I'm just angry all the time, anyone else?

[WhyZed]

I've loved this place on the Internet but have had to hide it in my topics for more than six months now because I was feeling more and more despondent and angry.
I'm desperate to come back properly but please can someone tell me how to deal with the rage? I'm literally shaking typing this. I know this is a personal issue with me being unable to deal with my feelings but I'm surely not the only one who sees the news, the updates from Scotland and elsewhere and just simmers.
How do you deal with this?

Yes (even though I'm only just getting to grips with it all). I feel increasingly alienated from others and I know the anger is only just beneath the surface (if not actually on the surface).

Well if your blood pressure is up today, don’t check out the Reclaim These Streets tweets today. It took them about 8 hours to wuss out.

A (now long deceased) colleague told me decades ago “Don’t get mad. Get even.”
Channel your anger, OP. Turn it into positive action. Write to MPs, fund raise for feminist groups, bring up your DC as radfems, support other women both online and irl, challenge misogyny wherever it rears its ugly head. Be part of the solution instead of raging or crying over the problem.
We will prevail.

@Cagedbirdsinging

Me too . Angry and tearful and just so , so sad . Nowhere is safe for us or our children .

Exactly this.

Another here, also permanently angry. I recommend getting off Twitter, kickboxing and taking breaks, just to manage and cope with everyday life.

Coming here to talk about it with others who understand helps too. I feel like FWR is a public service!

For every high there is a low but overall we are making progress and as it's a marathon and not a lasting we need to keep our energy up and not peak too soon.

See what I did there?

Chin up OP. There are more of us waking up every day.

Yes, me too. Simmering rage most of the time. Particularly this week. The Scottish hate crime bill, Sarah Everard, the transwoman's entry for a women's literary prize and then the Guardian's front page was the cherry on top of a shit cake of misogyny.

I consoled myself with thoughts of the grown ups in the House of Lords, the High Court and the Court of Appeal all of whom have demonstrated in recent days they clearly 'get it'. And that's where things will change. Where laws are made.

I'm going to channel my anger into more letters and more donations to legal challenges.

And boxing sounds a great idea. In the meantime I beat the hell out of the pillows when I make the bed.

I absolutely lost it yesterday when my (female) boss talked about how it wasn't a good idea for women to meet at Clapham.
I started by saying, "you have to understand that women are bloody raging and here's why..."
Think my tirade lasted about 10 minutes, with a rundown of the last couple of weeks in feminist fights. She basically put her fingers in her ears and NAMALTed.
I then told her that whilst we're unlikely to end up in a women's refuge, prison or psychiatric ward, there are plenty of vulnerable women who will and they do not need to be assaulted by male bodied people while they're in there.
She said 'How do you know?' 'How does it affect you?'
I explained about having escaped DV and five the Freedom programme - women only. Were it not for my parents I'd have ended up in a refuge with my daughter.
She plastered on a smile and went off to make a cup of tea. #bekind.
Thankfully I have zero career ambition.
You'll find plenty of women like this though. They have their cosy lives and just don't want to know or give a shit.

I've had a huge tantrum today from a male acquaintance who is furious that I and another female friend were talking about male violence. He's deeply offended, even though everyone repeatedly NAMALTED in an attempt to soothe him, got really upset at the statistics and called us sexist, and then yelled about us being woke and virtue signalling, which made me laugh.... he knows it's something bad to call people, but honestly has no clue. Women defending sex based classification and women's rights being woke...?

The worst thing about male violence apparently is women daring to notice and name it.

A walk with a friend usually helps to process the rage for me but I still can’t broach the topics that have created the rage because I know that not everyone shares the same point of view. I’m becoming a bit of a bore when it comes to women’s rights.

I do yoga and kickboxing and it helps. I love the sound of daily acts of feminism, I’d like to do more of that.

I like the sound of:

“Being actively involved in "action" via a feminist group helped a lot; knowing I can meet and talk to local people who feel the same etc.” From WarriorN

and this from pandorasmailbox

built up a network of like-minded women (and some men) onine and in real life.

Yes absolutely. It’s never ending. Constantly angry, upset and exhausted. You are not alone, FWR is the only place I feel I can open discuss this, I’m so glad it’s here!

Me too. Radio presenter just announced that statistcally TW experience more attacks/ assaults than women.
Is that true?
Where can I find out?
In any case, it is men doing the attacking, so why try to distract and divert attention away from women?

Barraker

“Instead, I'm compelled to treat the imposter's false claim as somehow equal to my own real one, and ensure I always consider how to make them feel welcome. Never rebuff them. Never deny them. My very act of daring to openly defy them and deny them what they want - what is mine - is called 'intolerant'. I'm told I can claim the baby is mine, but I must make my case without declaring the imposter to be an imposter.
This is how I feel.“

100 times, YES, to all of your post!

Many people just don't get our passion so I wonder if it might be helpful to think about the difference between 'envy' and 'jealousy' when it comes to our anger. I think that there is a difference, even though we often use the words interchangeably.

Envy is wanting, demanding or desiring something that is not rightfully ours but belongs to someone else, so a male wanting access to prizes/concessions for females or, say, 'boobs' for example.

Whereas Jealousy is impassionedly demanding to hold on to what is, already, rightfully and uniquely ours.

Our anger is currently white hot because we are being forced to jealously guard what is already rightfully and uniquely ours - our language, our spaces, our protections in law - while others are prepared to either carelessly give them away (through failing to see their value) or enviously usurp them.

As for how practically to manage the 'righteous anger', I have to sometimes remind myself to have more compassion on my resident wokester who can't yet see the bigger picture, whose critical thinking skills are not well developed and who I know is not personally responsible for all the outrageous guff TRAs etc say.

It's never going to be comfortable being Cassandra...

Another one here constantly enraged and fearful for my blood pressure.

@endofthelinefinally

Me too. Radio presenter just announced that statistcally TW experience more attacks/ assaults than women. Is that true? Where can I find out? In any case, it is men doing the attacking, so why try to distract and divert attention away from women?

Depends how you define attack.

I assume that number is based on complaints made and attacks - from physical assault all the way down to verbal bullying/‘dead naming’ and misgendering... women just don’t run off to the police every time they are verbally attacked/hassled or grabbed/groped (or insulted/threatened on social media). Can you imagine them actually bothering when they don’t even seem to take rape seriously?

@adviceseekingnamechanger
Hear hear.
Yesterday's Guarodan made me cry. All those women, so many women and Eddie Izzard propped there.
Why over why?

@endofthelinefinally

Me too. Radio presenter just announced that statistcally TW experience more attacks/ assaults than women. Is that true? Where can I find out? In any case, it is men doing the attacking, so why try to distract and divert attention away from women?

It is for the radio presenter to give the source of that claim.

As ever, there is no denominator, no definition of what counts as attacks or assaults. I saw something on Twitter that attempted to claim that every act of aggression counts x2 - once as a hate crime related to trans status and another against a protected class (women - I'm uncertain if anyone has done the arithmetic for other groups).

"Impotent rage" sums it up for me. Between the everyday microabuses and reminders that because I'm a woman I'm always going to be second to men no matter the situation, watching the mess the Met made of the vigil for Sarah, and hoping against hope that the world might change for my young nieces I'm so, so tired of all this rubbish, and tired of being angry about it as well.

I don' t know if anything is going to change in the next twenty years and that makes me both sad and furious as well. No woman should have to go through her lifetime hoping for a scrap of acknowledgement for her abilities and efforts made to get through the days with good results or a bit of contentment. No woman should have to scream from a mountaintop that she matters and deserves to be heard ... but here we are.

Even Before I joined MN, I feel like this a LOT.

If I drove and if mum was brave enough to join...

Me too. Radio presenter just announced that statistcally TW experience more attacks/ assaults than women.
Is that true?

No, it’s bullshit. Just like it’s bullshit that biologically male trans people have no physical advantage over women in sport. And bullshit that biologically male trans people don’t have male privilege. And bullshit that TWAW.

It’s all bullshit and one of the things that winds me up immeasurably is the way we are expected to fall over ourselves countering these palpably absurd and patently untrue claims and “statistics”, even while knowing whatever facts and evidence we provide, we will still be roundly ignored. (cf England Rugby’s response to the World Rugby research that showed that hey, guess what, big news, it’s not safe or fair for women if biologically male people are included in women’s rugby, even if they identify as women!!! Which response was of course la la la fingers in ears and not listening to the nasty transphobic exclusionary bigots.)

Are biologically male trans people perceived as male more often than women? Yes. That’s it. That’s the “more attacks/assaults”. Yes, of course some biologically male trans people sadly do suffer genuine attacks and assaults as well, but certainly not more than women.

As toffeebutterpopcorn said, the vast, vast majority of assaults that women are subjected to don’t even get reported, and we get practically no justice for those that are; there is no category for hate crime on the basis of sex, unlike “gender reassignment”; and the truth is that sexual harassment is just a fact of life for most women and girls, and we are expected to just live with it. We just don’t matter enough for it to be taken seriously - but if it happens to a biologically male person? Then it’s a big deal! Then people have to care about it.

endofthelinefinally which radio station was this? And do you know which presenter? If you feel like it, you could write in to ask them to substantiate that claim, or to complain about them making the claim with nothing to back it up. Misinformation, fake news, etc. Lies like this really make me rage.

My first job was 3 weeks before I turned 15. At a hotdog stand- so dealing with the general public.

My father sat me down and warned me that from here on out and until I was old, every man who looked at me would think about what it was like to have sex with me.

Now he should know! He'd happily catcall when my mother and I were in the car. And then one day it was like something clicked.

Makes me so angry that some men have to have teenage daughters for them to realise.

Yep, angry angry angry here.

I’m so fucking angry right now. Also weary and despondent. I have a two year old daughter and I am so worried about her future.

"Impotent rage" sums it up for me. Between the everyday microabuses and reminders that because I'm a woman I'm always going to be second to men no matter the situation, watching the mess the Met made of the vigil for Sarah, and hoping against hope that the world might change for my young nieces I'm so, so tired of all this rubbish, and tired of being angry about it as well.

Great post, agree 100%.

I think anger is the only rational response to the facts, to the truth. Like for example the fact that rape is virtually legal in the UK, given the tiny amount of reported rapes which are prosecuted.

It is tiring, especially if you're doing the bulk of the housework and childcare. And the fear for my daughters is so palpable, every. single. day.

Makes me so angry that some men have to have teenage daughters for them to realise.

I remember being about 14, and cursed with being very well developed from the age of about 11. My father had heard me talk about the problems of it all (vividly remember the boys in my class having a great time miming being me running and being knocked senseless by a flying boob) and he'd been very yeah yeah, but I walked with him one day down a busy dockside where lots of men were working, and by the time we reached the end he was so angry he was scarlet in the face. He told me then he'd seen for himself, bloke after bloke look and exactly where and how they were looking.

He was very yeah yeah about women's spaces too until it dawned on him one day in conversation with me exactly what his daughters and granddaughters would experience in toilets, changing rooms, hospital wards, and then he wrote to his MP.

It's meaningless to many lovely men sadly until they see it directly affect a female person they feel is theirs. I can't imagine the luxury of living in a body all your life where you just don't have to care about such stuff because it doesn't affect you.

The last two weeks have been peaks and troughs. GP conference ONS Scotland Glinner and Helen in HoC , then the horror of Sarah's murder and then the vigil violent stuff last night, and the hijacking of it all by TRA, ReclaimtheseStreets crown funder

Its really upset me, but actually made me more proactive today.
I've dug in some gardens, I've ordered more merchandise, I've joined a few more GC feminist sm groups .

Solidarity, Sisters!

I feel locked in a cycle of anger. My Dh doesn’t get it and comes out with NAMALT. I have daughters. Two have autism. I’m absolutely petrified for them. I also have an older DD with no Sen. I talk to her constantly about it but I worry I could end up making her hate men. And I don’t want her to but...

I’m absolutely sick of the way women are treated. How we’re always secondary to men. FWR is the only place I’m able to air how I feel though still with the threat of being deleted or banned if I openly state the truth. I live in a small town and haven’t come across any GC women, one woman who I was friendly with now has a trans daughter so posts about how wonderful Sam S and Eddie Izzard is. She’s fallen down this rabbit hole where she believes Mermaids and Stonewall are wonderful.

I’m frequently becoming more and more sick of it.