'Any book that provides an alternative narrative to the one we’ve read throughout history, that of women as angelic, quiet, and acquiescent, should be celebrated.'
We’re living through a critical moment in history where women’s anger is simultaneously being challenged and used as a revolutionary force. The expression of women’s ire through the #MeToo movement and women’s marches is heartening. But a quick look at the gendered bias we see towards anger in the public sphere tells us they’ve by no means stopped the inertia of patriarchal status quo.
When it comes to sexual harassment, assault, or infringement on our reproductive rights, the only rational response is anger. But as Traister outlines in her book, we’ve been schooled to believe that anger is unladylike and unattractive and this has been reinforced through our punishment in the professional and political spheres when we do express it.
The use of water therapy — or as it’s referred to in the book ‘the drowning game’ — to supress the sister’s feelings, be it desire, anger, or sadness, mirrors the rhetoric we’ve been seeing in the public sphere that reinforces angry women as hysterical or unhinged. Think of the deeply engrained gender stereotypes we witnessed in action during the fiery, emotive testimony of Brett Kavanaugh compared to Christine Blasley-Ford’s polite, palatable anger during the Kavanaugh hearings.
The decision to work with the limitations placed on women’s voices in a literal sense finds a stark parallel in the silencing of senators — and now presidential candidates — Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren who have both been told quite literally to shut up by male colleagues. In her feminist manifesto, Mary Beard traces this systemic silencing of women in the public sphere back to Roman antiquity to show how deeply entrenched these beliefs are.
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