116 Quotes by Soraya Chemaly

We minimize our anger, calling it frustration, impatience, exasperation, or irritation, words that don’t convey the intrinsic social and public demand that ‘anger’ does. We learn to contain our selves: our voices, hair, clothes, and, most importantly, speech. Anger is usually about saying “no” in a world where women are conditioned to say almost anything but “no.

Anger is usually about saying “no” in a world where women are conditioned to say almost anything but “no.

In my experience, it is difficult for many adults to accept that boys can and should control themselves and meet the same behavioral standards that we expect from girls. It is even harder to accept that girls feel angry and have legitimate rights not to make themselves cheerfully available as resources for boys’ development.

As women, we are continuously told to live in the cracks of a world shaped by and for men, without complaining or demanding. Without being angry. So we adapt, and when we do, we use familiar minimizing expressions to describe what we feel: ‘It was annoying.’ ‘I was so frustrated.’ ‘I can’t believe he said that.’ ‘I’m so disappointed.

Every girl learns, in varying degrees, to filter herself through messages of women’s relative cultural irrelevance, powerlessness, and comparative worthlessness. Images and words conveying disdain for girls, women, and femininity come at children fast and furiously, whereas most boys’ passage to adulthood – even for boys disadvantaged by class or ethnicity – remains cloaked in the cultural centrality of maleness and masculinity.

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.

The challenge we face is in being unapologetic about our desires and decisions and in not judging other women’s choices. It is in rechanneling the anger, guilt, and shame that we often encounter into creating a culture that no longer conflates the word woman with mother and the word mother with sacrifice.

It took me too long to realize that the people most inclined to say “You sound angry” are the same people who uniformly don’t care to ask “Why?” They’re interested in silence, not dialogue. This response to women expressing anger happens on larger and larger scales: in schools, places of worship, the workplace, and politics. A society that does not respect women’s anger is one that does not respect women – not as human beings, thinkers, knowers, active participants, or citizens.

It is not just a coincidence that we are at an uncomfortable strategic inflection point for the rights of girls and women just as we face grave threats to democratic values and the health of the planet. One cannot be separated from the other. This is an era of angry women and women willing to make noise. This is not a luxury but a necessity. Be angry. Be loud. Rage becomes you.