Unapologetically Angry!

You perhaps have heard the joke about the crash of an aeroplane when the only conscious and available captain on board who happened to be a female – out of her rage and fury – chose not to communicate and then under her presumed notion that she would not be understood by the men sitting on the other side, later become a reason of a substantial loss of precious lives.

The ridiculing joy drape in the laughter over the jokes deriding women, is the everyday ordeal women endure. They hoot and slander this systematically induced emotional unhealthiness as HER gender-linked hysterical paranoia instead of admitting it as a devastating reaction looms after a long and often muzzling of her own complaining and dissenting voice. She often ignores, avoids or tolerates the nerve-wracking and mocking episodes of disregard only because the patriarchal dictation of her very own people – including the ones of her own gender – manipulates her to opt to bottle up her feelings and emotions over outburst and outpouring. This genderization of anger compels a man to remain violent and make women feel coy.

The disdainful misconception that women are dumber and more incompetent when are annoyed, excited or distressed, suppresses the need for the emotional well-being in the suffocated noise of unpleasant and unrealistic crackers. They don’t want to bother to look into her side because they can’t fathom her silence nor her anger and ire which demand her to yell, scream or being vehement and forceful.

Even the new-age rebellious woman struggling against the deep-seated misogyny often succumbs to the disparaging arrogances. What is she afraid of? You guess it right. Yes – she is exhausted and appalled of unending name-calling and mud-slinging; labeling and discrediting and disassociation associated with the demeaning reactions intruding her public and private life followed by her dare to express her anger and discontent. To avoid the break-in of ridicules, most of the times woman squirms and sheathes herself into self-destructing depression and annihilating silence.

Anger is an emotion characterized by antagonism toward someone or something you feel has done wrong with you calculatedly or purposefully. An excessive and controlled anger span over ages leads to an outburst and aggression often misread as anger which results in increased blood pressure, uneven heart rate and other physical changes that make straight thinking a difficult task and can become a cause of harm to the physical and mental health.

Conversely, acknowledging, unjudging and accepting the rage as a healthy way to release the negative energies help anyone to ensure their mental health and emotional well-being.

Repressing anger is not a good idea. Repressing anger is just like denying the existence of a problem or trouble. Piling up the anger eventually causes aggressive, quarrelsome and argumentative behavior, poisons the overall comfort and induces the harm to the physical and mental health of a woman and man alike.

The patronization of genderization of emotions and feelings shrinks the actualization to differentiate the acknowledgment of emotion for any gender from the reaction to the emotion by any gender.

Regardless of the gender, we as a society are convinced with the rightfulness of the stigma adhered to the angry woman. Our bringing up is stirred with the notion that anger is a negative and extremely harmful sentiment and is particularly shattering and destructive for the image of a ‘good and civilized’ woman. Cheery on the pie is WOMEN CAN’T DEAL WITH IT.

The women who react to social media trolling are the perfect example of how society, in general, sees them. For most of them out there, an angry woman is a crazy woman; an aggressive woman is a mentally distressed woman, and an outrageous woman is an uncivilized obnoxious woman and ultimately poses a great threat to the civic sense and morality of the society.

Despite being overstrained and sickened with the notion to learn the mantras and techniques to hush anger with more will power and endurance, women in almost every culture and society surrender their expression of anger and fall prey of the consequences of loss of mental and physical health. This surrender further paves the ways for molestations, physical abuse, emotional exploitations, sexual assaults, marital subjugation and rapes, discrepancies in finances and opportunities of growth and learnings and other perils obstructing in the well-being of a society free of gender disparity and inequality.

Bashing, smearing and torturing women is a norm in rural culture but the women living in cities, should not be considered less tormented by the entrenched patriarchy of ages. Being stuck in the male-dominance learnings-of-all-life and a desire to live a dictation less life, women deal with more veiled ridicule done by the urban men. The people called themselves educated and liberal often demonstrates masqueraded form of intimidation of the cult in tinting women, not as a victim; but as a wrongdoer, offender, naïve, irresponsible, incapable and inept.

The recent loss of the cool of many impersonated progressive minds (males and females alike) to the Aurat March, exposed many such fake ultra-modern individuals and unmasked our spirit to contribute towards the equality. The anger of women of Aurat march was misread and misjudged by the people in general as we are only familiar with her casual attitude of suppressing it for long and rarely expressing it and one day when the lava fuming inside bursts out; sometimes without any considerable provoking, we are programmed to label it with the names and titles such as hysterical, panic-stricken, feverish, exaggerated, incompetent, incapable, emotionally weak, frustrated, crazy, wild and others. Therefore, women every so often remain uncomfortable in expressing anger.

Men are told not to cry; men are taught not to express their soft feelings; men are programmed to ensure their superiority so they may elevate themselves as angry and ferocious creature who can raise his stature further with his hurl and howl whereas women are instructed to learn to suppress anger; to express their discontent with silence and cries and programmed to contain their disgruntlement within so a timid, naïve, diffident, nervous, unconfident and mostly a sad being can easily be brought up to rule.

The disparity and ill-acknowledgment of the feelings of men and women and callous ‘genderization’ of emotions, refrain her to explore her potential and prove her mettle. Society adores women who are composed, calm and definitely quiet whereas worship men who are fearful, fuming and fierce.

Famous writer and activist Soraya Chemaly, a staunch feminist in her book ‘Rage becomes her: The Power of Women’s Anger’ enlightens the significance of the expression of anger for the emotional well-being of a woman.

She writes, ‘’ anger is the emotion that best protects women against danger, unfairness and injustice. Understanding it and learning to think about its methodical uses in response to threats like these allow women and girls to move from passivity, fear, and withdrawal to awareness, engagements, and change.’’

Chemaly in her book explains the value of acknowledging anger as anger and highlights how the proper channelization of anger makes people visible and repression of anger ends up with their instability and invisibility.

Recent scientific research conducted at the University of Aberdeen reveals that rage could help women to improve their psychological health and move society forward. The study suggested women experience a rebound effect when they suppress angry emotions which result in greater feelings of fury, outrage, and disgust than their male counterparts. Hence containing the sentiments within harm them more too.

Many of the other scientific studies have shown that the common health issues women deal with and which are often derogatorily exaggerated to make women feel inferior such as depression, anxiety, distress, digestion disorders, sleep disorders, discomfort and lack of interests and concentration and others, are the repercussions of the repression of an anger that extremely hinder their ways leading to the conscious of progress, power, and puissance.

In South Asian region particularly in Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh, instead of shattering the myth that women are more emotional and irrational, the mansplaining and moral policing are being more stereotyped by the new-age television, popular literature, films, art, and theatre. Even in these times, we are failed to grasp the anger of a woman as a norm and a necessity towards her physical, mental and emotional well-being.

Our media, culture and community and society do not promote that women have equal right to disclose their discomfort and annoyance at any given dislikeable situation as unapologetically as men do. They also do not advocate that women are as equally entitled to raise their voice, uproars and rages to make their opinions and grievances heard and their authority being declared to subjugate the opponent – without the terror of being judged – as men do. Her needs, desires, and agonies demand not to be muzzled not even by herself. Under the influence of cultural stereotypes, she has often barred from the contemplation that compromise is not solely her responsibility nor is the only option to stick to.

Why can’t we mold our mindset to strengthen the belief that men are equally required to control and manage anger and aggression and to learn the fair expression and exercise calculated and manageable rage as women are expected to?

Aggression is as injurious to the health and well-being of men as it is for women. There must be no discrepancy in acknowledging the expression of any emotion for one gender as a demonstration of strength and for another as a depiction of weakness.

This is the disparity which gives oxygen to the physical and emotional abuse, blackmailings, honor-killings, acid throwing, revenge porn, rape and other horrors of superiority complexes of being a man.

On the other hand, women first should learn to acknowledge their emotions and then motivate themselves to exercise their right to express their emotions in its real state to cover a mile towards ungenderization of the emotions and feelings for a healthy and indiscriminating society – not only for wives, mothers, daughters and sisters but for husbands, fathers, brothers and sons too.

There is no shame, disgrace and weakness for men in crying and no embarrassment, humiliation, and name-calling for women in yelling, expressing dissatisfaction and mourning when the heart and mind are battling with agonies, pressures, and discomforts.

To overcome the gender-based emotional discrimination, we must learn to unlearn the rot lessons of patriarchy and irrelevant models of functioning of an individual; to re-mold the norms of crying for him, unquestionably and anger for her – unapologetically.