#soraya chemaly

[lesyeuxdemeduse]

“What would it mean to ungender our emotions? What would the world look like if all of us were allowed to experience and productively express the full range of our emotions without penalty? What if girls and women were not so often and effectively cut off from this particular emotion as a function of being feminine? What do we lose, personally and as a society, by not listening to women’s anger or respecting it when it does have a voice? And, importantly, how does our treatment of women’s “anger-free emotionality” relate to democracy and put us at risk of authoritarianism?”

Soraya Chemaly - Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger

[radfemreader]

I made my url with the intention of posting book reviews - is this the year I actually do it? maybe!

The first book I finished this year was Rage Becomes Her by Soraya Chemaly.

This was a reread, this time I read it with my feminist book club which really added to the experience. (If you're in the Midwest of the USA and interested in meeting radical feminists near you, DM me for an invite to the discord!)

This book is pitched as an exploration of the power of women's anger. It does touch on that topic throughout, but it's more so an argument for why we need feminism. Each chapter focuses on a topic, for example motherhood or sexual violence, and describes the way women are and have been treated using both results from studies and examples or anecdotes from the author or the news. I appreciated the seriousness and the scope - this didn't fall into the libfem girl power trap that a lot of mainstream feminist books do, and seemed well researched and well cited.

It can be very relentless reading, particularly the section on violence, and I found the bulk of the book rather disheartening. This isn't exactly a flaw, it's just painful to read about everything women face laid out in this way. I can imagine it would be very eye opening for someone who is maybe not really convinced that we still need feminism, or who hasn't been familiar with the extent to which women suffer under patriarchy.

With that in mind, I'd recommend this book as a gift for your casual libfem friend or your mildly misogynistic family member. If you're already familiar with feminism, as I assume those reading this review are, I'd recommend reading the intro, the last chapter, and the conclusion. Could also be a good reference for further reading from its sources.

[gaerfinn]

[lbdwow]

"Ask a man what his greatest fear is about serving jail time, and he will almost inevitably say he fears being raped. What can we deduce from the fact that jail is to men what life is to so many women?"

Soraya Chemaly

[nando161mando]

It’s also important to note that the peak period of witch hunting was the 17th century, when both the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution posed great challenges to religion's dominance. Women healers whose powers and successes were based on empirical study presented many layers of threat.

Instead of faith, “witches” derived conclusions from their study and applied their knowledge accordingly (often to far greater success than university-trained doctors). The church was not interested in women who were effectively practicing observation-based science and providing alternatives to faith-based “medicine.”

Older, assertive, knowledgeable, authoritative and respected women were not welcomed in a fast-changing world in which many forces were aligned against them. They were a constant challenge to men’s power.

—Soraya Chemaly, What Witches Have To Do With Women's Health

[misandresther]

Women are angry, and it isn’t hard to figure out why.

We are underpaid and overworked. Too sensitive, or not sensitive enough. Too dowdy or too made-up. Too big or too thin. Sluts or prudes. We are harassed, told we are asking for it, and asked if it would kill us to smile. Yes, yes it would.

Contrary to the rhetoric of popular “self-help” and an entire lifetime of being told otherwise, our rage is one of the most important resources we have, our sharpest tool against both personal and political oppression. We’ve been told for so long to bottle up our anger, letting it corrode our bodies and minds in ways we don’t even realize. Yet our anger is a vital instrument, our radar for injustice and a catalyst for change. On the flip side, the societal and cultural belittlement of our anger is a cunning way of limiting and controlling our power.

We are so often told to resist our rage or punished for justifiably expressing it, yet how many remarkable achievements in this world would never have gotten off the ground without the kernel of anger that fueled them?

— "Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger", by Soraya Chemaly

[edwardian-masquerade]

"The anger we have as women is an act of radical imagination. Angry women burn brighter than the sun. In the coming years, we will hear, again, that anger is a destructive force, to be controlled. Watch carefully, because not everyone is asked to do this in equal measure."

-Soraya Chemaly, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

[the-forest-library]

August 2024 Reads

The Pairing - Casey McQuiston

Slow Dance - Rainbow Rowell

The Break-Up Pact - Emma Lord

Last Seen Online - Lauren James

All's Fair in Love and War - Virginia Heath

A Shore Thing - Joanna Lowell

You Should Be So Lucky - Cat Sebastian

This Spells Love - Kate Robb

Where Are You, Echo Blue? - Hayley Krischer

My Antonia - Willa Cather

The Girl in Question - Tess Sharpe

The Only Light Left Burning - Erik J. Brown

Death at Morning House - Maureen Johnson

Hawkeye: Bishop Takes King - Ashley Poston

Across a Field of Starlight - Blue Delliquanti

Show Up and Vote - Ani DiFranco

A Product of Genetics and Day Drinking - Jess H. Gutierrez

The Hard Parts - Oksana Masters

Rage Becomes Her - Soraya Chemaly

The Genius of Judy - Rachelle Bergstein

Me Vs Brain - Hayley Morris

Forever Barbie - M.G. Lord

It's Not Hysteria - Karen Tang

The New Menopause - Mary Claire Haver

The Nervous System Reset - Jessica Maguire

The Modern Trauma Toolkit - Christy Gibson

Small Talk - Richard Pink

Girls Just Wanna Have Funds - Emma Due Bitz

Please Unsubscribe, Thanks! - Julio Vincent Gambit

Work Won't Love You Back - Sarah Jaffe

The Tree Collectors - Amy Stewart

Cowpuppy - Gregory Berns

Bold = Highly Recommend

Italics = Worth It

Crossed Out = Nope

Thoughts:  Unfortunately this month was marked by some disappointments (eagerly anticipated reads: Slow Dance, Last Seen Online) and (sequels to books I loved: The Girl in Question, The Only Light Left Burning), but The Pairing restored my faith in Casey McQuiston and left me desperate for a European food and wine tour.

Goodreads Goal: 289/300 2017 Reads | 2018 Reads | 2019 Reads | 2020 Reads | 2021 Reads| 2022 Reads | 2023 Reads | 2024 Reads

[deariemay]

"Women are conditioned from infancy to placate, ignore, and downplay feelings of anger. As girls and women grow up, their anger becomes a blight on their character."

"How many women cry when angry because we've held it in for so long? How many discover that anger turned inward is depression?"

"Many of us are taught that our anger will be an imposition on others, making us irksome and unlikeable."

"When a woman shows anger... she automatically violates gender norms.”

- Soraya Chemaly

[lesyeuxdemeduse]

“Anger is an assertion of rights and worth. It is communication, equality, and knowledge. It is intimacy, acceptance, fearlessness, embodiment, revolt, and reconciliation. Anger is memory and rage. It is rational thought and irrational pain.”

Soraya Chemaly - Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger

[theonlysparkle2]

"Angry women burn brighter than the sun "

Soraya Chemaly, in Rage Becomes Her

[plasticwerewolf]

Dennis + Feminine Rage and the Feminine Mystique

--

John William Waterhouse//Mac and Dennis Move to the Suburbs//Paris Paloma//Betty Friedan//Soraya Chemaly//Artemisia Gentileschi// Mac and Dennis Move to the Suburbs//Suzanne Buffam

[maaarine]

Night Vision: Seeing Ourselves Through Dark Moods (Mariana Alessandri, 2023)

"A society that equates a woman’s strength with her capacity to bottle up her grievances, a society that admonishes us with the perennial reminder that someone else has it worse, a society that hands her a self-help book instead of admitting that she has a raw deal, is a society full of sick women.

In Rage Becomes Her, the anger expert Soraya Chemaly discusses a study that found that “anger is the single, most salient emotional contributor to pain.”

And because women suffer more silently than men, Chemaly concludes, anger affects women’s bodies in ways we have not even realized yet.

What my sweet Minnesotan cousin has been calling “chronic pelvic pain” might also very well be repressed anger.

After all, we’ve learned that when we swallow anger it does not disappear.

We have also heard that when we express it (as boys are more often encouraged to), we survive.

In one study cited by Chemaly, breast cancer patients who ex- pressed their anger survived at twice the rate of those who kept it in."

[b3lialx]

“sex segregation and exclusion aren’t legitimate responses to women’s demands that we no longer, as a society, tolerate sexual discrimination in the workplace” - Soraya Chemaly on the “Pence rule”

[soracities]

Hi, I hope this ask finds you well. Life has been chronically & impossibly unfair to me. I try to deal with things as best I can, perservere & attempt to move through things with as much grace as possible, try to find beauty & gratitude where I can. But some things weigh so heavy. I think sometimes there is a place for anger.

My question is, do you have any quotes you could share on anger? or betrayal? Or any book recommendations where those themes come into play? I think it could be somewhat cathartic, and it would be so appreciated.

Thank you. ❤️

Hi lovely! I'm really sorry that you're going through so much, and I can only imagine the frustration and exhaustion of it all. The most I have is a quote compilation here. As for book recommendations, I've been recced Rage Becomes Her by Soraya Chemaly a few times, so maybe there will be something there for you also. I hope you are able to find an outlet for everything you're feeling and carrying right now and that you are able to move through it in the healthiest way possible for you 💕

[bianca-alexander88]

Any woman interested in her own equality would do well to avoid men and institutions that claim to want nothing more than to protect her. — Soraya Chemaly