Anger and the Feminine

“Anger often signifies that a boundary has been crossed.”

These words, from a very wise friend, allowed me to reclaim my anger. Like many women, I denied my anger. It had been shamed right out of me as I bought into the idea that girls should be sugar and spice and everything nice. We should be easygoing, going along to get along.  It isn’t okay for us to feel angry, much less express it.

But I was angry, angry about a lot of things- injustices in my personal life and those in the wider culture.  And because I wasn’t allowing myself to feel my anger or express it, it was wreaking havoc on my body.  All sorts of strange symptoms started to appear including thyroid issues and liver problems. According to Chinese medicine, the liver is the organ associated with anger, and in the chakra system, the thyroid is linked to the fifth chakra- our place of communication. My body was expressing what my voice could not.

But my friend’s words helped me to see that feeling angry wasn’t something that was a shortcoming or pathological or unfeminine. Rather, it was a sign that a boundary had been crossed- that someone had disrespected or not honored me in some way, perhaps my needs or my voice were ignored. 

The 2015 film, Grandma, starring Lily Tomlin (Elle) and Julia Garner (Sage), as a grandmother and granddaughter pair, shows this process of identifying when our boundaries have been crossed and recognizing that we are entitled to our anger.

Throughout the film, Elle gets angry. Sage, however, struggles with her grandmother’s hostility and tells her that she has an anger problem. Elle replies, “No, I have an a**hole problem. When people are a**holes, I get angry.” Elle grows increasingly frustrated with Sage’s passivity in the film and finally erupts telling Sage that she is going to have to learn to tell people “screw you”, which Sage ultimately does.

So now when I start to feel that burning in my stomach and chest, which are signs that I’m feeling angry, I ask “What boundary has been crossed?”  This helps me to stop shaming myself for my anger and allows me to start to get to know it. Once I answer the question, I can then consciously act on it, rather than unconsciously acting out. Asking this question is also a check to see that my anger really is warranted and that it isn’t due to an unconscious complex, or getting caught up in a mob mentality.

The ancient Greek mythic figure of Medusa is often the image of the angry, furious woman.  The goddess Athena’s shield was covered in her image as were the Temples of Artemis, the goddess of the wilderness, and of young girls (this image is from her temple on the island of Corfu). Medusa’s image reminds us of the need for anger, particularly feminine anger as it protects our boundaries.