"Feminism is the collective manifestation of female anger," wrote Lindy West in the New York Times last fall. What eludes Lindy West in this quote is that while the notion of feminism is fueled by emotion, anger often being the most motivating, feminism also requires action, fact, and credibility. Throughout American history, U.S. culture has dismissed and perverted feminist movements characterized by female rage. Consequently, women have had to package their anger into falsifiable, flowery language complicit to male standards of impartiality to bear even the slightest chance of being heard. In rejecting organization, the goal behind the 90s Riot Grrl movement escaped the media, while the #MeToo movement, which was backed up with organized arguments, found much more success in raising awareness about the mistreatment of women. 

Female rage is the emotional response to centuries of violent sexism accumulated, passed on generationally, and still relentlessly experienced by women today. The anger that women experience constantly, that is directed furiously at all men, is born by trauma and constraints to tight social roles. A cumulation of these experiences adds up to create a collective anger among women. Unfortunately, in American society, a woman’s anger can often detract from her message as the audience will question her credibility, focus solely on her emotion, and assume her anger is simply unsubstantiated– a typical example of a woman and her emotional nature.

In 2018 when Christine Blasey Ford stood before an impassive judiciary committee and disinterred how Brett Kavanaugh, associate justice of the Supreme Court, traumatized her, every woman in attendance was left feeling powerless. In order to reclaim that power and autonomy, women had to resort to weaponizing their anger to motivate change and then condensing it into eloquent verifiable claims. The #MeToo movement popularized in the wake of famous filmmaker, Harvey Weinstein’s, conviction of numerous rapes. The movement voiced thousands of sexual assault victims’ deep-held anger, and finally gave them a voice. This movement was especially effective because the multiplying allegations of sexual assault were meticulously proven. These allegations involve Marilyn Manson, Bill Cosby, R. Kelly, Danny Masterson, Placido Domingo, Josh Duggar, Matt Lauer, and the list goes on. The #MeToo movement successfully forced several states to ban the use of nondisclosure agreements in cases comprising of any sexual assault. This ban allows witnesses and victims of assault to publicly share their experiences by interrupting a level of secrecy that allows companies to get away with sexual assault cases in the workplace. In 2019, several states expanded their laws regarding sexual harassment. The movement also brought about a fund titled the Time’s Up fund, providing 3,677 victims of sexual assault with legal attorneys to go to receive justice. By providing women at an economic disadvantage, this fund helps give marginalized women a voice. These are only a few examples of the profound systemic changes made to America’s policies regarding sexual violence against women as a result of this movement. #MeToo inspired several organized protests all around the United States and systematically benefitted women.

Earlier on, a famous sub-branch of the third-wave feminist movement called the Riot Grrls emerged, angrily mocking sexist stereotypes through art. This glamorous 90s movement critiqued the male domination of the Punk scene and created a space for young women to amplify their angry voices to reclaim power. Before Riot Grrl truly gained vogue, the music industry had been subjugated by famous punk rockers Iggy Pop, Joey Ramone, and Johnny Thunders. As a counter-culture movement, many punk artists appealed to infamous ideals in their work, using shock value to promote their brand. One of the most well-known ideologies claimed by Iggy Pop’s band, The Stooges, was Nazism. Iggy and his guitar player Ron Ashton often appeared publicly painted in swastikas or dressed in Hitler Youth uniforms. In addition, they often participated in physical altercations and shot up on heroin frequently. This violent counter-culture movement governed by angry and unhinged men incentivized women to come forward with their own take on this movement. Unlike the precursory male-dominated movement the Riot Grrls had a social justice message to convey through their music. Unfortunately though, as these women gained popularity and their art became commercialized, the movement grew into an aesthetic more than a crusade. 

As the movement grew, capitalizing on the music and the famously girly fashion that came with it, little progress toward equality was made. From the perspective of the women involved in the movement, dressing like young girls was a way of embracing their tantrum-like anger and recklessness, but in the eyes of lawmakers, they were seen as juvenile in politics, and belonging more to the media– which often sexualized them. The movement created a cathartic space for women to feel empowered among other women, but would not make long-lasting change to American gender dynamics because Riot Grrrls quite plainly rejected the notion of compromise. More than anything, what we remember of this time is the art it produced, and its empowering effects on young girls. 

The Riot Grrls movement was known for reclaiming degrading sexist vernacular to satirize men. Kathleen Hanna, lead singer of Bikini Kill, famously wore babydoll dresses and spelled out the word “SLUT” on her stomach to reclaim the word’s power as her own. Bikini Kill’s song titled “White Boy” begins with a spoken intro by an unknown male voice: “But some dumb hoes, slut rocker bitches walking down the street, they're asking for it. They may deny it, but it's true” Kathleen Hanna replies in a shrieking angry voice with a sarcastic line about how she’s sorry and sings that she’ll “try to scream in pain a little nicer next time.” By exposing the ugliness of male violence against women, Hanna riles up her female audience against men. This use of demonizing all men is part of what made the Riot Grrls movement an exclusively female one. It was unrealistic to punish all men, therefore people in power were less inclined to pay attention to the demands of the movement. In an article written in The Evening Standard about Bikini Kill, it was stated that “[t]he best thing that any Riot Grrrl could do is to go away and do some reading, and I don’t mean a grubby little fanzine” (Leonard 243). Many similar articles were published, often beside completely irrelevant photographs intended to discredit members of various female punk bands. Kathleen Hanna stated that Newsweek purchased a picture of her and her friends in bikinis to be published above an article about her. She later said that she believed this was done as an effort to invalidate her feminism. By using an image of Hanna in a bathing suit beside an article that is meant to defile her, Newsweek attempts to sexualize her and make her appear frivolous. Many articles discounted the message the Riot Grrrl propagated about the gruesome realities of girlhood. The movement was dismissed by scholars as puerile because it was angry, and not politely composed. 

However, strong emotional ties to a movement do fuel productivity. To be effective, renowned American author bell hooks proposes a “love ethic” in her book, All About Love. She suggests that people can achieve social justice by developing a loving relationship with those oppressed in order to motivate change. Tana Burke, leader of the #MeToo movement also employs a theory very similar to bell hooks’: “empowerment through empathy” (Burke). Burke uses empathy to focus especially on bringing people together. Anger at the oppressor by this logic is an acceptable feeling, as long as love for those oppressed is the prevailing emotion. Civil Rights activist Diane Nash explains that love is what made the Civil Rights Movement as successful as it was. Nash was a strategist for many of the most prominent campaigns that precipitated several civil rights victories. She separates people from their actions, explaining that she criticizes their bigotry not the people perpetrating it. She furthers her point by describing that in committing violence against the oppressor, very little is accomplished. She believes in civil disobedience, but not in violence which simply instigates more violence. She warned her audience in a speech she gave at the Patrick F. McCartan Courtroom that in violent rebellion, people “often kill individuals and leave the oppressive system, or the real problem, untouched.” By committing violence a group can often undermine its own credibility. The oppressor can argue that violent protests prove certain stereotypes that marginalized groups are violent or hyper-emotional. Violence is an oppressor’s tool, and to achieve social change, the oppressed have to employ a unifying appeal– love– accompanied by fact. 

The Riot Grrrl movement also lacked efficacy because the white Riot Grrrls produced a majorly white movement. There was little dialogue surrounding the intersectional experience of being Black and being a woman. Author of Beyond Bikini Kill: A History of Riot Grrl, from Grrls to Ladies, Christina D’Angelica writes that members of the Riot Grrl movement used the “‘whiteness’ of the PNW [Punk New Wave] community as well as the fact that punk was a majority white subculture as an excuse to forgo attempts at formulating an inclusive activism.” The bands that functioned as the face of the movement, Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, Jack Off Jill, and L7, were all white bands. The members were cut out and glued onto every Riot Grrl fanzine and distributed across the United States. Without any representation of women of color, most non-white women were completely excluded from the movement. The movement was predominantly led by thin white women who fit the beauty standard and who were able to capitalize off of their privileges, dismissing other women. Being an exclusionary movement, Riot Grrl was not able to gather sufficient support and was in fact frowned upon by many women who didn’t fit this beauty standard.

In the United States, white women’s pain has always been valued above the pain women of color experience; America often sympathizes more with the suffering its white women endure and responds violently when women of color use their voices. The Sapphire caricature was popularized especially through film, depicting a black woman, often irrationally angry, and abusive towards men. This illustration of Black women was created to chastise women of color who expressed discontent with the oppression they faced – Black women who stepped out of their societal norms. These “Sapphire” characters are present in famous television including comedies like Good Times, The Jeffersons, and Coffy. In the 1970s, these characters often became melded with the “Jezebel” caricature of Black women: The Jezebel was typically illustrated as a hyper-sexual temptress; this was yet another way to demonize women of color. On the poster for the 1970s film Coffy, a black woman is pictured wearing little clothing and a partially transparent bikini-like top; she is also illustrated with a gun in hand, thus symbolizing both the sexualized and angry traits associated with the Jezebel and Sapphire personas. These caricatures have been so often used to oppress the voices of women of color, specifically Black women, and to undermine their anger. While all women experience sexism, the convergent experiences of other women including women who are not white, queer, Muslim, Jewish, and/or more make for different struggles which is why our society must learn to acknowledge the different emotional tolls on all women. Feminism cannot be exclusive to one “kind” of woman.

Men’s anger has been conditioned into American society by America’s fabrication of masculinity characterized by power achieved through violence; their anger is respected because it is seen as a natural male trait – an indication of strength. A study performed in 2015 by Arizona State University uncovered that men were viewed as more credible when speaking angrily, more so than women. Researchers simulated three jury deliberations with identical arguments, one jury read a piece written by a typically male name in an angry tone, the second read a piece written by a typically female name in an angry tone, and the last read a piece written by a genderless name in a neutral tone. The results indicated that the participants who read the man’s argument found that his justification was significantly more credible, while those who read the woman’s identical argument found it to be emotionally motivated. Examples like this prove why women are forced to take the extra step to withhold their anger and display a composed and agreeable temper when arguing for justice.

The #MeToo movement, despite unearthing great anger, has also been strongly supported by many politicians as a rational and important movement. Former first lady, Michelle Obama, spoke out on the Today show about the importance of the movement. She explained the importance of education in the process of reaching equality, and that our future generations will have to be equipped with the knowledge to make a difference. In order to reach systemic and social equality, women have to perfectly formulate claims, to change laws, and to be respected in politics. Put perfectly by feminist writer Virginia Woolf, “[t]he expression of the personal implies the exposure of autobiographical information,” which “is a historically fraught issue for women writers” who “feel pressure to adhere to masculine standards of intellectual objectivity,” (Woolf). Women often struggle with the notion of complying with masculine standards of intelligence to avoid being denounced for speaking subjectively. Despite clearly experiencing constant rage aimed at the patriarchy, Virginia Woolf’s writings on feminism do not revolve around her own experience. In the United States, female anger has to be subversively packaged into accurate, provable facts, or its mother movement will be discredited.

Unlike the Riot Grrls movement, the #MeToo movement was inclusive of all female-identifying people. This includes women of color and women who are part of the LGBTG+ community. By embracing all women, this movement managed to snowball a vast following. Spearheaded by Tana Burke, the #metoo movement is committed to diminishing sexual violence. Burke also calls attention to the disproportionate abuse of women of color in particular. She makes it a priority to incorporate anti-racism into her cause to create a new movement that won’t leave behind women of color. While American society has responded more to the voices of straight cis-gender white women, women of all sexualities, genders, and ethnicities have spoken out in participation. With social media playing a large role in activism and the movement's expansion, more women have had access to online platforms to share their experiences and express allyship. 

The disparity between how women and men’s anger is treated inhibits women from taking advantage of this tool to get what they need. American society has relied on the oppression of women to support its men, and out of fear of being emasculated, the patriarchal American society invents all sorts of beliefs to ensure that women stay oppressed. By delegitimizing women’s anger, America strips them of the ability to establish credibility when expressing emotion.

Female rage is a consequence of sexism filling women with so much pain and trauma over centuries that it eventually transitions into revenge. However, American culture does not respond to women’s anger with the same respect as it does men, but rather it responds with utter contempt. Consequently, women have had to delicately frame their anger into, cold, sterilized arguments catered to what men believe compose credibility. In better words, American novelist Erica Jong writes, “No wonder they invented the myth of female inadequacy."