Interview with Dr Jennifer Cox, article by Gaby Hinsliff (3 July 2024)

Podcast link (in article) https://auddy.com/shows/inspiration/women-are-mad

Book being referenced in article: Women Are Angry: Why Your Rage is Hiding and How to Let it Out is published on 4 July (Bonnier Books, £16.99).

Article: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/article/2024/jul/03/all-the-rage-women-are-furious-and-repressing-it-can-ruin-our-lives

A few quotes:

Cox began wondering whether suppressed rage might be undermining women’s mental – and sometimes physical – health, and whether recognising and expressing it might help them move on faster. Cox stresses that she isn’t suggesting the diagnoses her clients arrived with, from panic attacks to chronic pain, aren’t real. Rather, she is arguing that a diagnosis isn’t always the whole story, and that for many women that story is complicated.

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Women’s rage differs from men’s, Cox argues, because women are conditioned in a patriarchal society not to show it publicly (much as men are conditioned not to show sadness or fear). “Women have to stay in their place and be very nice, accepting and kind.”

Girls learn that crying is fine, but that yelling is unfeminine. Angry older women are caricatured as screeching harridans, while righteously angry younger ones are told they just can’t take a joke. Black women are portrayed as particularly aggressive if they lose their tempers. “Whatever way society has of squashing them, it does, and that angry black women trope is kind of classic,” says Cox. Meanwhile, angry white women can also be dismissed as “Karens”, stereotypically entitled middle-class whiners. Essentially, women learn that anger isn’t socially acceptable and that losing control means they won’t be taken seriously. “It’s really easily humiliating and shaming, isn’t it? We kind of embarrass ourselves,” Cox says. Easier, then, to keep a lid on it.

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Many new mothers who endure traumatic births, she writes, are left feeling angry and cheated. But those feelings are often brushed under the carpet, with women encouraged to be grateful that they emerged with a healthy baby. “This whole gratitude thing is a problem; it’s the enemy of good mental health. Of course there’s a place for it and, of course, attitudinally we feel better when we look at the positive. But so we can get there, we have to let ourselves discharge the negative.”

When that anger isn’t discharged, she says, it can resurface as shame, or feeling there must be something wrong with you. 

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What needs to be normalised isn’t lashing out, but openly acknowledging anger, so that you can focus on trying to fix whatever is fraying your temper.

Stressed women are often encouraged to self-soothe by running a hot bath or lighting a candle, strategies that exasperate Cox. “It makes me feel really furious even as you describe those activities. Like, fine – but get the anger out first and then do your lovely thing. Reward yourself for having been brave enough to get it out.”

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But the ultimate aim isn’t, she says, never to feel angry again. “[Anger] is there for a reason. We have it as part of our apparatus because we need to respond to it, and ideally make change happen because of it.” Rather, it’s to turn anger into something women can use: a way, ultimately, of taking back control.