Rage. This is not simply a strong word for anger. No, it’s so much deeper than that. Rage, you see, is often misunderstood. To some, it appears as an unbridled, irrational anger. And in a sense, they’re right. Because rage stems from irrational treatment, the feeling of being helpless to change things, and years of swallowing anger in the moment. Have you ever seen a mother in a court room witnessing her child’s abuser walk free? Have you ever seen a sexual assault victim be charged for defending herself? Have you ever been told you’re the crazy one in a world that is making no logical sense? Have you ever had your greatest wound thrown in your face? Have you ever been told to be grateful your suffering isn’t worse?
Then you know rage. And you know it isn’t the same as anger. You also know it’s actually anything but irrational, and that it is has every right to be unbridled. This is why rage is something witnessed with reverence. If you’ve heard the wails, the screams, the shouts, the pain behind a cry of true rage, you have witnessed the cry of a soul. Because beneath the outward expressed rage, is profound grief that has been compounded.
Feminine Rage is Ancestral
As women, our rage is generational; a grief shared by many women, throughout the ages. A rage never heard, never honored, and never apologized for. This is why we recognize feminine rage most of all.
What do men have to rage about? They’ve ruled the world, entitled to privilege after privilege because their male ancestors wrote the rules.
But women? We have been oppressed for a millennia, around the world. We’ve been sexualized, objectified, humiliated, burned, harassed, raped, killed, lobotomized, brutalized, institutionalized, withheld from money, power, education, scientific studies, careers, safety tests, had our inventions, discoveries, creations, and research stolen by men, been sold like cattle to the highest bidder (often as children), have had to fight for every scrap of autonomy and self-ownership, oh and we also get BLAMED for men’s crimes against us & all men’s suffering too. Men take our pictures without consent and post them online. They beat and kill us for rejecting or leaving them. They’ve sexualized us since we were children. Men have treated, and continue to treat us, as second-class citizens. All because we’re women.
What the actual fuck? If that’s not an irrational belief fully deserving of “irrational” anger, I don’t know what is.
This is the life women are expected to bear with a smile. All because a bunch of dudes got together and moaned that they couldn’t give birth to children and were feeling impotent and decided to write some stories inventing a life-giving man, called God, who just so happened to say women came from man’s rib? Men’s pity party and resulting self-soothing bedtime story became the law of the land. Girls were brainwashed to believe they were less, boys brainwashed to believe they were more: resulting in one half full of righteous rage and the other, scratching their head in bewilderment.
Women have been suffering for generations because of the fragile egos of men. The pain we carry in our bones, in our blood, is not ours alone. It is the injustices endured by our mothers, our grandmothers, our great-grandmothers, our great-great-grandmothers and on and on it goes. It is the grief we hold for our sisters, our daughters, our grand-daughters, and ourselves as we consider the world future women will be born into.
And then men play dumb when we speak of rage. Because they don’t know it. They think it’s simply “anger” not well managed. But
Rage is Not Just Anger
Rage is not simply “anger.” It is Righteous Anger Given Expression.
There is a difference.
Anyone can be angry. Angry you didn’t get the job. Angry you got stuck in traffic. Angry your coffee was made incorrectly. Angry that your plans got cancelled. Angry that your washing machine broke. You can even be angry with a partner, a child, a friend, a family member, a neighbor, a boss. But the key difference is that the anger is often temporary. Either it’s not a big deal and is passed in time, such as traffic or getting over your coffee. Or it is something that can be handled with a bit of effort, such as your broken washing machine or a conflict with another human. Anger is a burst of emotion, in the moment. The source? Relatively small. Being inconvenienced. Having to pay money. Enduring an uncomfortable conversation.
But rage? No amount of time passing will heal that wound. No amount of talking or money will solve that problem.
That is why men cannot fathom our feminine rage. For rage is not a momentary emotion. Rage doesn’t go away if we “cool down,” or take a break from social media or just don’t think/talk about it. Because women are still in an abusive world. Women are bombarded everywhere they go with fresh reasons to rage. From the man following her home, to the man eying her at the grocery store, to another law being passed limiting her autonomy, to a boyfriend or husband making her the villain for expressing her feelings, to just watching a movie where every woman is sexualized, assaulted, or infantilized.
Women are being drip-fed reasons to rage. And then being told to “not be so angry.”
I repeat: Rage is not normal anger, it’s Righteous Anger Given Expression.
When I say “righteous” I don’t mean in the religious sense, I mean justified. It is morally right to be enraged when we see the abuse of our sisters, our children, animals, the planet. We are full of rage because we know injustice when we see it or experience it. We are full of rage because we are constantly gaslit by our oppressors who tell us there is nothing to be so enraged about. We are full of rage because we are tuned in to all the of the unexpressed rage of our ancestors. Our rage is, indeed, righteous.
What Rage Is
Rage stems from a feeling of powerlessness, grief, INJUSTICE.
- Rage is knowing 1 in 3 women will face sexual assault in her life. ONE IN THREE.
- Rage is knowing that an all-male committee is deciding things like abortion laws & laws governing reproductive health, when they don’t care to know the actual science of how a woman’s body works.
- Rage is being told you can’t get the promotion unless you sleep with your boss, and then being told you “slept your way to the top” by men.
- Rage is when a woman brings up systemic MALE violence against women, and the men in the room, men she thought she could trust, only pipe in with “not all men.”
- Rage is when a woman can be brutally raped, beaten, and left for dead, but her rapist walks free because 1- He’s such a promising young man 2- There wasn’t enough proof 3-He is related to the judge 4-She filmed him without consent 5-Insert bullshit excuse here. Worse – when the rape victim defends herself and kills her rapist, she faces criminal charges.
- Rage is knowing 40k women were burned at the stake, simply for owning land.
- Rage is being institutionalized for not submitting to your husband, for having a mind of your own, for reading.
- Rage is basically being a woman in this patriarchal world. Caged in, leashed, and beaten when we don’t smile.
Men don’t know rage like women know rage. Because what would they have to rage about when the things women are raging about, are MEN.
If men wanted to change the world, improve the world, they could. They run it. If they wanted us to have clean water, clean air, adequate housing and food, we’d have it. If they wanted women to feel cared for, children to be protected, they would. But they don’t.
And women are expected to co-exist with their tormentors. Expected to bear children to their abusers. Expected to give love to their killers. To save ourselves, we put on a fake smile. We laugh uncomfortably. We stifle our rage.
Because men can’t handle it. Because men caused it. And to handle it would require accountability, which the average man has never been taught. This is why he makes her rage at him, her problem. Why he makes crimes against her, her problem. Why he can cheat on, abuse, sexualize, etc. her, but makes it her problem. They don’t know how to be accountable for their actions. And rage demands they account for their misdeeds.
Women Aren’t Even Allowed to Be Angry
It doesn’t even have to be rage that men call women “crazy” for expressing, it can be any amount of anger. If she is anything but polite, soft-spoken, and sweet she’s deemed a bitch, a ball-buster, a nag, a cunt, crazy, too emotional, too sensitive, or accused of being on her period. We aren’t permitted to express ANY amount of healthy anger, so rage (bone-deep, generationally compounded, system-flawed kinda rage) is completely off the table. But it eeks out. On the surface, it was her boyfriend lying about where he was, but in her bones, it’s generations of women who’ve been betrayed, cheated on, and made a fool of. On the surface, it was one birthday he forgot, but in actuality, it was all the years he did nothing and made her feel unspecial coming to the surface. Our anger is only made worse, because we are forbidden from expressing it entirely.
The woman who does release any anger, let alone rage, is gaslit. Her problems minimized, her reaction deemed an overreaction, her pain mocked, her pleas ignored, her helplessness reveled in. It’s not just that men don’t care about the suffering they cause women, it’s that they seem to enjoy it. And for some, if they don’t enjoy it, they still prioritize a man over her, and will look the other way. So when a woman isn’t smiling, when she speaks out, she is deemed a “crazy bitch” and used as the token “emotional woman” that allows them to call all women ‘too emotional” as justification for withholding power. But let’s be clear: Men had no intention of giving us power, they’re just looking for excuses and hoping we give it to them. Because if rage or anger were disqualifiers from having positions of power, then we wouldn’t have had many male leaders throughout the world reigning needless war down around the globe. Men are the ones taught not to express themselves, yet only permit themselves to express anger. Women welcome all emotions, and yet men judge us harshest for anger. She is meant to just accept the injustices committed against her, the life men permitted, and be grateful.
And so, she swallows her anger AND her rage rather than be ignored and vilified. She begins to tell herself she’s too much, too sensitive, too moody. She starts to believe what the men in her life tell her. That she shouldn’t care so much about the suffering of others. That she should just accept the way life is for women, just accept what kind of man he is, just accept the way men are. That she should just focus on herself. She is told that she can’t change the world, so she may as well not be so goddamn angry about it.
But there is a shift in the tides. Can you feel it?
We’re At A Boiling Point
Birth rates are down. Movements like B4 are spreading. Women are evolving, realizing who it is that is making us feel less than. We are waking up to the Patriarchal conditioning we’ve been subjected to. And we’re saying: This is bullshit. And it was bullshit for my mother, and every woman who came before me.
Women have been shouldering the emotional load for humanity for all time and yet they still call us the “weaker” sex. We have a higher threshold for pain. We literally birth new life into this world. We bleed the blood of 65 men in our lifetimes. Our brains are more efficient: from requiring fewer brain cells for cognitive processing to literally having more grey & white matter to even being slower to age. We are built with more empathy, more self-control, more intuition, and are more inclined to collaborate than men. And the fact that, all eggs are female until they undergo a mutation that turns them male. We’ve discovered it is not in fact our eggs that age, but men’s sperm quality that suffers with age. So the one’s with an “expiration date” are, in fact, men.
So! If we’re going to be having an argument claiming one gender is “superior” to the other, and we’re looking at science, not just who can bench-press more, the women have it. And that’s the kicker: I think men know this. That’s the only justification I can fathom for why they would seek to exert their dominance and force us to feel inferior. If a being truly is superior, would it need to force everyone to bow? I think not. Yet men the world over oppress women, gaslight them for being upset about their oppression, then demand sex, then whine about a “loneliness epidemic” while ignoring the actual epidemic of femicide. Men continue to deny us a seat at the table, basic human rights and dignity, and the rights they take for granted every day. And they think we’ll just smile and spread our legs.
And maybe while our survival counted on it, we did. But times have changed. Women no longer need to be silent to be safe, no loner need to be wives to be secure, no loner need to be sweet to be saved. Women are saving themselves and each other. And we are feeling our rage now more than ever before, because it’s finally safe to. It’s a beautiful thing. Because rage will be the one thing that saves us, our children, and the planet.
Rage is A Warning
Rage is grief, yes. Yet rage is also wisdom. Rage is the desire for hope when hopelessness wants to overwhelm. Rage is a warning.
And any men who think a woman’s rage is nothing to fear, have yet to witness a group of women expressing their rage. They think they can handle one enraged woman. But any more than that, and they know it’s over.
There is a reason men joke that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. They know a woman full of rage is a fearsome thing to behold. And yet…they continue to “scorn” her through betrayal after betrayal after betrayal. They mock her. They use her. They hold her back in every way possible. They rape her, then force her to give birth. They don’t want to pay for everything, but then they blame women for ruining the traditional family. They cheat on her, then tell her she’s the unreasonable one for not taking him back. They force her to walk a tightrope of what a woman is supposed to be, knowing they’ll criticize her for every choice she makes, they weaponize incompetence. They know her rage, and yet they continue to cause it.
So if that’s the case, I say we flip the steam switch. No more swallowing our rage. No more phony smiles or awkward laughs. No more soft voices. No more trying to explain it to them like they’re five years old. They know why we’re mad. They know we have every reason to be mad. And it’s time they dealt with the consequences of their actions.
Release Your Venomous Rage
The next time someone tells you to calm down, ask them why. The next time they say you’re too emotional, ask them why emotion is bad. The next time they say it’s no big deal, ask them to explain. Rage is always justified. And the only ones who want to downplay it are the ones who cause it. Don’t let them.
Be the raging bitch, the “angry” feminist, the “nasty” woman, the “difficult” woman, and all the other names men gave women who didn’t swallow their rage. Call out injustices when you see them. Squish sexist jokes. Demand explanations when you’re treated unfairly because of your sex. Attend protests with your rage on a sign and on your face. Start supporting businesses that give a shit about women and the planet and use your rage to make a difference in the economy. Stop giving out your numbers to bros who haven’t earned access to your energy.
If they haven’t earned your respect, they don’t get it. If they don’t deserve an apology or a thank you, they don’t get it. If they don’t respect or care to understand why you feel so enraged at the world, at men in general, they don’t get access to you. Full stop. It’s time our oppressors truly start to understand our rage. It’s time to make them feel it.
Until next time I remain ragefully yours
Shelby
Integrate This Transmission
Express your anger, your rage, in anyway. It can be a journal entry, a post on social media, an art project, a song, through dance, or sitting in circle or group of friends. Just let it out. Give voice to your grief, call out the injustice you experience, and let your rage breathe. Report back on how it felt.
Embrace Your Rage
If you’re seeking to truly embody your rage, I’d love to see you at Shadow Ignite where we reclaim all the powerful archetypes they shamed in us, from the Wild Woman to the Destroyer to the Witch and beyond and we use our rage to tap in. Learn more here!
Listen to the Broadcast
Looking to listen rather than read The Serpent Signal? You can! The recorded broadcast is available on Spotify. Tune in!
