Book Review/Heather Seggel

Let It All Out

Rebecca Traister’s latest book, Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger (Simon & Schuster), is a catalyzing whomp to the solar plexus. While reading you may find yourself relitigating old grievances that have nothing whatsoever to do with politics, as well as regretting the times you failed to speak up for yourself or others. This is normal, but can be jarring. Emotions will arise as you read; by the time you’re done, you’ll have a clearer sense of how to harness them for good.

Much of the anger examined here stems from the 2016 election, and it’s shocking to see how much energy the media invested in minimizing women’s reaction and response. The Women’s March that followed Trump’s inauguration was the largest political protest in US history; while imperfect it managed to be inclusive and intersectional, and showed potential for coalition building among women the likes of which has rarely been seen. The next day, Traister recalls watching George Stephanopoulos let Kellyanne Conway reduce the whole event to one quote from Madonna, then pivot to a chat with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who had himself attended a Women’s March in New York. Stephanopoulos had only one question for Schumer: “Were you comfortable with everything you heard?”

Anger begets action. The confirmations of Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court despite credible evidence of sexual harassment and assault respectively both led to waves of women stepping up to become more politically active. A lengthy discussion of the #metoo movement, still evolving from week to week, notes that we’re in a new phase with regard to issues of sexual harassment, though the old problems persist (notably, a general incomprehension that the problem with having one’s ass slapped on the job is not the slap but the way it devalues women, which reinforces a power dynamic we are expected to either endure with quiet stoicism or self-deprecating humor).

It’s the suffragettes who may have the most to teach us, especially in terms of what not to do. The fight for women’s rights was at one time inextricably tied with the abolition movement; the strategic decision to pull away and prioritize the needs of white women created a much-deserved distrust that still impacts our work today. There were hard and hurt feelings from all sides when the first Women’s March was being planned: The original name was boosted from an event created by and for black women; as corrections were made and the event focused on women of color, white women threatened to stay home because they felt unwelcome; Some transgender women felt excluded because many women knit and wore pink “pussy hats.” Despite a range of concerns, people chose to show up. And despite dismissive comments about the relative triviality of signs and hats and chants, there was more going on at those marches than met the eye. Women, and especially women of color, ran for office in unprecedented numbers, and as we now know, many of them won in the 2018 midterms. The news media tied itself in knots beginning roughly at noon on Election Day to minimize the “Blue Wave” as a mere ripple, but the numbers don’t lie. This is what angry women can do.

There is more good and useful information in this book than can be easily summarized. Traister is explicit about how much of the labor on behalf of all women has been performed by women of color, and assigns clear responsibility to white women to shoulder our share in ways more meaningful than Facebook memes from here on out. She discusses the damning statistic about the 53% of white women who voted for Trump in a way that prompts direct action rather than guilty reflection, which is the right approach; consider that many of those new midterm candidates won not by trying to persuade older white voters to give them a chance, but by working to register and engage with young, new voters, and pointing out that if Republicans are willing to work so hard to suppress their votes, they must be worth something.

Books about women and anger are enjoying a heyday right now. I jumped from Good and Mad directly into Soraya Chemaly’s Rage Becomes Her, and took a moment on a recent bookstore trip to peruse the back cover of Gemma Hartley’s Fed Up. If you’re naturally interested in their subject matter these books will speak to you, but if the subject of angry women makes you uncomfortable they are essential reading, because we are not going away any time soon.

Heather Seggel is a writer living in Northern California. Email heatherlseggel@gmail.com

From The Progressive Populist, February 1, 2019

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