Anger has power

 　　Men simply don't know how to properly acknowledge or name our anger—largely It's because we women don't know it. This is a new topic for everyone.

　　Women's anger has been purged for so long that when it finally came to light, there were no ready-made explanations for what happened.

　　- Sarah Robinson

repressed women's movement

　　Feminism had been dormant for decades before contemporary female anger resurfaced.

　　The 20th century saw a series of great social movements, such as the women's movement, the civil rights movement, the gay rights movement, etc., but in the decades since, the counter-reformists have prevailed.

　　In 1982, conservative representative Phyllis Schlafley launched an anti-feminist movement against the Equal Rights Amendment, preventing the ratification of the 24-word amendment that would have guaranteed equal rights for men and women, marking the beginning of the 1970s. The second wave of feminism and the outrage that fueled that movement were pushed to the fringes.

　　On a larger scale, during the Reagan era, the increasingly far-right counter-reformist political forces and the Christian right-wing "Moral Majority" were strongly opposed to all social progress.

　　At the time, the women’s movement secured relief, rights, and protection for poor women, allowing them to lead stable lives, as well as legal, vocational, and educational benefits for middle-class women, allowing them to live more independently, free from Dependence on marriage, the patriarchal system that binds women.

　　These social advancements were all under attack at the time. The right in the 1980s was obsessed with restricting abortion freedoms and deregulating banks, while also trying to scrap the Social Security system, leaving the black “welfare queens” Reagan called them.

　　A 1986 Newsweek cover story horribly pointed out that studies show that single women in their 40s are more likely to be killed by terrorists than they are to be married.

　　Although this data was later revealed to be false, it did not coincide with the core point expressed in Susan Faruday's chronicle of the era, Backlash, which described the various anger against women in the Reagan era. Contain, suffocate.

　　At the time, for example, the feminist movement was accused of being responsible for the “lack of men,” while daycares that forced women to work outside the home were stigmatized as harmful to children.

　　In popular culture, open-minded white professional women are often portrayed as overindulgent monsters, such as the character played by Glenn Close in "Fatal Attraction"; Either you are saved by union with the opposite sex, or you are punished for being rejected, like Diane Keaton in "Baby Boom" and Sigourney Weaver in "Working Girl."

　　By contrast, there is little room for black heroines, and even the most nuanced performances are often reserved for male creators, allowing them to use the image of liberating women to express their views.

　　For example, Spike Lee's 1986 film She's Gotta Have It portrayed heroine Nora Darling as a dissatisfied figure; Bill Cosby's "Kos" In The Cosby Show, heroine Claire Huxterpole is a wealthy married mom with a law degree—a successful black matriarch given Cosby's own racial political views , in fact, it is a denial of other black women.

right to be angry

　　Who wants to be a feminist? Nobody wants to. People's anxiety about the name is not due to the existence of issues such as racial exclusion and indifference in the feminist movement, but because the term "feminist" itself implies a blatant political challenge to male dominance. Constructed as an old, ugly, crazy image.

　　In the 1980s and 1990s, Susan Sarandon was one of the few stars who consistently spoke out about left-wing politics.

　　She once explained why even herself, who is constantly devoted to giving disruptive political speeches, prefers to be mistakenly called a "humanitarian" rather than a "feminist," because "feminists are, in some people's eyes, an aggressive bunch. The shrew, let people avoid it."

　　Of course, anger does erupt like a volcano, and it comes from those who have declared war on injustice, often women. In 1991, law professor Anita Hill testified before the all-white, male U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee against Clarence Thomas, then-nominated to the Supreme Court, for her role in the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. committed sexual harassment.

　　The Senate Judiciary Committee ignored and humiliated Hill, ultimately did not believe her allegations, and left Thomas sitting on the justice seat to this day, shocking women.

　　"Watching these men sit in high-backed chairs and question this woman condescendingly was brutal," recalled Washington State Senator Patty Murray. Outraged by what happened to Hill, Murray and many women began running for office in 1992.

　　Four women, including Murray, won state seats, with Carol Moseley Braun becoming the first African-American woman in U.S. history to enter the state House.

　　An additional 24 women were elected to the House of Representatives for the first time, more than in any other year. Over the years, there have sometimes been violent outbursts of anger at racism.

　　In 1992, four white police officers in Los Angeles beat the black driver Rodney King, but were found not guilty by a predominantly white jury and released, and the entire Los Angeles was plunged into riots.

　　Angry protesters looted stores and set fires everywhere, killing 63 people in the unrest. At the time, the news media and local politicians were quick to characterize the events as riots.

　　However, one Democratic congressman in Los Angeles saw something else in the riots: Rep. Maxine Waters, who represents South Central Los Angeles, where most of the riots took place.

　　"Some people want me to ... persuade people to go home and accept the jury verdict calmly. I will take responsibility and ask people not to make fun of their own lives. But I won't ask people to stop being angry," Waters said. , "I am angry, I have the right to be angry, and those people also have the right to be angry."