Anger doesn't invalidate facts

Listen to angry women instead of blowing them off

I made a short video about anger last week that ended up doing better on Twitter than it did on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok combined.

It was a timely and relevant word for some conversations that were happening on Twitter, so I can see why it resonated there.

I don’t want to rehash the nonsense over that gross sex book (see a masterful review in seven parts here) but I do want to point out something that happened in the ensuing public conversation.

Multiple eminently qualified, educated, and articulate women brought up insightful, well documented, and important critiques about a book written by a man. Other men platformed the author man and ignored or downplayed the critiques by women. This isn’t even a summary of this situation in particular - I’ve seen the same pattern happen over and over again.

Men explicitly refuse to give credence to women’s critiques because the women are ANGRY when they make them.

And I don’t mean blow-their-top angry, I don’t mean shouting or cursing, I don’t mean typing in all caps. Because these women don’t do any of those things. The men mean angry as in “not excessively nice.” Or maybe “mildly snarky.” Basically any tone from a women that is not explicitly respectful and deferential is seen as angry.

It’s exhausting.

And women are not getting angry over minor inconveniences. We’re talking about language and actions and policies that deeply harm vulnerable people. Like books that lead to documented sexual harm for women.

When women who are trained and educated express a problem in the world a man can shut them down and not listen to the critique because she was angry (not deferential enough) when she said it.

Women have every right to be outraged when people are being harmed, when bad teaching is hurting people. It’s right and good to be angry about that stuff. There is nothing wrong with expressing their critiques AND there is nothing wrong with BEING ANGRY while expressing critiques.

Anger is an important emotion that helps motivate us to take action for change in the world. Often, those actions for change make the world a better and safer place for vulnerable people. Anger helps us protect ourselves and those we care about.

Women are told, “If you would be nicer, calmer, more amicable, more winsome when you make critiques, we would listen to you…”

But women have tried for years to be nice and polite when expressing problems and we get ignored.

We are ignored if we are nice and ignored + insulted if we are angry.

We shouldn’t have to smile when we are talking about terrible issues in the world. It’s okay to be angry when you are talking about terrible things. That doesn’t invalidate the concerns - in fact, it should cause people to pay more careful attention.