to think about with your reply, as did the person above you. I want to thank you both for that, and for taking the time to respond to me. I am doing my best to hear you, and I'll be trying to come back and re-read both of your comments a few times today. I think there is a lot that I am missing, which means there is more that I can learn from your point of view.
Men are socialized to believe that it's unacceptable to express any emotion other than anger, and thus must sublimate all negative emotions (including anxiety) into anger.
I do want to respond to this portion of your comment explicitly. As a man, I have been working on my own fear of conflict with my therapist for a while now. Yes, fear of conflict, including fear of others anger as well as my own. I have recognized that it is resulting in part from me physically hurting someone when I was young, which wouldn't have happened if I did not act out of anger. I would like to think that at the end of the day, men and women are not that different mentally in the things that we need emotionally to be healthy. We are different in the ways that we have been treated by society, and the expectations that others have had for us since childhood, but I think that working to get beyond that as a culture, and getting to a healthier place for all sexes, genders, etc. will require similar things for both men and women. I am not trying to say that we can ever get there, I am trying to say that we should constantly work towards that goal. At least I hope to try to, personally.
Of course, this is all coming from my own personal position in life: as a man who has taken a passive role in communication, until I blew up in an anxiety attack. I am trying to learn to be assertive, to hear others, and to be more curious. And as a person who has often had an aggressive communicator nearby both in male and female forms (and to be completely honest more commonly in female forms for me). So what I am saying is that this could entirely be a product of my vantage point and not something that is applicable to most. I know that the majority of men are not like me, and it would be wrong for me to assume that even a minority of women are like me as well.
Your whole comment is really thoughtful, but this part in particular I absolutely agree with -- my only quibble is that I think the differences in how we've been treated by society can influence...
I would like to think that at the end of the day, men and women are not that different mentally in the things that we need emotionally to be healthy. We are different in the ways that we have been treated by society, and the expectations that others have had for us since childhood, but I think that working to get beyond that as a culture, and getting to a healthier place for all sexes, genders, etc. will require similar things for both men and women.
Your whole comment is really thoughtful, but this part in particular I absolutely agree with -- my only quibble is that I think the differences in how we've been treated by society can influence the precise steps we need to take to undo the harm that has done to us. As someone who was raised as a woman, the way assertive women are treated differently from assertive men is particularly salient to me, but I definitely didn't mean to suggest that your original comment was completely irrelevant to women -- I think there's some portion of the population that share your experiences there regardless of gender. It's just possible that the way we're socialized can have an impact on the proportion, if that makes sense.
I’d like to add one more group to your exemplary discussion on how the cynical and the grifters trade in capital-A Anger®. It’s understandable that you didn’t focus on them, as they are much more...
I’d like to add one more group to your exemplary discussion on how the cynical and the grifters trade in capital-A Anger®. It’s understandable that you didn’t focus on them, as they are much more prevalent in racial equity and trans rights discussions than in traditional anti-sexism movements. Namely, the Allies.
They truly believe that the problems are so bad. Therefore, they end up listening and elevating the most radical voices they can find. Thus, they spread capital-A anger under the assumption that because the problems are so severe, the strongest voices must be the most authentic.
An excellent addition, and well said. "Allies" who fan the flames rather than quell the fire because they haven't done enough listening and learning to understand what the issues are and how to...
An excellent addition, and well said. "Allies" who fan the flames rather than quell the fire because they haven't done enough listening and learning to understand what the issues are and how to support; who are so fired up themselves that they add to the inferno. "Allies".
I've been mulling over this article, and wasn't sure where to start in tackling the relationship I had with Jezebel back in its hey-day, and also the relationship I had with myself, growing into my acceptance and understanding of womanhood (not sure if worth clarifying, but I say this as a white, cis-het woman): Coming of age trying to navigate the complicated pop-cultural messaging broadcast to girls/women in the 2000s (while also having grown up more or less lacking a mother-figure or close, consistent woman-figure in my life, for whatever it's worth mentioning here).
Into my early 20s, around when I discovered Jezebel, I think I held the idea that sexism was 'solved'. From my young perspective, (Western) women had all the big-ticket things: freedom, work, sexual liberty, girl power, yada yada. Yea, pay-gap, but I wasn't in the work force yet and surely it was being solved.
Jezebel offered me a place to learn about the different experiences of women, and it was funny, sarcastic, and entertaining, too. It was a perspective I craved, but I also scoffed at it: if sexism was 'solved', was it even necessary? Was the website just a bunch of angry/emotional women yelling into the internet, a critique I'd heard so often of it?
Only as I've gotten older have I noticed and reckoned with the more insidious ways sexism/misogyny has in fact impacted me. First, elephant in the room: all that aforementioned negativity and complexity I had felt toward the very concept of 'womanhood'. As well, the ways I realized I was perceived by others when acting/reacting in certain ways (while being a woman), but also the ways I was taught to behave. The comments from evye + sparksbet speak better to the perception of angry women than I could hope to repeat, so I'll just say: their comments resonate with me.
In hindsight, I'm still not sure if some of my life experiences were simply due to an unlucky circumstance or differential treatment as a woman. Were certain careers not suggested to me because a girl wasn't perceived as being a 'good' fit for them, or were certain guidance counsellors/teachers just bad at their jobs? Did I not negotiate strongly enough for pay because of my specific experiences regardless of gender, or because of a wider trend in the way women are taught to weigh they work experience?
To help contextualize these types of experiences, I've come to deeply value story-swapping with (everyone of course, but especially) the women in my life. Sometimes those stories are shared with anger, because other women understand the source of that anger and it can be cathartic in the right dose. Sometimes they're also shared with sarcasm and humour, or confusion and frustration, or sadness. In that sense, when I was younger and didn't really have a way to voice these stories myself, Jezebel helped me find at least some context. And, if the commenters were so 'angry' and passionate, doesn't that speak also to a need other women had to be heard?
Not sure why I felt so compelled to share this much: I suppose in the hopes that it maybe resonates with someone, or gives someone something valuable to think about. :)
I was an avid Jezebel reader back in the day and still found the occasional article even up until very recently.
I really enjoyed this piece, thanks
I have a question to throw out there after reading this article. Especially to the female readers out there who have in the past clicked with the type of articles and comments on Jezebel.
What do you think of the idea of anger being learned as a (perhaps unhealthy) coping mechanism for anxiety?
One of my concerns is that the question comes off as minimizing due to our society's dismissal of things such as anxiety, and mental health. When instead I, personally, hold the exact opposite view of those two things. It's easy for me to say, as a man, that my voice is heard louder when I am not angry; that my voice is heard louder when I say "X makes me anxious". But I fear we, as a society, are stuck in a cycle of passive and then aggressive communication. One where it is expected that only if we are angry will we get what we want, and the other will become passive. Where, women especially, have been taught that they can not be heard, and can not make a difference in the world unless the things that make them anxious are instead sublimated into anger. And you have a lot of very valid things to be anxious about!
There's a couple of key points in the article that I think skirt up against this question, so I'd like to point them out here:
...
...
I'll jump in.
I think there needs to be a distinction made between anger as a result of society, and Anger (which I'll identify with a capital A) as a means to drive clicks - they are two very different things with distinct nuclei and distinct pathways. In the former case, I think anger is a result - it's a byproduct of having to live every moment of our lives in a system that demeans us, commodifies us, restricts us, thinks of us as weak and in need of protection while simultaneously seeing us as too powerful, too reactive, too angry, too pushy. That anger is earned, and I think that finding healthy ways to let that out is a good thing. That can look like discussing and complaining with friends to explore ideas and solutions; it can look like writing a scathing play or blog post to raise awareness; it can look like influencing public policy and systemic change; it can look like jiu jitsu classes or hovering over a pottery wheel as acts of self and community care.
One important note: We as women are NOT heard when we are angry, I want to make that very clear - we are more likely to be called unflattering names and dismissed if we engage in discourse while angry. This is exponentially more true for BIPOC women - I speak from experience as an Indigenous woman. I will also mention that we are unlikely to be heard if we say X makes us anxious - we are waved off as hysterical, as over-sensitive, as frightened little things that need to be protected. Our anxiety, as legitimate and real as it is, is held up as proof that we don't belong in such-and-such place or such-and-such role.
I also want to point out the pile-on principle, which I have mentioned before on Tildes, which occurs when a marginalized person experiences several instances of discrimination or hostility (overlapping or in sequence) - the result being that the impact increases as time goes on such that what could be a very small slight feels like a very big blow. The learned behaviour that results in us being heard is the repression of our anger, and I don't need to tell you that repressing anger is itself unhealthy! I'm pointing this out as I think it contributes to both the anxiety and the anger that you are discussing and should be worked into the calculus of understanding.
Anger (capital A) is manufactured to drive clicks. It is intentionally over the top, provocative, and is meant to get people to engage in order to make a case for advertising dollars. The more ludicrous the better. This Anger - whether it is based in a truth or not, whether it is based in identified concerns from our communities as women or not - exists to get people riled up without any concern for what happens next, as long as engagement is involved. This kind of Anger creates hostile environments where anger and anxiety flourish, and takes no responsibility for the fallout. It's a petri dish in an unscrupulous lab where conversations are swabbed on, encouraged to develop into something dangerous, and then thrown out with the kitchen trash to infect the rest of the world.
Now, I am not just speaking specifically about Jezebel or women's communities in these examples. I am speaking about online discourse specifically, and discourse in popular media generally (e.g. lumping in network news and their ilk). We are only stuck because the loudest and most broadly available voices are not always the most balanced or the most responsible. "Anger" (capital A) is at least partially artificial and as a means to an end; "anger" is earned, caused, and a natural reaction to existing in an unbalanced system.
Anyways, that's enough of an essay for today.
This bit in particular needs emphasis -- those perceived as women are caught in a no-win scenario. We're told to be more aggressive and less apologetic and to speak up... but we are not rewarded for such behavior. We're seen as bossy or hostile or bitchy when we behave this way -- and as you point out, this is only exacerbated for women of color. But when we don't do these things, our failure to do so is blamed for any lack of raises and promotions and other special treatment when compared to male colleagues.
I think in @arch's comment, this portion stuck out to me:
This portion honestly feels more applicable to men than it does to women (at least beyond the extent to which it's applicable to all humans). Men are socialized to believe that it's unacceptable to express any emotion other than anger, and thus must sublimate all negative emotions (including anxiety) into anger. Women are raised in ways that much more strongly discourage any expression of anger, for the same reasons that they're punished for expressing anger as adults in the workplace even when their male colleagues are rewarded for doing so. Of course this doesn't stop women from being angry, but I think the different ways that anger is framed as acceptable from men but unacceptable from women heavily influences how people relate to the emotion.
You've given me a lot to think about with your reply, as did the person above you. I want to thank you both for that, and for taking the time to respond to me. I am doing my best to hear you, and I'll be trying to come back and re-read both of your comments a few times today. I think there is a lot that I am missing, which means there is more that I can learn from your point of view.
I do want to respond to this portion of your comment explicitly. As a man, I have been working on my own fear of conflict with my therapist for a while now. Yes, fear of conflict, including fear of others anger as well as my own. I have recognized that it is resulting in part from me physically hurting someone when I was young, which wouldn't have happened if I did not act out of anger. I would like to think that at the end of the day, men and women are not that different mentally in the things that we need emotionally to be healthy. We are different in the ways that we have been treated by society, and the expectations that others have had for us since childhood, but I think that working to get beyond that as a culture, and getting to a healthier place for all sexes, genders, etc. will require similar things for both men and women. I am not trying to say that we can ever get there, I am trying to say that we should constantly work towards that goal. At least I hope to try to, personally.
Of course, this is all coming from my own personal position in life: as a man who has taken a passive role in communication, until I blew up in an anxiety attack. I am trying to learn to be assertive, to hear others, and to be more curious. And as a person who has often had an aggressive communicator nearby both in male and female forms (and to be completely honest more commonly in female forms for me). So what I am saying is that this could entirely be a product of my vantage point and not something that is applicable to most. I know that the majority of men are not like me, and it would be wrong for me to assume that even a minority of women are like me as well.
Your whole comment is really thoughtful, but this part in particular I absolutely agree with -- my only quibble is that I think the differences in how we've been treated by society can influence the precise steps we need to take to undo the harm that has done to us. As someone who was raised as a woman, the way assertive women are treated differently from assertive men is particularly salient to me, but I definitely didn't mean to suggest that your original comment was completely irrelevant to women -- I think there's some portion of the population that share your experiences there regardless of gender. It's just possible that the way we're socialized can have an impact on the proportion, if that makes sense.
I’d like to add one more group to your exemplary discussion on how the cynical and the grifters trade in capital-A Anger®. It’s understandable that you didn’t focus on them, as they are much more prevalent in racial equity and trans rights discussions than in traditional anti-sexism movements. Namely, the Allies.
They truly believe that the problems are so bad. Therefore, they end up listening and elevating the most radical voices they can find. Thus, they spread capital-A anger under the assumption that because the problems are so severe, the strongest voices must be the most authentic.
An excellent addition, and well said. "Allies" who fan the flames rather than quell the fire because they haven't done enough listening and learning to understand what the issues are and how to support; who are so fired up themselves that they add to the inferno. "Allies".