Feminine Rage Quotes

If art is not to be life-enhancing, what is it to be? Half the world is feminine--why is there resentment at a female-oriented art? Nobody asks The Tale of Genji to be masculine! Women certainly learn a lot from books oriented toward a masculine world. Why is not the reverse also true? Or are men really so afraid of women's creativity (because they are not themselves at the center of creation, cannot bear children) that a woman writer of genius evokes murderous rage, must be brushed aside with a sneer as 'irrelevant'?

Women are just as motivated by the desire for power as men; it's just that our cultural ideas about power don't associate it with femininity.

I can be feminine in all my rage. I can be girl and woman, and claws with teeth. Watch me burn.

Every girl learns, in varying degrees, to filter herself through messages of women's relative cultural irrelevance, powerlessness, and comparative worthlessness. Images and words conveying disdain for girls, women, and femininity come at children fast and furiously, whereas most boys' passage to adulthood—even for boys disadvantaged by class or ethnicity—remains cloaked in the cultural centrality of maleness and masculinity.

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. Anger is freedom, independence, expansiveness, and entitlement. It is justice, passion, clarity, and motivation. Anger is instrumental, thoughtful, complicated, and resolved. In anger, whether you like it or not, there is truth. Anger is the demand of accountability, It is evaluation, judgment, and refutation. It is reflective, visionary, and participatory. It's a speech act, a social statement, an intention, and a purpose. It's a risk and a threat. A confirmation and a wish. It is both powerlessness and power, palliative and a provocation. In anger, you will find both ferocity and comfort, vulnerability and hurt. Anger is the expression of hope. How much anger is too much? Certainly not the anger that, for many of us, is a remembering of a self we learned to hide and quiet. It is willful and disobedient. It is survival, liberation, creativity, urgency, and vibrancy. It is a statement of need. An insistence of acknowledgment. Anger is a boundary. Anger is boundless. An opportunity for contemplation and self-awareness. It is commitment. Empathy. Self-love. Social responsibility. If it is poison, it is also the antidote. 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. Women, especially, will be told to set our anger aside in favor of a kinder, gentler approach to change. This is a false juxtaposition. Reenvisioned, anger can be the most feminine of virtues: compassionate, fierce, wise, and powerful. The women I admire most—those who have looked to themselves and the limitations and adversities that come with our bodies and the expectations that come with them—have all found ways to transform their anger into meaningful change. In them, anger has moved from debilitation to liberation. Your anger is a gift you give to yourself and the world that is yours. In anger, I have lived more fully, freely, intensely, sensitively, and politically. If ever there was a time not to silence yourself, to channel your anger into healthy places and choices, this is it.

Shame is paralyzing and debilitating. It invites us not to be heard, at least not in an authentic way. Acting courageously when shame enters the picture requires extraordinary courage because people will do anything to escape from shame or from the possibility that shame will be evoked. It is just too difficult to go there. Even for people who will walk in to the fires of transformation to face fear. Men and women tend to manage shame differently. Generally, men have less tolerance for shame, perhaps because they are shamed almost from birth for half their humanity. The so called feminine part of themselves including anything vulnerable or seen as weak. Men often sit with shame for only a nanosecond before flipping it into something more masculine or therefore tolerable like anger or rage or a need to dominate devalue or control.

You forgive what you can, when you can. That's all you can do. To forgive does not mean overlooking the offense and pretending it never happened. Forgiveness means releasing our rage and our need to retaliate, no longer dwelling on the offense, the offender, and the suffering, and rising to a higher love. It is an act of letting go so that we ourselves can go on.

Basically, I feel different from most other women. I feel I don’t have to put on an act. If I’m not feminine enough for someone, I don’t care, because femininity is different in everyone’s mind.

They wanted their girls to be safe. To do what they had to do to conform, to defer, to survive, to grow up. They wanted their girls never to grow up. Never to stop burning. They wanted their girls to say fuck it, to see through the lies, to know their own strength. They wanted their girls to believe the things could be different this time, and they wanted it to be true. They wondered, sometimes, if they'd made a mistake. If it was dangerous, taming the wild, stealing away the words a girl might use to name her secret self. They wondered at the consequences of teaching a girl she was weak instead of warning her she was strong. They wondered, if knowing was power, what happened to power that refused to know itself; they wondered what happened that couldn't be satisfied, to pain that couldn't be felt, a rage that couldn't be spoken.

Reenvisioned, anger can be the most feminine of virtues: compassionate, fierce, wise, and powerful. The women I admire most... have all found ways to transform their anger into meaningful change. In them, anger has moved from deliberation to liberation.

She flew in, all fiery flashing eyes and flushed cheeks, her bosom heaving beneath black wool. She was magnificent. "Tell them to let her go!" Séraphine ordered him imperiously. "Tell them to let her go right now." She stood over him, her lips wet, her body shaking with her rage, and he wanted to take her and roll her beneath him and fuck her into the mattress.

Being an American boy is a setup. We train boys to believe that the way to become a man is to objectify and conquer women, value wealth and power above all, and suppress any emotions other than competitiveness and rage. Then we are stunned when our boys become exactly what we have trained them to be. Our boys cannot follow our directions, but they are cheating and dying and killing as they try to. Everything that makes a boy human is a “real man’s” dirty secret. Our men are caged, too. The parts of themselves they must hide to fit into those cages are the slices of their humanity that our culture has labeled ‘feminine’—traits like mercy, tenderness, softness, quietness, kindness, humility, uncertainty, empathy, connection. We tell them, ‘Don’t be these things, because these are feminine things to be. Be anything but feminine.’ The problem is that the parts of themselves that our boys have been banished from are not feminine traits; they are human traits. There is no such thing as a feminine quality, because there is no such thing as masculinity or femininity. ‘Femininity’ is just a set of human characteristics a culture pours into a bucket and slaps with the label ‘feminine.’ Gender is not wild, it’s prescribed.

Girls with Sharp Sticks” Men are full of rage Unable to control themselves. That’s what women were told How they were raised What they believed. So women learned to make do Achieving more as men did less And for that, men despised them Despised their accomplishments. Over time The men wanted to dissolve women’s rights All so they could feel needed. But when they couldn’t control women The men found a group they didn’t disdain— At least not yet. Their daughters, pretty little girls A picture of femininity for them to mold To train To control To make precious and obedient. She would make a good wife someday, he thought Not like the useless one he had already. The little girls attended school Where the rules had changed. The girls were taught untruths, Ignorance the only subject. When math was pushed aside for myth The little girls adapted. They gathered sticks to count them learning their own math. And then they sharpened their sticks. It was these same little girls Who came home one day And pushed their daddies down the stairs. They bashed in their heads with hammers while they slept. They set the houses on fire with their daddies inside. And then those little girls with sharp sticks Flooded the schools. They rid the buildings of false ideas. The little girls took everything over Including teaching their male peers how to be “Good Little Boys.” And so it was for a generation The little girls became the predators.

Why isn't every woman a feminist? Feminism tells a tale of female injury, but the average woman in heterosexual intimacy knows that men are injured too, as indeed they are. She may be willing to grant, this average woman, that men in general have more power than women in general. This undoubted fact is merely a fact; it is abstract, while the man of flesh and blood who stands before her is concrete: His hurts are real, his fears palpable. And like those heroic doctors on the late show who work tirelessly through the epidemic even though they may be fainting from fatigue, the woman in intimacy may set her own needs to one side in order better to attend to his. She does this not because she is "chauvinized" or has "false consciousness," but because this is what the work requires. Indeed, she may even excuse the man's abuse of her, having glimpsed the great reservoir of pain and rage from which it issues. Here is a further gloss on the ethical disempowerment attendant upon women's caregiving: in such a situation, a woman may be tempted to collude in her own ill-treatment.

The transfiguration of anger is a movement from rage to outrage. Rage implies an internalized emotion, a tempest within, Rage, or what might be called untrasnfigured anger, can become a calcified bitterness. What rage wants and needs is to move outward toward positive social purpose, to become a creative force or energy… Outrage is love’s wild and unacknowledged sister.

During this part of the journey, the woman begins her descent. It may involve a seemingly endless period of wandering, grief, and rage; of dethroning kings; of looking for the lost pieces of herself and meeting the dark feminine. It may take weeks, months, or years, and for many it may involve a time of voluntary isolation—a period of darkness and silence and of learning the art of deeply listening once again to self: of being instead of doing. The outer world may see this as a depression and a period of stasis. Family, friends, and work associates implore our heroine to “get on with it.

The dissolving, uniting forces combine what to us have been incompatible: attraction with repulsion, darkness with light, the erotic with the destructive.  If we can allow these opposites to meet they move our inner resonance to a higher vibratory plane, expanding consciousness into new realms.  It was exciting, through my explorations some of which I share in later chapters, to learn firsthand that the sacred marriage or coniunctio, the impulse to unite seeming opposites, does indeed seem to lie at the heart of the subtle body’s imaginal world. One important characteristic of the coniunctio is its paradoxical dual action.  The creative process of each sacred marriage, or conjoining of opposites, involves not only the unitive moment of joining together in a new creation or ‘third,’ but also, as I have mentioned, a separating or darkening moment.5 The idea that “darkness comes before dawn” captures this essential aspect of creativity.  To state an obvious truth we as a culture are just beginning to appreciate.  In alchemical language, when darkness falls, it is said to be the beginning of the inner work or the opus of transformation. The old king (ego) must die before the new reign dawns. The early alchemists called the dark, destructive side of these psychic unions the blackness or the nigredo.  Chaos, uncertainty, disillusionment, depression, despair, or madness prevails during these liminal times of  “making death.” The experiences surrounding these inner experiences of darkness and dying (the most difficult aspects were called mortificatio) may constitute our culture’s ruling taboo. This taboo interferes with our moving naturally to Stage Two in the individuating process, a process that requires that we pass through a descent into the underworld of the Dark Feminine realities of birthing an erotic intensity that leads to dying. Entranced by our happily-ever-after prejudiced culture, we often do not see that in any relationship, project or creative endeavor or idea some form of death follows naturally after periods of intense involvement.  When dark experiences befall, we tend to turn away, to move as quickly as possible to something positive or at least distracting, away from the negative affects of grieving, rage, terror, rotting and loss we associate with darkness and dying. As

If there is, indeed, an anti-Marian spirit, what might it look like? Well, a woman in its grip would not value children. She would be bawdy, vulgar, and angry. She would rage against the idea of anything resembling humble obedience or self-sacrifice for others. She would be petulant, shallow, catty, and overly sensuous. She would also be self-absorbed, manipulative, gossipy, anxious, and self-servingly ambitious. In short, she would be everything that Mary is not. She would bristle especially at the idea of being a virgin or a mother.

We train boys to believe that the way to become a man is to objectify and conquer women, value wealth and power above all, and suppress any emotions other than competitiveness and rage. Then we are stunned when our boys become exactly what we have trained them to be. Our boys cannot follow our directions, but they are cheating and dying and killing as they try to. Everything that makes a boy human is a “real man’s” dirty secret.

We don’t need an invitation to be real. The truth is: we don’t need permission to own the power of what makes us unique, what makes us female. Your emotions, your tears or temper, your love and passion. Our emotions can be wild, untamed, and raging, as it can be loving, nurturing, and consoling. All are powerful feminine energies—that when harnessed and directed towards conscious action can be an unstoppable force. So this is your official authorization to awaken into your full-bodied, emotionally activated self. Passion and power included.

Everything about her was erotic, and she wasn’t even trying. His cock throbbed in appreciation of her femininity. Should have jerked one out after all. Walking awkwardly, Kellen clutched his laundry to his waist, hoping to hide what was going on in his shorts. Her shorts. Fuck! Stop thinking like that, moron. You’re going to rip her shorts in half if you get any harder. How are you going to explain that to her? Excuse me, Dawn. I seem to have damaged your shorts with my raging hard-on. Do you have something a bit hardier I could wear? Perhaps something made of thick leather or stainless steel.

Women of the world, our time has come! Our leaders have taken us down a road of destruction. Aggressive, masculine reflexes have created more violence and rage, have left us with little hope for remedy in the Middle East or anywhere else. Our hope of survival lies in honoring the feminine, that which a patriarchal society has tried vehemently to squelch. Their legacy has left us living in a deluded universe, a world that worships a fixed and righteous view. In order to feel secure, we only welcome change that men in power determine for us. Our patriarchal religions are prime examples of this, creating a one-sided world gone from static, brittle believes. Let us remember that patriarchy is founded on division not unity. We concentrate on the differences instead of giving importance to the similarities. There is good and bad, there is black and white. We are constantly in a state of opposites. Where does unity come into the picture? It is no wonder women have been seen as evil, an abhorrent influence that must be destroyed. Intuition, psychic energy, spiritual force, the unknown, creation itself…merely feminine mockeries of sanity—or so it has been claimed by religious men in power. Women have died at the stake for challenging such beliefs, and to this day dogmatic religious views have persisted in undermining the feminine. Therefore it is up to us to develop a balance between the feminine and the masculine. That’s the formula for a stable democracy. Wisdom and compassion working together will swing the pendulum away from aggression and fear toward peace and conciliation. I’ll venture to say it’s already begun. We have reached a critical mass. Now the energy of woman is being powerfully unleashed. Negative powers have reached levels where enough of us are reacting against them to instigate change. The critical mass that we have reached cannot be turned back, and the force of it will literally shift the energy of our planet, creating a new paradigm.

In order to bring the feminine into our world, we must begin in a personal way. It is not an easy path, and we will quickly see how readily it conflicts with the patterns of our daily lives. But in order to value the feminine and have it become reborn within us, we must take the time to reconnect with the wholeness of who we are. We have to take the time to listen to our dreams, to write them down, and to reflect on our lives. Honoring the feminine means having the patience and taking the time, like Mary in the Gospel according to Luke, to ponder these things in our hearts. We must recognize that there are many things going on within us that need to be perceived, accepted, felt, said, lived, grieved, and raged over. We need to give these things our attention, concern, and understanding.

The jurors put themselves fully in George Zimmerman’s shoes. They could not find any empathy for the teenage boy walking home with snacks. These women’s acquittal of Zimmerman suggested that their primary social priority is white safety, even if it means authorizing lethal force against Black folks who aren’t studying them or their white suburban lives in the least. After the Zimmerman trial, white feminists did not call out these jurors. During the trial they did not call on them to exercise integrity, check their white privilege, or act from a place of empathy. White feminism has worked hard to make the world safer for white women, but it has stridently refused to call out the ways that white women’s sexuality and femininity is used not just as a tool of patriarchy but also as a tool for the maintenance of white supremacy.

Women have always desired equality and respect, but our current culture isn’t seeking it through the grace of Mary; rather, the culture seeks this equality and respect through the vices of Machiavelli: rage, intimidation, tantrums, bullying, raw emotion, and absence of logic. It is this aggressive impulse—this toxic femininity—that finds pride in calling oneself “nasty,” feels empowered by dressing as a vagina, belittles men, and sees the (tragically ironic) need to drop civility so that civility can somehow return again. The devil knows that all these marks of the anti-Mary—rage, indignation, vulgarity, and pride—short-circuit a woman’s greatest gifts: wisdom, prudence, patience, unflappable peace, intuition, her ability to weave together the fabric of society, and her capacity for a deep and fulfilling relationship with God. Instead, the father of lies promises power, fame, fortune, and sterile, fleeting pleasures.

ASK FOR HELP. The anger that women feel at being treated unfairly, at recognizing societal hostility to their identities, is made significantly worse by low expectations. Wanting more and demanding more probably doesn’t come easily because low expectations are feminine. Low expectations, feelings of inadequacy, and low self-esteem are the driving engine of the self-help industry. Do you know when you need self-help? When no one else is helping you. An ideology of personal satisfaction and improvement is no substitute for systemic restructuring for liberation. It is no accident that the explosion of the self-help industry, one that to a great extent feeds off of women’s sense of inadequacy, coincided with the rise of choice feminism and neoliberal economics. Like choice feminism, self-help also reduced the need for social and state commitments to change by placing the blame for reduced circumstances on people who don’t have the time, money, or resources to “help themselves.

One of the biggest battles that second-wave feminists of the seventies had with third wave feminists of the nineties was over the place of sex and beauty in feminism. Second wavers critiqued high heels and lipstick as oppressive expectations of the patriarchy. Third-wave white girls brought heels and fly red lips back into the mix. Black feminists gave the side eye to white girls and their feminist waves, because looking fierce and fly has always been a part of the Black-girl credo. (And also because Black feminism didn’t fit neatly within the historical trajectory of waves.) Our embrace of femininity was its own armor in a world where white women said that Black women should never be called ladies. If I have to pick a side, I’d say I’m third wave enough to affirm that beauty and the desire to be wanted still matter. When you go for months or years without a dude (or any love interest) ever noticing you, you can begin to feel invisible. And feminist principles about how the patriarchy has made us beholden to beauty culture do nothing to assuage the desire we all have to be seen and affirmed.

The bonds of family can be wonderful but there is a time to know when to stand apart." She held out a hand to Rycca on the nearby bench. "Besides, we are your family now, all of us, and we know your worth." Deeply touched, Rycca had to blink several times before she could respond. She knew both women spoke pure truth and loved them for it.After a lifetime of emotional solitude unbroken but for Thurlow, it was still difficult for her to comprehend that she was no longer alone. Yet was she beginning to understand it. Softly,she said, "I worry over Dragon. He refuses to talk of my father or of what will happen now that we are here, but I fear he is planning to take matters into his own hands." Cymbra and Krysta exchanged a glance. Quietly,Cymbra said, "Your instinct is not wrong. Dragon simmers with rage at the harm attempted to you. In Landsende I caught a mere glimpse of it,and it was like peering into one of those mountains that belch fire." Despite the heat of the sauna, Rycca shivered. "He came close to losing his life once because of me.I cannot bear for it to happen again." There was silence for a moment,broken only by the crackling of the fire and the hiss of steam.Finally, Cymbra said, "We are each of us married to an extraordinary man. There is something about them...even now I don't really know how to explain it." She looked at Krysta. "Have you told Rycca about Thorgold and Raven?" Krysta shook her head. "There was no time before." She turned on her side on the bench,facing the other two. "Thorgold and Raven are my...friends. They are somewhat unusual." Cymbra laughed at that,prompting a chiding look from Krysta,who went on to say, "I'm not sure how but I think somehow I called them to me when I was a child and needed them very much." "Krysta has the gift of calling," Cymbra said, "as I do of feeling and you do of truthsaying. Doesn't it strike you as odd that three very unusual women, all bearing special gifts, ccame to be married to three extraordinary men who are united by a common purpose,to bring peace to their peoples?" "I had not really thought about it," said Rycca, who also had not known of Krysta's gift and was looking at her with some surprise. All three of them? That was odd. "I believe," said Cymbra, who clearly had been thinking about it, "that there is a reason for it beyond mere coincidence. I think we are meant to be at their sides, to help them as best we can, the better to transform peace from dream to reality." "It is a good thought," Krysta said. Rycca nodded. Very quietly, she said, "Blessed are the peacemakers." Cymbra grinned. "And poor things, we appear to be their blessings. So worry not for Dragon, Rycca. He will prevail. We will all see to it." They laughed then,the trio of them, ancient and feminine laughter hidden in a chamber held in the palm of the earth. The steam rose around them, half obscuringm half revealing them. In time,when the heat had become too intense,they rose, wrapped themselves in billowing cloths,and ran through the gathering darkness to the river, where they frolicked in cool water and laughed again beneath the stars. The torches had been lit by the time they returned to the stronghold high on the hill. They dressed and hastened to the hall,where they greeted their husbands, who stood as one when they entered,silent and watchful men before beauty and strength, and took their seats at table. Wine was poured, food brought,music played. They lingered over the evening,taking it into night. The moon was high when they found the sweet,languid sanctuary of their beds. Day came too swiftly.

I’m wondering what it would be like to be kissed by you.” “Let’s not go there,” he said. “I don’t want to mess up our friendship.” “It wouldn’t,” she said, grinning suddenly. “I’d like to know how it feels. I mean, as an experiment.” “Put the wrong chemicals together, and they explode.” She frowned. “Are you saying you don’t think I’d like it? Or that I would?” “It doesn’t matter, because I’m not going to kiss you.” She looked up at him shyly, from beneath lowered lashes, and gave him a cajoling smile. “Just one teeny, weeny little kiss?” He laughed at her antics. Inside his stomach, about a million butterflies had taken flight. “Don’t play games with me, Summer.” He said it with a smile, but it was a warning. One she ignored. She crooked her finger and wiggled it, gesturing him toward her. “Come here, and give me a little kiss.” She was doing something sultry with her eyes, something she’d never done before. She’d turned on some kind of feminine heat, because he was burning up just looking at her. “Stop this,” he said in a guttural voice. She canted her hip and put her hand on it, drawing his attention in that direction, then slid her tongue along the seam of her lips to wet them. “I’m ready, bad boy. What are you waiting for?” His heart was beating a hundred miles a minute. He was hot and hard and ready. And if he touched her, he was going to ruin everything. “I’m not going to kiss you, Summer.” He saw the disappointment flash in her eyes. Saw the determination replace it. “All right. I’ll kiss you.” He could have stopped her. He was the one with the powerful arms and the broad chest and the long, strong legs. But he wanted that kiss. “Fine,” he said. “Don’t expect fireworks. I’m only doing this because we’re friends.” And if she believed that, he had some desert brushland he could sell her. Suddenly, she seemed uncertain, and he felt a pang of loss. Silly to feel it so deeply, when kissing Summer had been the last thing he’d allowed himself to dream about. Although, to be honest, he hadn’t always been able to control his dreams. She’d been there, all right. Hot and wet and willing. He made himself smile at her. “Don’t worry, kid. It was a bad idea. To be honest, I value our friendship too much—” She threw herself into his arms, clutching him around the neck, so he had to catch her or get bowled over. “Whoa, there,” he said, laughing and hugging her with her feet dangling in the air. “It doesn’t matter that you’ve changed your mind about wanting that kiss. I’m just glad to be your friend.” She leaned back in his embrace, searching his eyes, looking for something. Before he could do or say anything to stop her, she pressed her lips softly against his. His whole body went rigid. “Billy,” she murmured against his lips. “Please. Kiss me back.” “Summer, I don’t—” She pressed her lips against his again, damp and pliant and inviting. He softened his mouth against hers, felt the plumpness of her upper lip, felt the open, inviting seam, and let his tongue slide along the length of it. “Oh.” She broke the kiss and stared at him with dazed eyes. Eyes that sought reason where there was none. He wanted to rage at her for ruining everything. They could never be friends now. Not now that he’d tasted her, not now that she’d felt his want and his need. He lowered his head to take her mouth, to take what he’d always wanted.

I…I thought you were going to heal my lip.” Sylvan stroked her hair which had come loose from the knot at the back of her neck and now cascaded down her shoulders in soft chestnut waves. “I thought your heart needed healing first.” She shifted against him, getting more comfortable. “This is nice,” she admitted softly. “I…I’m sorry I freaked out on you.” “The fault is entirely mine,” Sylvan murmured. “The urlich aroused my protective rage. And then I got so completely focused on marking you I forgot to consider your feelings. Can you forgive me?” “I…I think so.” She looked up at him. “I guess you can’t help the way you get when there’s an enemy around. But please just…don’t come at me that way again.” “I won’t. I swear it.” He meant it from the bottom of his heart and Sophia seemed to sense his sincerity. “Thank you,” she whispered, her gaze still locked with his. “I…I appreciate that.” “I don’t want you to fear me.” Sylvan heard the break in his own voice but he couldn’t help it. “I would die to protect you, Sophia. To think you would believe I could hurt you in any way—especially that way…” But he couldn’t go on. “Sylvan…” She was looking at him with something like wonder on her face. “You…you’re crying,” she whispered. She sounded like she could hardly believe it. Sylvan didn’t believe it himself. “No, I’m not.” He had never given in to such emotion, never allowed himself such weakness before. Even after his father’s passing and Feenah’s betrayal, not so much as a single tear had come to his eyes. But Sophia was nodding. “Yes, you are. Or at least, you’re sort of leaking a little.” Reaching up, she brushed lightly at his cheek. “See?” She held out her hand. To his surprise her fingertips were wet. “I’m sorry,” he said stiffly. “Why?” Sophia sounded genuinely curious. He shook his head. “To show such weakness before one I am supposed to protect…it is unacceptable. Unforgivable.” “No, it’s not.” Suddenly she put her arms around his neck and hugged him. “It’s not, Sylvan,” she whispered in his ear, pressing her soft cheek against his. “Not at all, I promise you.” His heart swelled until he thought it might burst and he hugged her back carefully. He no longer cared if the urlich and the AllFather with all his hellish legions came upon him and killed him. At that moment, with Sophia willingly in his arms and her sweet feminine fragrance invading his senses, he knew he could die a happy and contented male.

The layers of confusion, twisted thinking, decadence, sacrilege, and viciousness descend ever-deeper with each passing day. Rage, obscenity, sexual license, nudity, erasing of gender differences, and the cheapening of life have all become commonplace in the public square.

From the same Badiou piece: Strange is the rage reserved by so many feminist ladies for the few girls wearing the hijab. They have begged poor president Chirac… to crack down on them in the name of the Law. Meanwhile the prostituted female body is everywhere. The most humiliating pornography is universally sold. Advice on sexually exposing bodies lavishes teen magazines day in and day out. A single explanation: a girl must show what she’s got to sell. She’s got to show her goods. She’s got to indicate that, henceforth, the circulation of women abides by the generalized model, and not by restricted exchange. Too bad for bearded fathers and elder brothers! Long live the planetary market! The generalized model is the top fashion model. It used to be taken for granted that an intangible female right is to only have to get undressed in front of the person of her choosing. But no. It is vital to hint at undressing at every instant. Whoever covers up what she puts on the market is not a loyal merchant. Let’s argue the following, then, a pretty strange point: the law on the hijab is a pure capitalist law. It orders femininity to be exposed. In other words, having the female body circulate according to the market paradigm is obligatory. For teenagers, i.e. the teeming center of the entire subjective universe, the law bans any holding back.16

Small and intentional Circles can be a panacea for the loneliness that stalks us, and that the rage-venting, dream-sharing, heart-listening, and cosmos-digging are all the healing activities that happen once you know you truly belong.

I can be feminine in all my rage. I can be girl and woman, and claws with teeth. Watch me burn.

Most everyone knows that making someone your bitch might not mean that person is female, just as they also know it means that being dominated and powerless are feminine states of being.

Paul tells the bride in Ephesians 6:10-12 that her enemies are 'not...flesh and blood,' but the unseen spiritual forces of evil and darkness. She is called to arm herself for battle, to 'be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power,' and to 'stand firm'--all of which convery 'unflinching courage like that possessed by soldiers who determinedly refuse to leave their posts irrespective of how severely the battle rages.' Both brides represent an unmistakable call to action. They give us powerful feminine images of strong, open-throttled living for God's kingdom, which makes it difficult to imagine that God wants his daughters to sit on the sidelines while our brothers do kingdom work without us.

Sidney provides the commentary on the DVD, and he tells us that he wanted “a train song.” Warren and Mercer gave him much more than that, for “On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe” is really an “entire town song.” It starts in the saloon—an important location, as it will be at war with the restaurant the Harvey girls wait table in—then moves to the train’s passengers, engineers, and conductor as it pulls in and the locals look everyone over, especially the newly mustered Harveys themselves. Warren’s music has imitated the train’s chugging locomotion, but now comes a trio section not by Warren and Mercer (at “Hey there, did you ever see such pearly femininity … ”), and the girls give us some individual backstories—one claims to have been the Lillian Russell of a small town in Kansas, and principals Ray Bolger and Virginia O’Brien each get a solo, too. The number is not only thus detailed as a composition but gets the ultimate MGM treatment on a gigantic set with intricate interaction among the many soloists, choristers, and extras. But now it’s Garland’s turn to enter the number, disembark, and mix in with the crowd. According to Sidney, Garland executed everything perfectly on the first try—and it was all done in virtually a single shot. Fred Astaire would have insisted on rehearsing it for a week, but Garland was a natural. Once she understood the spirit of a number, the physics of it simply fell into place for her. In any other film of the era, the saloon would be the place where the music was made. And Angela Lansbury, queen of the plot’s rowdy element, does have a floor number, dressed in malevolent black and shocking pink topped by a matching Hippodrome hat. But every other number is a story number—“The Train Must Be Fed” (as the Harveys learn the art of waitressing); “It’s a Great Big World” for anxious Harveys Garland, O’Brien, and a dubbed Cyd Charisse; O’Brien’s comic lament, “The Wild, Wild West,” a forging song at Ray Bolger’s blacksmith shop; “Swing Your Partner Round and Round” at a social. Marjorie Main cues it up, telling one and all that this new dance is “all the rage way

Great rage needs a great heart to hold it; great trauma needs a great heart to heal it. Athena’s many epithets include ‘the Great-Hearted’ and ‘She Who Saves.’ By placing Medusa’s severed head in the centre of her heart, I suggest that Athena is acting to ‘save’ Medusa, by containing her rage with love and compassion, so it can be witnessed, honoured and remembered. In the words of Bessel van der Kolk, ‘trauma almost invariably involves not being seen, not being recognized, and not being taken into account... sensing, naming, and identifying what is going on inside is the first step to recovery.’ The Gorgoneion in the centre of Athena’s heart reminds me of the Buddhist practice of tonglen, breathing in and out of the heart centre while holding an awareness of all the hurts and evils of this world. Tonglen is seen as a way to bring the balm of compassion to the worst and deepest wounds inflicted by humanity, and is considered an extremely difficult practice. To consciously witness the terrible pain, the collective and individual rage of the betrayed and wounded feminine, simply to hold it in the presence of divine love and compassion, requires tremendous strength and courage.

When someone violates you sexually, it does not simply haunt and aggrieve you; it alters the very shape of your soul. And altered I was. Contrary to the mythology surrounding the unflinching nature of African-American women, we, too, experience trauma. Black women—our essence, our emotional intricacies, the indignities we carry in our bones—are the most deeply misunderstood human beings in history. Those who know nothing about us have had the audacity to try to introduce us to ourselves, in the unsteady strokes of caricature, on stages, in books, and through their distorted reflections of us. The resulting Fun House image, a haphazard depiction sketched beneath the dim light of ignorance, allows ample room for our strength, our rage and tenacity, to stand at center stage. When we express anger, the audience of the world applauds. That expression aligns with their portrait of us. As long as we play our various designated roles—as court jesters and as comic relief, as Aunt Jemimas and as Jezebels, as maids whisking aperitifs into drawing rooms, as shuckin’ and jivin’ half-wits serving up levity—we are worthy of recognition in their meta-narrative. We are obedient Negroes. We are dutiful and thus affirmable. But when we dare tiptoe outside the lines of those typecasts, when we put our full humanity on display, when we threaten the social constructs that keep others in comfortable superiority, we are often dismissed. There is no archetype on file in which a Black woman is simultaneously resolute and trembling, fierce and frightened, dominant and receding. My mother, a woman who, amid abuse, stuffed hope and a way out into the slit of a mattress, is the very face of fortitude. I am an heir to her remarkable grit. However, beneath that tough exterior, I’ve also inherited my mother’s tender femininity, that part of her spirit susceptible to bruising and bleeding, the doleful Dosha who sat by the window shelling peanuts, pondering how to carry on. The myth of the Strong Black Woman bears a kernel of truth, but it is only a half-seed. The other half is delicate and ailing, all the more so because it has been denied sunlight.

Being an American boy is a setup. We train boys to believe that the way to become a man is to objectify and conquer women, value wealth and power above all, and suppress any emotions other than competitiveness and rage. Then we are stunned when our boys become exactly what we have trained them to be. Our boys cannot follow our directions, but they are cheating and dying and killing as they try to. Everything that makes a boy human is a “real man’s” dirty secret. Our men are caged, too. The parts of themselves they must hide to fit into those cages are the slices of their humanity that our culture has labeled “feminine”—traits like mercy, tenderness, softness, quietness, kindness, humility, uncertainty, empathy, connection. We tell them, “Don’t be these things, because these are feminine things to be. Be anything but feminine.” The problem is that the parts of themselves that our boys have been banished from are not feminine traits; they are human traits. There is no such thing as a feminine quality, because there is no such thing as masculinity or femininity. “Femininity” is just a set of human characteristics a culture pours into a bucket and slaps with the label “feminine.” Gender is not wild, it’s prescribed. When we say, “Girls are nurturing and boys are ambitious. Girls are soft and boys are tough. Girls are emotional and boys are stoic,” we are not telling truths, we are sharing beliefs—beliefs that have become mandates. If these statements seem true, it’s because everyone has been so well programmed. Human qualities are not gendered. What is gendered is permission to express certain traits. Why? Why would our culture prescribe such strict gender roles? And why would it be so important for our culture to label all tenderness and mercy as feminine? Because disallowing the expression of these qualities is the way the status quo keeps its power. In a culture as imbalanced as ours—in which a few hoard billions while others starve, in which wars are fought for oil, in which children are shot and killed while gun manufacturers and politicians collect the blood money—mercy, humanity, and vulnerability cannot be tolerated. Mercy and empathy are great threats to an unjust society. So how does power squash the expression of these traits? In a misogynistic culture, all that is needed is to label them feminine. Then we can forever discount them in women and forever shame them out of men. Ta-da: no more messy, world-changing tenderness to deal with. We can continue on without our shared humanity challenging the status quo in any way.

Images and words conveying disdain for girls, women, and femininity come at children fast and furiously, whereas most boys’ passage to adulthood—even for boys disadvantaged by class or ethnicity—remains cloaked in the cultural centrality of maleness and masculinity.

I’m Death Rage,” said the mouse. “Oh, that’s nice,” said Bricabrac. “Very feminine.

Because I’m empty without rage. I don’t know how else to live.

I don’t have any ‘feminine rage’ inside me to hurt my abuser―I have pure, unrelenting bloodlust streaming through my veins.

The whole set of stylizations that are known as 'camp' (a word that I was hearing then for the first time) was, in 1926, self-explanatory. Women moved and gesticulated in this way. Homosexuals wished for obvious reasons to copy them. The strange thing about 'camp' is that it has become fossilized. The mannerisms have never changed. If I were now to see a woman sitting with her knees clamped together, one hand on her hip and the other lightly touching her back hair, I should think, 'Either she scored her last social triumph in 1926 or it is a man in drag.' Perhaps 'camp' is set in the 'twenties because after that differences between the sexes—especially visible differences—began to fade. This, of course, has never mattered to women in the least. They know they are women. To homosexuals, who must, with every breath they draw, with every step they take, demonstrate that they are feminine, it is frustrating. They look back in sorrow to that more formal era and try to re-live it. The whole structure of society was at that time much more rigid than it has ever been since, and in two main ways. The first of these was sexual. The short skirts, bobbed hair and flat chests that were in fashion were in fact symbols of immaturity. No one ever drew attention to this, presumably out of politeness. The word 'boyish' was used to describe the girls of that era. This epithet they accepted graciously. They knew that they looked nothing like boys. They also realized that it was meant to be a compliment. Manliness was all the rage. The men of the 'twenties searched themselves for vestiges of effeminacy as though for lice. They did not worry about their characters but about their hair and their clothes. Their predicament was that they must never be caught worrying about either. I once heard a slightly dandified friend of my brother say, 'People are always accusing me of taking care over my appearance.' The sexual meaning of behaviour was only sketchily understood, but the symbolism of clothes was recognized by everyone. To wear suede shoes was to be under suspicion. Anyone who had hair rather than bristle at the back of his neck was thought to be an artist, a foreigner or worse. A friend of mine who was young in the same decade as I says that, when he was introduced to an elderly gentleman as an artist, the gentleman said, 'Oh, I know this young man is an artist. The other day I saw him in the street in a brown jacket.' The other way in which society in the 'twenties was rigid was in its class distinctions. Doubtless to a sociologist there were many different strata merging here and there but, among the people that I was now getting to know, there were only two classes. They never mingled except in bed. There was 'them', who acted refined and spoke nice and whose people had pots of money, and there was 'us', who were the salt of the earth.

In her passionate and meticulously argued book The Change, Australian feminist writer Germaine Greer suggests that society’s aversion to menopausal women is, more than anything, “the result of our intolerance for the expression of female anger.”5 But why do we find women’s rage so unacceptable, so threatening? It is for sure an attitude which is deeply embedded in the culture. Several studies conducted over the past few decades have reported that men who express anger are perceived to be strong, decisive, and powerful, while women who express the same emotion are perceived to be difficult, overemotional, irrational, shrill, and unfeminine. Anger, it seems, doesn’t fit at all with our cultural image of femininity, and so must be thoroughly suppressed whenever it is presumptuous enough to surface. One of the saddest findings of these studies is that this narrative is so deeply ingrained that it even exists among women — and we internalize it from an early age. Soraya Chemaly, American author of Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger, writes: Studies show that by the time most children are toddlers they already associate angry expressions with male faces … Girls and women, on the other hand, are subtly encouraged to put anger and other “negative” emotions aside, as unfeminine. Studies show that girls are frequently discouraged from even recognising their own anger, from talking about negative feelings, or being demanding in ways that focus on their own needs. Girls are encouraged to smile more, use their “nice” voices and sublimate how they themselves may feel in deference to the comfort of others. Suppressed, repressed, diverted and ignored anger is now understood as a factor in many “women’s illnesses,” including various forms of disordered eating, autoimmune diseases, chronic fatigue and pain.6 We hide our anger by refusing even to use the word — instead of saying we’re utterly furious, we talk about being “annoyed,” “upset,” or “irritated.” We take refuge in sarcasm, we nurse grudges, or we simply withdraw. And as a consequence of these actions and attitudes, anger is an emotion that, more often than not, makes women feel powerless — not just because we’ve been made to feel as if we’re not allowed to express it, but, accordingly, because we’ve never learned healthy ways to express it.

made the tiny cleft in my chin seem feminine and less like Clark Kent’s. Without it, my resting bitchface would be boosted to epic proportions, intense enough to make people jump ship in a raging storm to escape me. I

The intensity of feminist rage at femininity should not be allowed to obscure the universality of feminist anger. It is difficult to call to mind another social movement in which feelings of displeasure and belligerence play so prominent a role. Now, the only thing so ubiquitous in the feminist’s field of vision that she finds it everywhere she looks is herself. It is not femininity in the abstract that feminists hate, but their own feminin­ity.

Teen girls—fragile, naive, desperate to belong and to please—don’t make marks on this world. The men who erase their fatal attempts do.