soraya chemaly, from rage becomes her: the power of women’s anger, 2018
[“Sandra Thomas, a professor of nursing at the University of Tennessee, spent decades studying women's anger, aggression, and emotional lives. In a 2005 review of years of research, including crosscultural studies in several nations, she found that the most consistent and prevalent theme in women's recounting incidents in which they felt and expressed anger was powerlessness. Powerlessness characterized two-thirds of situations described by women. "Women wanted someone or something to change, and they could not make that happen," Thomas wrote. "In fact, it was not uncommon for a woman to say that her significant others or coworkers were not even listening to her views or requests. Being told that your anger, and what it rep-resents, is invalid is perhaps the epitome of powerless-ness." Powerlessness is one of the reasons women cry more. It is less likely to cause an angry response in the person a woman is talking to.
Girls are constantly seeking ways to convince people they know, respect, and love that what they are saying when they describe their experiences or their anger and frustration is true, and that it is serious. Even at just eight to ten years old, young girls have been found in studies to think they will be made fun of or disciplined when they display anger. The culprits? Classmates— especially boys— but also, disturbingly, teachers. As girls move into adulthood, their awareness of the relationship between their anger and popularity becomes acute.
The gender beliefs and display rules that fuel these interactions, when discussed in terms of research or social science, can sound categorical and heavy-handed, but, in our actual lives, especially family life, they are far more subtle and invisible. The sexism we don't see is written in the cadence of traditions and habits. It makes its way into our identities around dinner tables, as we carpool, during school plays. It's going on when you ask only your ten-year-old daughter to set the table and send only her eight-year-old brother out to shovel snow. That's why it's important to consider that while anger-denial responses are common everywhere, they are most cutting and consequential at home, which is where the majority of girls and women say they feel and express anger most frequently. Everyday discrimination against girls and women is bound so tightly with prevailing cultural norms and "family-friendly" traditions that we barely see it for what it is: a massive social injustice perpetrated at every level of society.
We all have the right to believe what we believe and to live life as we see fit. But that doesn't mean we don't get to call what is clearly discrimination by its proper name.
Benevolent sexism is still sexism. Religious sexism is still sexism. Both operate at intimate and personal levels but extend into every aspect of our lives, establishing a complex and dynamic model for difference and domination that spirals outward.
A family, the starting point of our socialization, is an initial, foundational condition, and small changes in those conditions yield enormous advantages. Our emotional divisions, the ones that discourage and punish women's anger while cultivating and often rewarding men's, generate and sustain persistent imbalances in behavior and outcomes.
When individual people are sexist at home— implicitly or overtly, with hostility or with benevolence— their communities and societies are less egalitarian. A 2012 study of gender inequality in fifty-seven countries found that the gender beliefs of individuals in their homes "don't stay confined to the person who has them, but affect how a society functions." The more sexist individuals are, the more unequal the society. Societies with high levels of household and interpersonal sexism are also the least stable and secure. Working with a collaborative team, Houston's Rice University professor of political science Valerie Hudson conducted more than ten years' worth of research definitively showing that the greatest predictor of a nation's peacefulness and security is the way that girls are treated in their own homes.”]
