Watching Rebecca Traister talk at the NYPL about the women’s march—the largest one-day protest in US history—& how it was erased & laughed at in media afterward.
She’s talking about how excruciating the experience of MeToo was last fall—& how painful rage can be as well as liberating.
Then doing a hilarious riff about how interviewees wd say “I was angry, but now I’ve turned that into action!” and then 10 minutes later they’d be raging.
Then doing a hilarious riff about how interviewees wd say “I was angry, but now I’ve turned that into action!” and then 10 minutes later they’d be raging.
Correction: largest in human history.
This is a very funny panel. Currently a lot of dark jokes about squi and beer.
Rebecca reminding everyone that after the Access Hollywood tape there was a mass explosion of stories about female abuse—& one year later, same after the Weinstein article—& one year later, the same. Each time, year after year, men would say, “I had no idea!”
Telling the story of Emmett Till, ‘55. “It forced people who didn’t want to think about lynching was... to see it & look at it.” Compares to BLM streaming videos & photo of a woman who died after abortion: value of exposure. (Tho she also says it can feel like Groundhog’s Day.)
She & Aminatou are talking about the racial split, about nexuses: how BM can enjoy benefits of patriarchy, how WW are offered & incentived by power of whiteness. Talking about Brittney Cooper’s analysis in Eloquent Rage.
“What’s the thing about the Cool Girl? She never gets angry.” If WW get angry, they lose access to WM authority—incentivized to repress rage.
“I saw the polling today on Kavanaugh. It’s slightly better than your worst fear. But not by much.” She’s talking about the necessity of talking about whiteness & activating WW & teaching them context.
Aminatou talking about how she’d always seen tears as weakness & she was affected by Rebecca’s writing about them as a sign of rage.
RT: “Often when I cry it’s out of blind rage.” But the tears get misread as sadness & vulnerability. For WW, coded as fragility & manipulation.
Discussion of Shirley Chisholm and Gloria Steinem & a businesswoman who would cry but while crying, say, “You think I’m crying out of sadness, but it’s out of rage.”
People who curse while submerging their hands in ice water last longer than those who don’t!
RT talking about being in an “anger biodome” in the 4 months of writing the book & how it felt great. Was energized, exercising, having great sex! Says: maybe it’s repressing/swallowing the rage that is what makes people feel sick... But also know this was an unusual safe space—
And the world is not safe that way, it makes it risky to express anger. But we should listen to and be CURIOUS about women’s anger. Passionate speech about the political potential of anger I didn’t capture fully—huge burst of applause.
Q from a woman from near Newtown. She talks about the furious, war moment when they thought they could change the world, and how much bad has happened since then. RT talks about how (not in CT) gun laws got looser instead of tighter.
She’s talking about the suffrage movement. “These things often extend beyond our lifetime.” Talks about how Parkland extended from Newtown.
“That rage bears fruit. Maybe 6 years later. Maybe 60 years later.”
I can’t live-tweet all the q’s but Rebecca is recommending @schemaly’s Rage Becomes Her & talking about Audre Lorde.
“The full range of female intellectual and emotional expression should be as valuable and valued as the full range of male intellectual and emotional expression.”
