In praise of anger

I noticed that no one immediately took issue with my statement yesterday that anger is the emotion most likely to produce change. So that's uncontroversial, at least on my friends list. Well, duh.

Notice that hardly any of you were encouraged to express anger when you were children or teenagers.

Boys and girls alike, most of you were either encouraged to repress it or your anger was ignored. I don't think that my friends list is a very representative sample, though. (wlach pointed out, when we were discussing this, that boys who were encouraged to express their anger are less likely to have grown into the sorts of people who would read my friends list.) And in hindsight, I should have broken down "encouraged to channel anger into productive activities" into physical activities vs. non-physical activities, because it's also a gendered distinction. When I was growing up, I tended to channel my anger through writing and art. Cathartic though this may have been, these are both introverted and isolated activities, making me far more prone to repressing my anger than if I'd, say, taken up boxing.

If anger leads to change, then it follows that those lower on the totem pole would be the most encouraged to repress their anger. I'd wager that white liberal moviegoers tend to prefer scenes of Indians calmly lining up to get their heads cracked in by the British in Gandhi over Algerian guerrillas blowing up the French in The Battle of Algiers. But because breaking it down by other systems of oppression (class, geography, ethnic background, sexual orientation, etc.) would have gotten far too complicated for a quick LJ survey, So, sex. My suspicion was that those socialized as girls would be discouraged from expressing anger more frequently than those socialized as boys.

( Long, and all over the place )

In praise of anger

I noticed that no one immediately took issue with my statement yesterday that anger is the emotion most likely to produce change. So that's uncontroversial, at least on my friends list. Well, duh.

Notice that hardly any of you were encouraged to express anger when you were children or teenagers.

Boys and girls alike, most of you were either encouraged to repress it or your anger was ignored. I don't think that my friends list is a very representative sample, though. (wlach pointed out, when we were discussing this, that boys who were encouraged to express their anger are less likely to have grown into the sorts of people who would read my friends list.) And in hindsight, I should have broken down "encouraged to channel anger into productive activities" into physical activities vs. non-physical activities, because it's also a gendered distinction. When I was growing up, I tended to channel my anger through writing and art. Cathartic though this may have been, these are both introverted and isolated activities, making me far more prone to repressing my anger than if I'd, say, taken up boxing.

If anger leads to change, then it follows that those lower on the totem pole would be the most encouraged to repress their anger. I'd wager that white liberal moviegoers tend to prefer scenes of Indians calmly lining up to get their heads cracked in by the British in Gandhi over Algerian guerrillas blowing up the French in The Battle of Algiers. But because breaking it down by other systems of oppression (class, geography, ethnic background, sexual orientation, etc.) would have gotten far too complicated for a quick LJ survey, So, sex. My suspicion was that those socialized as girls would be discouraged from expressing anger more frequently than those socialized as boys.

( Long, and all over the place )