Anger Is An Energy

I couldn't believe it. I rewrote that email twice, trying to soften it, trying to make it less angry, less strident, less... you know, shrill.

And yet the answer still comes back, calling it "violent in design."

You know what that means. The person may understand your points, may even agree with some of them, but the sheer fact of your anger (justifiable though it may be) means that they can totally justify not responding to them.

Classic marginalising tactic, isn't it?

I'm feeling a bit weepy today, have just burst into tears twice on the way to work - the first time, over that email, the second time over Frances May Morgan's article in the last Plan B about learning to box. Funny, there she is, talking about the unacceptability of female anger and aggression and competitiveness, relating it to the work of Marnie Stern and Bat For Lashes. One quote, about a Natasha Khan interview where she expressed a desire to box, leapt out at me: "The exchange is revealing of a musician who has the drive of a sportswoman but who cloaks it in a dressing-up-box aesthetic because an ethereal woman is more acceptable than a tough one."

I don't know why that passage made me burst into tears, but it did. Because I'm the archetypical tough girl, demanding girl, intellectual girl, ANGRY girl - and I've just had it rubbed in my face by my idol how unacceptable this is.

What's so wrong with anger?

Well, it's obvious, isn't it. Apart from the price paid in terms of social interactions and compromising your own authority, there's the physiological implications, the stress, the high blood pressure, the stomach ulcers. Not to mention the psychological effects - that long term anger turns inwards, turns to resentment and sullenness and depression.

But that ignores a very pressing and important fact - anger *IS* an energy, it's a spur to action, an incitement, sometimes even an inspiration.

Sometimes I say that anger is the only reason I'm even still alive. That I exist - or rather, carry on existing, rather than giving up to suicide or worse - simply to prove other people wrong. The very fact of my life is a continued FUCK YOU to the people who told me I couldn't. Tell me that I CAN not do something (or rather, may not, according to societal rules about what women may and may not do) and I'll fucking DO IT just to prove you wrong.

A story from my childhood that I had totally forgotten: When my mother was finally ordained to full priesthood (and finally given her own parish) the mother of one of my childhood friends got in touch to congratulate her. "I always thought it would be Kate that would be ordained, though," she mused. "Why?" my mother demanded, surprised at this knowledge, given my feelings on organised religion. This friend recounted a story about me, aged about 9, in our local church, being told by the vicar that I could not be an acolyte, as only boys could be acolytes. Apparently, I looked him straight in the eye, nodded, and informed him "Fine, in that case, when I grow up, *I'M* going to be a PRIEST."

Clearly, I didn't. I grew up to be a computer programmer, a musician, a producer, a DJ, a music journalist, a digital artist, and all these other things that women Aren't Supposed To Do. But that spirit of that defiant little girl has never left me - tell me that I can't do something, and my anger provides the necessary impetus to get up and get on and bloody well do it.

So this is why I don't let go of my anger, why instead, I try to channel it, divert it instead of repress it. And why, when someone tries to write me off as "angry, shrill bitch" or "violent in design" or whatever - my response is, fuck you. My anger is the reason I'm even here.