The world is always changing. But right now it’s changing in ways that specifically matter, and - crucially - in ways that we’re all now hyper-aware of. The feminist movement and the racial equality movement in the U.S. have probably never been quite as visible as they are right now, and with all the tension in and around them, it’s tempting to feel that they’re approaching some kind of zenith, that there’s something big on the horizon, a grand finale. The reality, however, is that there isn’t. They’re not even halfway done actually, so I want to talk a little bit about anger and pain, the tension they cause, and why they’re not just a result of progress, but are necessary for progress itself.
Across history, there have been many supposed times of ‘civility’ and ‘harmony’, and while these have included many eras where things were going relatively well, they’ve also included many, many eras where peace was only the result of total domination by one side, with effectively no threat to the oppressors by the oppressed, and ‘civil unrest’ only occurred when the usually-docile lower classes rose up to try and fight for their rights. So ironically, many of these peaceful, gentle times are among the worst stains on humanity: Ancient Egypt built the pyramids on the backs of slaves; Ancient Rome’s brutal conquest fed a peaceful and prosperous city that was a hub of science and engineering; Great Britain saw its Empire as a peaceful civilisation in spite of the oceans of blood spilled to take it; the USA was a relatively peaceful place when African slaves were building the white house; and all the while, women were being taught to peacefully accept that they simply weren’t clever or wise enough to be allowed to vote.
The roaring attrition seen in the U.S. today is not due to ‘tribalism’. The attrition is not due to liberals being snowflakes. It is not due to Trump. It is not due to anything, in fact, other than progress. In our pride, we tend to conveniently forget the hostility, division, and abrasiveness of previous social movements that we are all very glad happened: Martin Luther King Jr. is today portrayed and remembered almost exclusively as a gentle, reasonable man, with an almost Zen Buddhist temperament. He was not. He was righteously furious, and it was his fury that powered much of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. He did, after all, say that it was riots that were the language of the unheard - not ‘peaceful protest’. He was an advocate not just of equality; but of anger, and loud anger at that.
Today, the Suffragettes are more accurately remembered, widely heralded for their civil disobedience, their violence, and their anger, fighting for their right to vote. Anger as a weapon is condemned all too frequently, and Rebecca Traister’s ‘Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger’ is an incisive narration of the history of how fury has shaped and moved feminism, and delineates the countless biases held in today’s society. It contextualises anger for a modern world where, above all, Trump is president - and a world where more people than ever are finding themselves furious. She shows how, over and over again, people on both sides are required to be pissed off - in two very different ways - for the world to become a better place. For as long as feminism has existed, social progress has required first for women to be angry, and secondly for men to be upset.
The Anger of Good Women
Anger has been not just a tool but a necessity, because in pursuing any cause of social justice, the oppressed need to be angry, because it’s the only option: asking nicely cannot work, because to ask nicely is itself to submit: you cannot change the rules of the game by abiding by the rules. Moreover, two groups are not truly equal if that equality is regulated by the first group, and granted by them to the second. Equality often has to be seized, and so it is an unfortunate truth that rebellion and kindness do not mix.
Unfortunately, there is no nice, convenient subsitute for anger. We’d all prefer the quiet, calm, educational route in theory, for the victims to be able to stand at the front of the class and cheerily explain everything that’s wrong with society and why, and for all the white men to smile, nod, announce that they ‘get it now’ and give all the women and people of colour a standing ovation. This is a fantasy, to put it lightly.
So if equality is to be taken and not given, it raises the obvious question of “what if ‘progress’ goes too far?” There are many valid ways to respond to this, but the simplest is to say that there are good problems and bad problems, and currently, that would be a very nice problem to have.
The Necessary Upsetting of Men
In her book, Traister talks about anger with more detail, context, and nuance than I can, but what I really want to offer is a perspective from the other side: that there is a pain that comes with being informed that you are unknowingly benefitting from something. As much as we like to think we don’t we take things for granted - we do. And we do it all the time.
In the case of men, it’s that we can take for granted that we’ll be listened to when we say something. We can take for granted that we’ll get home safe at night, and that people won’t assume we know less than them about sports, technology, or science. We blindly assume that we got the job because we were the best candidate, and not because the most qualified candidate was female, but was deemed to have the ‘wrong temperament’ for the office. It’s unsettling to be told you’re just lucky, and it’s genuinely upsetting to be told you’re both lucky and completely ignorant to that same luck. To be forced to question everything you’ve ever worked for is to be forced to question everything you thought you were worthy of. Ignorance is the buffer between the world we think we live in, and the painful reality.
As men start to peel back the many plasters we’ve stuck on this festering wound of a problem, we will inevitably begin to realise all the levels of our own ignorance, and that will hurt. And that will make us upset.
Un/Reasonable
There are two ways to respond to pain, of any kind: constructively and destructively. The same men angry at the destructive actions and reactions of women to what they perceive to be ‘not a big deal’, are themselves failing to respond constructively.
Pain makes us selfish. Pain makes us withdraw. Pain simply makes it harder to be a good person. And society is not good at teaching men to work through pain with humility, particularly when that pain is an unfamiliar one to us.
No wonder then that the vicious backlash from not just some handful of extremists on the far-right, but from almost anyone who stands to lose anything - material, ego, or otherwise - by being awoken to their own ignorance.
So if we tell ourselves that the process can be, and should be smooth, that only leads to emotional violence when we’re suddenly hurt by the truth. It can’t possibly be our fault for doing something wrong, it’s that they’re being greedy, vindictive, or downright salty.
That lashing out can be vicious, and hurts the people trying to talk to us. And since society is a little too good at persuading women to respond to their pain with humility, this creates an absurd cycle that hinders the entire process: women abandon their niceness in the name of progress; men are hurt; men lash out, or gaslight; women question themselves; they revert to meekness; progress never comes.
Destructive female anger is necessary; destructive male anger is malignant. This is not hypocrisy, it is an issue of what each is an attempt to destroy.
There is, unfortunately, no universe in which oppressors can open their arms to equality and have nothing to fear. Their world has been built upon their own ignorance, and the destabilisation of change and the lifting up of the oppressed requires the sharp, painful, but ultimately harmless fall of the oppressors.
Pain is an issue necessarily central to social progress, and this needs to be acknowledged, digested, and understood. Niceness cannot be expected, and so white men need to be prepared for the ire of all the people they’ve pissed off, and to be able to respond with decency and dignity. Men need to be able to be scolded for their ignorance, because if we expect that the process of re-balancing society will be an easy one, everyone will lose.
