A BEST BOOK OF 2018 SELECTION NPR * The Washington Post * Book Riot * Autostraddle * Psychology Today A BEST FEMINIST BOOK SELECTION Refinery 29, Book Riot, Autostraddle, BITCH Rage Becomes Her is an “utterly eye opening” (Bustle) book that gives voice to the causes, expressions, and possibilities of female rage. As women, we’ve been urged for so long to bottle up our anger, letting it corrode … book that gives voice to the causes, expressions, and possibilities of female rage.
As women, we’ve been urged for so long to bottle up our anger, letting it corrode our bodies and minds in ways we don’t even realize. Yet there are so, so many legitimate reasons for us to feel angry, ranging from blatant, horrifying acts of misogyny to the subtle drip, drip drip of daily sexism that reinforces the absurdly damaging gender norms of our society.
In Rage Becomes Her, Soraya Chemaly argues that our anger is not only justified, it is also an active part of the solution. We are so often encouraged to resist our rage or punished for justifiably expressing it, yet how many remarkable achievements would never have gotten off the ground without the kernel of anger that fueled them? Approached with conscious intention, anger is a vital instrument, a radar for injustice and a catalyst for change. On the flip side, the societal and cultural belittlement of our anger is a cunning way of limiting and controlling our power–one we can no longer abide.
“A work of great spirit and verve” (Time), Rage Becomes Her is a validating, energizing read that will change the way you interact with the world around you.
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Soraya Chemaly turns her rigorous compassion, scrupulous fairness, and microscopically sharp clarity of thought on our culture’s forced suppression of female anger…Our world will never be the same. And, yes, that’s a threat.
Women’s anger is the last taboo. In this provocative examination of the forbidden, hidden emotion, Soraya Chemaly asks ‘What do we lose, personally and as a society, by not listening to women’s anger or respecting it?’ Answer: the true voice of half of humanity. If you want to understand why #Metoo has swept the country, you need to read this book.
With every chapter I felt more power flooding in where fear and shame once were. This is a book that could change your life, and the world.
This explosive, vital and unapologetic book lifts the lid on a hugely important but little-discussed aspect of gender inequality. With skill, wit and sharp insight, Chemaly peels back layers of cultural norms and repression to lay bare the reality of women’s rage. She joins the dots to trace the connections between misogyny, violence and the repression of female anger. She weaves a path that takes us from pornography to the playground, media to medicine. This book should make you furious. It is a battle cry for women’s right to rage: teaching us that we have every right to be angry, and demanding that the world pays attention to that anger.
How many women cry when angry because we’ve held it in for so long? How many discover that anger turned inward is depression? Soraya Chemaly’s Rage Becomes Her will be good for women, and for the future of this country. After all, women have a lot to be angry about.
Every woman should read this.
The current political climate has taught me I have no idea how to be angry in a healthy way. I either simmer in outrage or shut my feelings down. Reading Rage Becomes Her didn’t make me less angry, it made me wrathful. As in how will l use the power of my wrath to be a stand for what I care about?
In Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger, author Soraya Chemaly explores and confronts the gendering of emotions, in this case the gender ideas of anger. Social norms teach us that anger expressed by females is undesirable, uncomfortable, and certainly not feminine, unlike with males where it is accepted because of its normalized tie to masculinity. She discusses how this suppression of anger harms women physically, emotionally, professionally and politically, and how the world would benefit from the much needed voice that the healthy and penalty-free expression of women’s anger would provide. Chemaly stresses that Rage Becomes Her is not a self-help book nor is it an anger management guide. “Self-help, different from self-efficacy, is frequently what you do when you aren’t getting the help you need from your society. We cannot “self-help” our way to being heard, taken seriously, paid fairly, cared for adequately, or treated with dignity. We cannot “self-help” our way to peace or to justice.”
Chemaly’s research and writing provides enormous validation as she connects the dots between ignored anger and common women’s issues ranging from shame to chronic pain, while also offering a look at culture, sexualization, women’s rights, #MeToo, raising girls, and even the beauty industry which profits from it all. Rage Becomes Her is bold, confrontational, and angry, and it embodies Chemaly’s message that women’s anger can lead to meaningful change. It embraces femininity and feminism equally, because it is. “Because the truth is that anger isn’t what gets in our way – it is our way. All we have to do is own it.”