The Journey with Anger Behind Angry Feminist Workouts
Growing up as a Catholic Christian, I was taught to hold and control my anger. “Turn the other cheek.” As an Asian American girl, I was even more firmly told to control my anger. Outbursts, especially in public, were the worst transgressions and outwardly showing anger, or any “negative” emotion other than extreme happiness, was discouraged. “It’s unladylike.” “It’s embarassing.” This is the story of my journey with anger.
Why is anger negative? It is part of the human emotional map, just like any other emotion. But why is it also gendered? And White male anger is accepted. The white male is passionate, assertive, and shows leadership. But white male anger causes the most mass shootings in the entire world. Non-white male anger is not as praised, but it is reasoned with. But women have their own issues with anger.
Women’s anger, in high likelihood is due to actual behaviors of men. Men’s anger, especially towards women, often is because it is their reaction to women’s emotions. Except -- anger is not actually distributed by gender. We all have it because we are all human. So it is unfair how coded it is to have all of these rules on who gets to have it and display it and what it means when some of us show it and some of us are told to hide it.
Letting go of anger that hurts us is crucial, but how it fuels us can give us energy. Righteous anger, rooted in fear for our loved ones lives and futures, can be channeled into sustainable action. Anger fuels us. Soraya wrote about how rage is fueling in her book, Rage Becomes Her, and detailed it in a TedTalk. Brittney Cooper writes about anger as a black woman’s superpower in her book, Eloquent Rage and discusses it on NPR. There is a power to anger. Anger can lead to mass action. Not all of them are always male driven, either. The Women’s March, racially problematic as it was, was one of the largest mass protests in history, only having been surpassed now by The Black Lives Matter movement protests, which have all been fueled by anger of injustice and police brutality for the black community and have included marchers of all genders, races, intersectionalities.
Anger drives. When I first started this account, it was to take anger from sexism/racism (sometimes both racism & misogyny at once)/white feminism to go to the gym to take out the rage into a productive workout. Every time I was told to smile, I would hold the emotion within me and use it as fuel when I was on the bike, or the rower or performing one more set of leg lifts. I would hear the voice of a man who thought he had the right to treat me like I was property and increase the reps. Misogynistic and sexist jokes from work about women being on their period were conversations I took to heart, which meant I would increase my cardio. Annoyance at white women praising feminism but dismissing black women as “ghetto” drove me up the wall - to rock climbing and to pilates to stomach all that nonsense.
Working out with anger also was a healthy outlet for personal disruptions as well. I took arguments from partners and it got me into the gym, ready to pedal out all of the rebuttals I had. After a breakup, I was in gym 4-5x a week consistently, releasing anger of fear of being alone into multiple rowing sessions. It kept me toned, it helped me calm down, it riled me up into doing something productive.
Working out with anger gave me the drive to go protest more often as well. How could Eric Garner have been killed with an illegal chokehold in my city of New York? My friends were in the NYPD. It was unforgivable. Anger over the detention centers drove me to leave my house and participate in vigils all over the city outside of where the youth were being held without their parents, giving me strength to hold up signs about how Chinese children upon entry to the States were also separated from their parents. Protests became the ultimate cardio. Anger drove all of those workouts.
But anger, deep down, is rooted in fear. It is a warning sign to the brain that the environment we are stepping into is not safe, that there is injustice, that there is something to be fearful of. When we express anger, we express that fear. All of my examples above were productive ways but sometimes anger is not productive. It is destructive. Naming that fear is a great step in helping to overcome the anger, not in a way to hide it but in a way to soothe the underlying emotion.
Easing anger is crucial because it can fuel but it also causes burnout. There are some parts of the original theory of “anger is bad” that ring true. We hold anger in our body and that can lead to cancer and cardiovascular issues. It hurts the holder sometimes much more. So while anger at times for me was useful - it let me name the fear, it gave me energy at times - it wasn’t sustainable. Living in fear, even a fear that is acknowledged is not healthy. Perpetual anger with the only release being an assault on my body wasn’t healthy either. Even after naming the fear, when knowing that the fear cannot be absolved, wasn’t enough. A workout didn’t bring Daniel Pantaleo to be arrested, and now I couldn’t even get up enough mental energy to consistently do anything about it.
Working out when angry made me more exhausted, more unlikely to finish longer term sets for myself and I didn’t want to go to the gym because “I wasn’t that angry.” Anger also could come from so many different sources. Yes, sometimes I was angry at misogyny, racism ---> but sometimes anger came from myself - from hating my appearance, from being disappointed with myself, from all the belittling that we can do to ourselves. Anger came from inside myself towards myself - and punishing my body for those feelings was not the answer.
So at some point - I had to let go of anger in my workouts. No, I won’t change the name of the blog. But going consistently enough to work out with/without anger made me realize - when I thought of happy thoughts, I’d actually be able to go much further in my workout than when I previously was doing so out of anger. I could run longer by praising my knees rather than getting mad at my thighs. I would lift heavier when I would focus on how good positions my shoulders were in rather than focusing on some stranger who made me mad that day. And while I couldn’t change the patriarchy, I could focus and change my self-esteem and build on myself in the meantime to be able to better withstand challenges directly in front of me.
Anger got me into fitness, but love keeps me here. Recently, in attending a healing seminar for COVID where I acknowledged I had a fear of the future and was angry at the current state of affairs for COVID in the States, I attended a seminar of Ivy Lee at Luminae Wellness, where she stated that “anger is an unmet need.” That resonated deeply. I’d grown to be able to name the fear behind anger. It is a great technique when helping to channel anger. But acknowledging that there is a fear because there is an unmet need is how we actively heal from the anger.
You are not just afraid to be alone, you feel alone. You are not just afraid of being unsafe, you actively feel unsafe. When I was angry and able to name the fear of being ignored at work for my contributions, I wasn’t able to identify the need was to be seen as someone who could give valid contributions. Acknowledging the unmet need that I deserved to be allowed space as a someone with value gave me the strength to demand that for myself and make space all of my fully fledged emotions. Fear of the future for myself means that the unmet need is feeling security in my skillset, in my ability to survive, in my ability to create.
For the month of August 2020, I am teaming up with 4 bloggers of color to work on being more creative. I’m letting my anger (read: fear of the future) not hinder me in writing, thinking, dreaming of things outside of my scope. Fear of the future equates to aforementioned anger and ultimately is a path for decisiveness in designing my future. More love, more art for self-care for myself -- so this is anger translating itself into more love towards myself.
Loving Feminist Future Workout (31 Days)
31 lying down leg raises
10 burpees
31s left side plank
10 burpees
31s right side plank
11 burpees
31s plank
