{"id":1558,"date":"2013-04-11T15:34:32","date_gmt":"2013-04-11T10:04:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/asap-asia.org\/blog\/?p=1558"},"modified":"2014-02-07T12:04:55","modified_gmt":"2014-02-07T06:34:55","slug":"im-an-angry-feminist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asap-asia.org\/blog\/im-an-angry-feminist\/","title":{"rendered":"I\u2019m an angry feminist, Anne Th\u00e9riault Writes For the Good Man Project"},"content":{"rendered":"

Let’s revisit Anne Th\u00e9riault’s wonderful piece! She wrote this piece for the Good Man Project following a conversation with another blogger on why she stopped being feminist and started liking men. Read the original with a prologue by Good Man Project on our blog<\/a>. Anne Th\u00e9riault regularly blogs at the Bell Jar<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m an angry feminist.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"womenI\u2019m angry at the way that society treats women, angry at all of the big and little examples of casual misogyny that I see every day. I\u2019m angry that our culture still puts so much value in a woman\u2019s appearance, rather than focussing on her brains or personality.<\/p>\n

You know what, though? I don\u2019t think that being angry and being a feminist are terrible things; in fact, I believe that the contrary is true. And I feel frustrated by our media and culture constantly representing angry feminists as psychotic, man-hating bitches. So when the Good Men Project posted an article with the title, \u201cHow I Stopped Being an Angry Feminist, and Started Loving Men<\/a>,\u201d I was upset. I felt that this just furthered the idea that angry feminists are Bad Women, and, honestly, I\u2019m tired of reading stories about ladies who used to be angry feminists and then found redemption through the love of a good man.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve since chatted with Sarah Beaulieu\u00a0and understand that this wasn\u2019t her intention, but still\u2014intent isn\u2019t magic, you know? And as much as I appreciate what she was trying to say (that anger wasn\u2019t helping her heal from her multiple sexual assaults\u2014love was, in the end, what gave her peace), and as much as I understand that she\u2019s speaking about her personal experience (although she does make a few broad generalizations as well), I do think that the title and content of her article are problematic, even dangerous.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not angry because I hate men. I\u2019m not even angry\u00a0at<\/em>\u00a0men. I\u2019m angry at the system that, for the lack of a better term, most people refer to as the patriarchy. As far as defining the patriarchy, I don\u2019t think anyone has ever done it better than Ashley Judd, so I\u2019m going to use her words here:<\/p>\n

Patriarchy is not men. Patriarchy is a system in which both women and men participate. It privileges,\u00a0inter alia<\/em>, the interests of boys and men over the bodily integrity, autonomy, and dignity of girls and women. It is subtle, insidious, and never more dangerous than when women passionately deny that they themselves are engaging in it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I have participated in this system. I still do, really, as much as I try not to. I participate in it when I work hard to make myself sweet, smiling and non-threatening, even in the face of blatant sexism, because I know that that\u2019s the easiest way to get through life. I participate in it whenever I tell a man that I\u2019m a feminist and then feel the need to follow up by telling him that I don\u2019t hate men. I participate when I shave my legs, put on makeup or wear a cute dress, because I am helping to further the idea that there is one narrow definition of how women should look. And sure, I\u00a0like<\/em>\u00a0doing these things, but I also realize that I want to look a certain way because the idea this is what my appearance I\u00a0should<\/em>\u00a0be has been pushed on me for my entire life.<\/p>\n

\"image\"I participate in the patriarchy when I write for the Good Men Project, trying to make my feminism safer, more palatable, in an attempt to convince you that I\u2019m not like those other feminists, the feminists that some of you hate so much. And just to be clear, these posts have been my own choice to write, and I have come up with both the content and the subject matter, so don\u2019t think that I am trying to obliquely criticize the project or its editors. I chose to try to sugarcoat feminism, and now I regret it, and I have to own that.<\/p>\n

But make no mistake, I\u00a0am<\/em>\u00a0an angry feminist. I\u2019m angry at the way that society treats women, angry at all of the big and little examples of casual misogyny that I see every day. I\u2019m angry that our culture still puts so much value in a woman\u2019s appearance, rather than focussing on her brains or personality. I\u2019m angry about lack of easy access to birth control and abortion, and the way that some conservative politicians seem to view women as nothing but a uterus on legs.
\n<\/code><\/p>\n

I\u2019m angry at the people who have told me that no one will respect me because I call myself a feminist.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019m angry at the people who have told me that I\u2019m too reasonable, caring and compassionate to be a feminist.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m angry that when I do call someone out on their misogyny, I end up being castigated for coming across as too outraged, too abrasive, just because I\u2019m not always willing to kindly, sweetly educate.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m angry that the onus is always on women to explain, to be patient, to understand, when the person you\u2019re being asked to educate could just as easily educate themselves, should they want to.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m angry at how often I find myself stroking men\u2019s egos, promising them that promoting women\u2019s rights will be a benefit and not a detriment to them.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m angry at how often I find myself excusing my actions and words based on the grounds that I\u2019ll catch more flies with honey.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m angry at how often I feel obligated to be\u00a0nice<\/em>, because I feel that people won\u2019t take me seriously otherwise.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m angry at the fact that there are tons of people who won\u2019t take me seriously anyway, whether I\u2019m nice or not, just because I\u2019m a woman.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m angry at the way the patriarchy ingrains a deep-seated self-hatred in women, a hatred that begins at a very young age.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m angry whenever women feel the need to behave in a certain way just because they\u2019re women.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m angry whenever other women happily take advantage of all the rights that they\u2019ve gained thanks to the feminist movement, then turn around and say that they\u2019re not feminists.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m angry whenever people talk about how good women had it a century ago, because social codes dictated that men had to be more polite to them or some bullshit. As if having someone feel obligated to hold the door open for you totally makes up for not being able to own property, vote or have any kind of bodily autonomy.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m angry when people say that women were \u201cgiven\u201d the vote, as if suffragettes didn\u2019t fight tooth and nail, enduring prison, physical violence and sometimes death just so that we could have this right.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m angry about a lot of stuff, but I think that\u2019s a good thing, not a bad thing. I think that anger can be a good way, sometimes the only way, to fuel change. Anger at injustice is often the spark that ignites political and social movements, and anger can keep you fighting the good fight even when all your other resources feel used up. Anger is transformative, and can mean the difference between passively accepting oppression and waiting for someone else to deal with it, and suddenly realizing that if you want to see change,\u00a0real<\/em>\u00a0change, you have to be the one to stand up for your beliefs.<\/p>\n

And yes, sometimes I am angry with specific men, when they\u2019ve done or said something that\u2019s sexist, misogynist or just plain hurtful. Sometimes I\u2019m angry with specific women for the same reasons. But that doesn\u2019t mean that I hate men or women as a whole. And sometimes it can be hard to maintain this perspective, when I\u2019m faced with an onslaught of negativity about women and feminism, but still, I manage to separate the individuals from the group.<\/p>\n

So my hope is that, while reading this, those of you who have had negative experiences with individual feminists will try to understand that the unfair actions of one particular person don\u2019t mean that you should write off the feminist movement. Please don\u2019t conflate your anger at things that have been said or done by people who label themselves as feminist with anger at feminism in general \u2013 because I promise you that no one single person (or even group of people) is representative of the whole.<\/p>\n

Instead, maybe you could join me in directing your anger outward, to all the injustices that both men and women deal with in the face of the patriarchy and its desire to impose strict gender roles on all<\/em>\u00a0of us. Because I can tell you from personal experience that the patriarchy hurts men, too. Because I don\u2019t want my son to grow up believing that being a boy means that he can only like certain things or behave in certain ways, in the same way that I don\u2019t want to feel constricted by my gender, either.<\/p>\n

Because honestly I think that if we were able to stop fighting with each other and instead use our anger to fight oppression, everyone would win.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Let’s revisit Anne Th\u00e9riault’s wonderful piece! She wrote this piece for the Good Man Project following a conversation with another blogger on why she stopped being feminist and started liking men. Read the original with a prologue by Good Man Project on our blog. Anne Th\u00e9riault regularly blogs at the Bell Jar. I\u2019m an angry…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":4097,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[284,278],"tags":[190,114],"class_list":["post-1558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feminism-vaw-srhr","category-ideologies","tag-feminism","tag-patriarchy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/asap-asia.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/blog-featured-image-logo.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3O7nG-p8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asap-asia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asap-asia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asap-asia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asap-asia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asap-asia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1558"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/asap-asia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1558\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1746,"href":"https:\/\/asap-asia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1558\/revisions\/1746"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asap-asia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asap-asia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asap-asia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asap-asia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}