![]() While writing Good and Mad, Traister realized she never felt more alive or more healthy, because for the first time she was able to fully recognize her own anger and the anger of the women around her. Women are often told to suppress their anger for health and wellness benefits, such as not grinding their teeth or raising their blood pressure. By characterizing anger this way, the patriarchy has worked to prevent women from recognizing their own political power. They shunned their own anger because it felt un-feminine or unjust. After the 2016 election, many women told her they were sad, or that their anger had subsided to be replaced with sadness. Her anger was a crucial, catalytic force for the Civil Rights Movement - a fact often gleaned by historians.Īs Traister explains, women are more likely to be viewed and to view themselves as sad, not angry. What we don’t hear is that when the funeral director refused to open Emmett’s casket, she asked “Do you have a hammer?… if you can’t open the box, I can, and I’m going in the box,” knowing that she wanted everyone to see his brutalized body. As Traister explains, Mamie Till is lauded for having insisted on an open-casket funeral, but is often depicted as simply a dutiful, sorrowful mother. His death, which became highly visible when Black newspapers published photos of his mutilated body, is widely regarded as having ignited the energy behind the Civil Rights Movement. One of the most powerful stories within the book is of Mamie Till, the mother of Emmett Till, a 14-year old Black boy who was lynched after having been falsely accused of flirting with a white woman. One of the most useful and rich aspects of Good and Mad is the way Traister pulls in forgotten historical context to better help us understand today’s political climate. Traister goes on to explain the implications of this division on today’s feminist movement – both white women’s misplaced anger at Black women and Black women’s rightful anger for the damage inflicted by their white counterparts. White women’s financial and familial dependence on white men led to one of the most destructive occurrences of misplaced anger. ![]() Black women were forgotten and harmed by the most visible white-led suffragist movement. They used their racial and financial privilege to further racist stereotypes, contributing to the roadblocks that prevented Black people from voting for the next century. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, sharply turned against Black activists such as Frederick Douglass and Ida B. They feared that there was only so much justice to go around, dolled out sparingly by the white male minority. While “It seemed there was a possibility that the young nation’s majority, people on whose subjugation and labor the country’s economy and political power were being built, might come together,” white women were “livid at having put aside their emphasis on women’s enfranchisement to focus on abolition through the Civil War,” growing even angrier when Black men were granted the right to vote before white women. In her book, Traister details the break between the once-united Suffrage, Anti-Slavery, and Labor movements. Too often in history, activist groups have turned their anger inward, driving wedges and shutting out contingents of their movement. Unfortunately, these patriarchal myths have also told women that there is not enough justice to go around. Through Good and Mad, Traister recognizes women who did not let go of their fight. In attempt to maintain control, the powers behind white supremacy and patriarchy have long told women that their anger is unattractive, un-ladylike, and unhealthy. ![]() There have always been brave women turning anger into political action, but patriarchal forces have derided and suppressed these movements as much as possible. In her book, Traister looks back much further than 2016 to the women whose anger has influenced movements throughout history, such as those who fought for fair-labor practices during the Industrial Revolution and the Black women who led the anti-lynching movement. Rebecca Traister examines this topic in her book Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger, published in October 2018. Many people view this moment as a turning point, and a time in which people are beginning to take women’s anger seriously. Women have taken to the streets to protest the racist immigration policies and stormed the United States Capitol building in defense of survivor Christine Blasey-Ford. ![]() Between the now-annual Women’s March, #MeToo, and a number of groundbreaking elections of women into office, women’s anger has begun to make headlines.
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