I am angry.
That’s an understatement.
I’m filled with a burning, swelling rage that I’m having trouble controlling. I am controlling it—just. And I’m angry that I’m controlling it. That this world won’t accept a lack of control on my part, while it not only accepts it in powerful white men, but rewards it.
I am angry that I feel the need to control myself, when powerful white men are allowed to be out of control. To be filled with fire and brimstone and fury and hate, and they suffer no consequences.
I am angry that controlling my own emotions is still my first instinct when I feel them growing too big for the room. I want to rage and scream and cry and smash and obliterate. But I control myself because the consequences for showing anger are much higher for women than they are for the men who are the cause of that anger.
I am furious that I was taught this, from birth, that a girl can’t be angry because it is pathetic, unbecoming, dangerous. I am livid that I internalised this, and that even in the current climate I default to controlling myself, policing my words, so as not to blow everything apart.
I want to blow everything apart.
I am angry that powerful, corrupt, weak, snivelling men are allowed to abuse those with less power than them. Not only allowed to, they are rewarded for it. They are applauded. Supported. Promoted. Raised to higher and higher levels of privilege not in spite of the fact they abuse women. Because of it.
Because of it.
Abusing women, hating women, diminishing women, is how men become powerful. And once they are powerful, they elevate other abusers because they see themselves in them. Other abusers validate their own choices.
Because it is a choice to be an abusive arsehole. It is a choice to step on other people’s heads to climb higher. It is a choice to disregard another human being’s feelings, their humanity. It is a choice not to care. It is a choice to laugh in the face of someone else’s trauma.
I am angry that so many men in power make that choice, and are rewarded for it by other men.
I am angry that they shut women out of the power positions because they are weak and frightened and on some level know they are not worthy of the power they have. Because they know they didn’t earn it—they stole it.
I am angry.