At 5.30am this morning I was rudely awoken by a dream. It featured a man that I have been in relationship with for many years. He has done things that make me furious at him, and the dream left rage in its wake.
I watched the Barbie film at the weekend. I laughed really hard at the feminist jokes - the kind of laughter that had rage mixed in. I cried, too. The tears were an acknowledgement of the ways in which I have been undermined and underestimated and misunderstood and silenced by the patriarchy. The tears were grief, with rage mixed in.
I am not good at dealing with my anger. For most of my life it has remained hidden just out of sight - leaking out as passive aggression or manipulation, or turning inwards as depression or hopelessness. Of course, good girls don’t get angry. Good girls don’t speak to power or rock the boat. Good girls smile and say, ‘don’t worry about it.’ ‘I know you didn’t really mean it.’ ‘Sorry.’
Good girls don’t write pieces like this. Maybe I’ll offend male readers with my rage and there’ll be a mass unsubscribing. Maybe the women will say that I’m making a big deal about nothing and that things are so much better now (and don’t rock the boat). Maybe they’ll take the man’s side. This happened to me recently.
I want to try and meet my rage. I want to make a space and welcome it in. Other parts of me1 are afraid of it, afraid of what it might say or do, and I get that. It’s really hard to be around rage. I learnt to protect The Other by eating mine. Either I swallowed it down, or I found myself alone.
I am letting God build a huge field for me, one with wildflowers, which is encircled by fences of fierce love. I am going to take my rage there. I am inviting yours along if it wants to come. We can share our experiences there, and validate each other. We can recover. We can say the things we couldn’t say at the time. We can scream at the sky. We can grieve the injustices visited upon us. The tears are coming as I type.
In this field, in solidarity with the rage of others, and over time, I have a feeling that something new will emerge. It will be brave, fierce, and driven by love. We shouldn’t have to do this alone.
When I say ‘we’ I am speaking right now of women, for that is the body I have lived in and been oppressed in, and I cannot speak for other groups. There are many other groups, because oppressing each other is one of the things that human beings do. There is so much suffering. There is so much hiding of suffering and managing of suffering. There is so much trying to get what we need from underneath the systems that are taking all of our air.
And, most of us (certainly me) are sometimes on top of others, taking their air. When we see it, and when we don’t see it. It is important not to leave that out. This is a part of my grief. This leads me to contrition and to reparation. To the ongoing internal and external work of anti-racism. To uncovering my fatphobia, my transphobia, my assumptions and stereotypes, my prioritising and valuing of this person over that one. This acknowledgement of my culpability is a part of what drives me.
We will be brave, fierce, and driven by love.
I will work to make space for my rage, over the coming days. I won’t leap to action. I’ll hear it, and validate it, and let it scream. Of course it’s fucking angry. Of course.
It is already softening around the edges. The urge towards violence is shifting. I see my hand, held in front of me, palm out. I hear a clear NO. My face is soft - I can see now that The Other is suffering too. I can see the suffering of that man who harms others. I do not forgive him. Not yet. I will take my own time.
I will take my own space. I will trust myself. I am HERE.
Go gently,
Satya <3
PS I also spoke about rage in my piece for Gentle Buddhism this week, about how we can take compassionate action in the face of the enormity of the climate crisis. There’s also a photo of me crying. Here it is.
Invitation: I would like to welcome your rage.
Before you invite it forwards, first make sure that other parts of you feel comfortable about you doing so. If they don’t feel comfortable, then ask the rage to wait until all of you feels safe. If in doubt, wait. This is important, because our rage can end up hurting vulnerable parts of us.
If it doesn’t feel safe yet, keep your rage where it is and, if it feels okay to you, send it a message that I see it and I respect it and I acknowledge its suffering.
Your rage might want to come into the love-boundaried field of wildflowers. It might feel safe somewhere else. When you are ready, when you are curious about it, or feel compassion towards it, listen.
What does it want you to know? What is it protecting you from? What does it need?
How can you use it to heal what needs healing?
How can you help it to source its power from love?
Parts of me = Internal Family Systems.
I, too, can feel rage and it feels so important for oppressed folks to allow these feelings to be present (though, it's often not pleasant!) and to notice when they're trying to deny them or beat themselves up about it. Over the last year I worked with a supervisor who is a body psychotherapist who really relished working with anger - I found her approach really helpful. She would encourage us to not direct it outwards or inwards but into the ground - to let the ground take it, channeling that energy into our legs and feet. I can see the argument for letting it outwards, but there was something really helpful about not perpetuating the cycle of rage by letting it ricochet between people.
Thank you for this Satya, I was also enraged by Barbie the movie. As a gay man I’ve also felt squashed by the patriarchy, sidelined, “beta-maled” and seen as “less than”. I feel hugely for women, and for other groups who have been locked in the patriarchal cage. And yes I laughed and yes that film made me think, but the abiding feeling I came away with was that I’d just paid Mattel my hard-earned cash so they could “Fem-wash” (and other washes) their empire and the legacy it has left which filters through into the digital age of impossible physiques and unhealthy comparison (for all genders). My rage is being duped by a multi-billion dollar industry once again.
The “middle-wayer” in me also says, ‘it’s just a piece of cinema to provoke debate’. And it’s culturally helpful to have it out there, presenting 75 years of social history’’. And here we are doing just that.
On a less rage-ful, more cerebral note, I love how this movie presents patriarchy and Mattel for all the world to see. We can make up our own minds. There are 11 directors on the board at Mattel. 5 are women, that’s some progress at least? Thank you so much for this thought provoking piece.
All of that said, I loved America Ferrera’s impassioned monologue and it brings home the impossible expectations on women in our society, I hear these expectations so frequently in my work with clients. “Be this but not that, and and and, and oh by the way also be perfect...like a Barbie doll in every way. Except that in real life, being perfect has no criteria, it’s a constantly moving target, buffeted by opinion and trend. And that is too much for our people, and therein lies the road to overwhelm and breakdown.
This expectation of perfection is not only affecting young women, it is also now filtering through to the expectations of young males. There is suffering here too. “Have a six pack, 6% body fat, take T, get surgery, be bigger, dress designer, 1m likes... be more Ken...oh and don’t talk about your feelings, whatever you do don’t share your feelings”.
But here we are, 2023, and some “fem-washing, some pink-washing, some tax-evasion-washing later, and the board of directors is almost equal men and women, so is this movie actually representing change? Are we way to cynical? Or is it just another piece of cultural brain washing so a corporate can carry on “corporating” whilst our children suffer? Whatever it is that this movie is, and that Mattel is, I just added 12GBP to the over $1 billion box office sales of this movie.