Columns, Opinion

Femitwist: Anger isn’t conducive to allyship

It’s 10 p.m. on a Saturday night. Why am I screaming at this cashier at Star Market?

Flipping through People magazine while I wait in the checkout line, I come across a picture of three generations of Pinkett women: Jada Pinkett Smith, her mom and her daughter, Willow Smith. They looked damn good, but this anecdote isn’t about Jada. It’s about the fact that my friend didn’t know who she was, and the cashier, a young man, described her to my friend as “Will Smith’s wife.”

Before he even spoke, I knew he would describe the actress, singer-songwriter, dancer and businesswoman as “Will Smith’s wife.” Why? Because women’s personal and professional accomplishments will always be secondhand to their wifehood. Because women’s careers are not as recognized as their relationship status. They are not their job, role or achievement. They are the wives of someone else’s job, role or achievement.

We saw this in 2016 when Hillary Clinton was running as “Bill Clinton’s wife,” not as Hillary Clinton, the 2016 presidential nominee. I saw this at Star Market, but I could’ve let it go so easily. He wasn’t making a personal attack against women. He wasn’t blatantly disrespecting or harassing me. But his comment did have implications, ones that were problematic to the perception of women’s personhood. But I could have communicated that in a different way than I chose.

I screamed my defense. I told him he was guilty of diminishing a woman’s identity to that of a wife and not of a person. I told him his comments were predictable of an ignorant man’s.

It was 10 p.m. on a Saturday night, and I was screaming at a cashier in Star Market.

When did I become a cliche?

Girls learn very young that they should be feminists. They should want equal rights, and they should want to be independent and strong. But they also learn that they should make their demands in a way that doesn’t take away any power from men in the process and in a way that does not sacrifice their femininity. We learn to not be the angry feminist with body hair who screams at cashiers in Star Market. It may scare men away from respecting whoever is threatening to assert dominance over them.

To be clear, I’m entitled to be angry. I’m entitled to assert my dominance and expect women to be perceived with the same respect as men. I’m entitled to voice my opinion and for that opinion to be accepted as valid. What I’m not entitled to do is to yell at men for something they don’t conceptualize as problematic (yet) and push them away from allyship.

Being angry is really easy. It’s especially easy to be angry at the embodiment of the institution that is holding you back from equality. But being angry is not always productive. Angriness is not conducive to dialogue and understanding, which is the only way to form a united front against an institution that operates to oppress every gender. The battle isn’t men vs. women, it’s men vs. women against the patriarchy.

News flash: men aren’t useless. They’re not immune to patriarchal pressures, either. And if I’m angry, I’m just as angry for them as I am for myself. At the same time, I understand that the angry feminist isn’t the best face for the feminist movement, but that’s because her feelings can be viewed as emotional outbursts, premenstrual syndrome mood swings or some other gendered dramatics.

Therefore, unleashing the angry feminist is ineffective because it isolates men from the feminist movement in several ways.

It threatens men’s superiority, which has been established in the western world for millennia. It gives them an opportunity to dismiss the anger as a womanly outburst rather than a genuine expression of offense. And it debunks their own validity as victims of the patriarchy.

By exacerbating the angry feminist persona to project my own insecurities onto men, I invalidate the patriarchy as an institution that affects people of all gender, not just femme people.

So next time I decide to unleash the angry feminist at a Star Market, or elsewhere, I can decide to welcome the man as an ally rather than push him away as an oppressor.





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2 Comments

  1. You are literally being so psychotic. Firstly, people refer to Jada Pinkett Smith as “Will Smith’s wife” because she is less prevalent in the media and acting compared to her husband, so obviously, people will refer to ger as the “wife. Calling a woman someones “wife” is not infringing on their personhood and whatnot. NEWSFLASH: you don’t have to get triggered over every comment like a basic millennial and be a soft ass snowflake. You should really grow up and stop thinking you’re always in the right with things. Next time, learn to think about things more deeply rather than ranting online about your “struggle” against the patriarchy.

  2. YOU ARE NOT ENTITLED TO ANYTHING, NEITHER ARE MEN