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31. This Episode Will Make You Angry.
20 Plays1 month ago
Don’t take your rage out on yourself, bitch!
Molly and Christina tackle the intensity of feminine rage, and why it’s our most valuable tool in fighting the patriarchy. (And if you stick around til the end, you get to hear Molly being embarrassingly wrong about the Wilhelm Scream.) In this episode we refer to passages from the first 3 chapters of “Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger” by Soraya Chemaly.
TW/CW: stories of physical/verbal/emotional abuse, discussions about the stories of Emmett Till and Gabby Petito, adolescent sexual activity, potential statutory SA, and general troubling subject matter regarding the patriarchy.
We're so grateful you're here! If you like what you’re hearing, you can find more exclusive content on Patreon: www.patreon.com/soulpodthepodcast. We can’t wait to see you over there!
You can also follow us on Instagram: @soulpodthepodcast, or email us directly at soulpodthepodcast@gmail.com.
Molly does tarot readings online and locally in Massachusetts: https://www.thehighpriestesscoaching.com/
Christina sells delicious microgreens in the greater Detroit area: https://www.christinasgreens.com/
Hosts: Christina Bell & Molly Wilde
Music: The Confrontation, by Jonathan Boyle, licensed from Premium Beats by Shutterstock
Editing: Molly Wilde
Disclaimer: The purpose of this podcast is for entertainment and enjoyment. We are not professionals in any regard. We do not have professional knowledge, training, or education in physical health, mental health, or spiritual matters. Any suggestions or recommendations made during our episodes should be independently researched by the listener before considering implementation, or better yet, listeners should ignore everything we say. We cannot be held responsible or liable for anything we say, or any actions taken by any persons as a result of listening to our podcast episodes. Stay safe, stay informed, stay smart.
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Transcript
Introduction to Anarchist Calisthenics
00:00:24
Speaker
I actually, before we dive in I came across an interesting TikTok and I wanted to like lightly talk about it in a way that potentially we could return to it at some point.
00:00:36
Speaker
But I thought it was really fascinating because it gave a name to a concept that I have subscribed to for years, but there like wasn't a name for it.
00:00:47
Speaker
At least I wasn't aware of a name for it. Hmm. And this concept is called anarchist calisthenics.
00:00:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:03
Speaker
And like, you know, the I didn't even get all the way through the TikTok. I need to finish it. But like, you know, it started out with like examples first, but then it gave a pretty solid definition. i was like, huh. Okay.
00:01:16
Speaker
And like the definition is effectively, You know, it's where you look for areas in your life where there are rules that exist only to assert control over you.
00:01:36
Speaker
And then you slowly, gently, quietly break those rules.
BYU's Honor Code Critique
00:01:44
Speaker
Some examples that we were given were ah to steal toilet paper from your employer.
00:01:54
Speaker
ah you know or paper clips or like pens um or to ah fight back against dress codes that don't actually have any like real purpose besides you know ah so asserting gender roles or ah modesty standards and like that's the kind of thing where it's tough because like dress codes usually only apply to like kids and kids can get in hella trouble for breaking the dress code but like yeah but like it it made me think of why you having the honor code
00:02:36
Speaker
which was address and conduct code. And most, if not all colleges have something that is called or similarly called an honor code.
00:02:48
Speaker
um But BYU is notorious for being unreasonably strict
00:02:59
Speaker
with rules that don't make sense. And i frankly, it would be kind of interesting to have Tom come on here as a guest who to talk about his experiences with the honor code, even though like that was like, there were some like traumatic things that he went through fighting the honor code.
00:03:18
Speaker
Really? Yeah. And like, because at the end of the day, like that, that, you know, the definition of anarchist calisthenics, really um highlights the presence of those kinds of rules. It's rules that are only there to assert control over your life.
00:03:38
Speaker
And that is never more present than in a religious institution.
00:03:44
Speaker
Yeah. yeah I had another friend who like Tom, you know, Tom loves his long hair and greatly lamented not being allowed to have long hair.
00:03:57
Speaker
at BYU and on his mission. But I had a friend while I was at BYU he didn't want like super long hair, but he liked having like floppy hair and, you know, to have floppy hair in a certain way can get you in trouble as a guy yeah BYU.
The Power and Suppression of Women's Anger
00:04:18
Speaker
And so, and and ah especially because to have any dress dress code, honor code violations, would prevent you from being allowed to enter the text ah testing center and take your tests.
00:04:33
Speaker
And so if he ever needed to take a test, but he didn't want to have to go get a haircut before he could take the test. What kind of test? Any test. but Like for school?
00:04:45
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. The testing center at school. Like, i don't know if this is a common thing amongst universities, but at BYU, most classes didn't administer their tests in class.
00:04:58
Speaker
They would just make the tests available at the testing center and say, you have from this date to this date to go in and take the test anytime ah that they're open. Weird. Yeah.
00:05:10
Speaker
It worked out for being able to like, especially for finals week, to be able to schedule when you take your finals. You know, it could give you like extra time to study and stuff like that was convenient. But the fact that they could turn people away for violating the honor code for dress and appearance, particularly crazy.
00:05:29
Speaker
So like what he would do because they literally would say you have to get a haircut before you're allowed in here to take your test. That's crazy.
00:05:39
Speaker
He would. put a beanie on and kind of tuck his hair like behind his ear, like into the beanie ah to be able to go in and take the test.
00:05:52
Speaker
Yeah. Crazy. so it's like, you know, that like the concept of anarchist calisthenics hu really brought these things to the surface for me.
00:06:07
Speaker
Where did that concept come from again? ah found it on Tik TOK. Okay. I don't remember or I don't, I may not, like, again, i didn't even get through the whole video. So I may not have gotten to the part where she referenced a source.
00:06:21
Speaker
But yeah, i think I'm going to dive into that concept a little more. Maybe we'll have to talk about it in the future. Because yeah, like when she, when she talked about stealing toilet paper from your employer, i was like, well, I do remember the times that I stole toilet paper from my therapist's office.
00:06:40
Speaker
and that was mostly driven out of necessity but like you know yeah i've done that too like like i'm paying for those places to be upkept so
00:06:52
Speaker
the toilets in the school one of the schools that i used to drive for um They would like be, you know, if the, if the roll was close to running out, they would like replace the roll and then set the almost empty one on top of it.
00:07:07
Speaker
Oh yeah. And I would grab like a couple of those nearly empty ones to take home. Yeah. Yeah. I've done that a few times. It wasn't usually like great quality toilet paper, but like, nah, you know, when you didn't have the money to go buy a whole pack of it, you just needed like a little bit longer to get you through. Like, yeah. Yeah.
00:07:29
Speaker
yep yeah they just kept him under the sink in the bathroom so i just you know stuck a whole brand new roll in my backpack
00:07:41
Speaker
it what it is y'all so what up do you want to introduce our topic today Um, if I have the title correct, I don't know.
00:07:57
Speaker
It's literally, you don't have to have anything correct. Just like, you know, the concept. So feminine rage or. Yeah. Yeah. yeah Yeah.
00:08:09
Speaker
One of the two. um and The power. oh the power. See? Yeah. yeah well that i'm totally not Well, that's like the subtitle of this book. is
Race and Anger Expression
00:08:21
Speaker
the power of women's anger i mean like that's literal literally the subtitle but like i think what i had put in our our topic idea list was like the power of feminine anger or rage and it's a huge huge topic and we are not going to hit every possible point or even every point that we would want to hit today we will inevitably not hit at all
00:08:46
Speaker
But yeah, we do intend to revisit this. Not often because don't want to get too obnoxious, but.
00:08:57
Speaker
But often enough, when we feel like it would be good to have a refresher um or the or, you know, when we feel ready to cover more the facets of it.
00:09:08
Speaker
Mm hmm. Because we are, or or rather I, have been reading and am going to be referencing a book that sort of inspired adding this topic to our potential idealist.
00:09:24
Speaker
And that book is called Rage Becomes Her, The Power of Women's Anger. the author is Soraya Shemali. I hope I'm pronouncing that last name correctly.
00:09:36
Speaker
And it is an amazing book, but it is so dense. And I don't know if this is ironic or not, but it makes me so angry that i have to take it in small bites. And so like, I like, you know, I put it down and then like have to come back to it.
00:09:57
Speaker
And So I'm just slowly I'm like mostly now resolved to kind of jump around in it ah for the purposes of being able to talk about this subject, because I was like, God, if I just say, oh, I want to have you know read the entire book before we talk about it.
00:10:15
Speaker
ah well We would never get there. Yeah.
00:10:20
Speaker
So I'm giving myself permission to jump around a little bit. to be able to hit the points that I want to hit. And so I do have ah couple of things that I want to reference from it today. And I, I think that it's going to stem lots of discussion and lots of rage. And I encourage those listening to express their rage when they hear things that make them angry from this book or about what we're talking about, express it because that's the point.
00:10:48
Speaker
Right. Yeah. It's the whole point. So and I'm basically relying on you to like spur on the conversations because I really didn't do any research.
00:11:04
Speaker
because Okay. It's okay. Stop it. Stop. Stop that.
00:11:12
Speaker
yeah
00:11:15
Speaker
Don't take your rage out on me, Molly. Don't take your rage out on yourself, bitch.
Societal Expectations on Anger Suppression
00:11:21
Speaker
Oh my God. Be nice to my mommy.
00:11:29
Speaker
Oh my God. Nope. But for real, like, I mean, fear not because I have put tabs. and don't know if you can see them. Where?
00:11:41
Speaker
In the book. Oh yes. And, uh, done some underlining to be able to reference stuff so actually I do want to start here on oh what page is this page 18 okay
00:12:00
Speaker
got with a book ah of the book and i Honestly, i say underlined, but really I like bracketed entire like paragraphs and like sections because it is hard because I'm like, God, how much can I bracket this entire book?
00:12:16
Speaker
Can I just like read the whole book? Because God damn, every little thing I'm just like. ah
00:12:24
Speaker
I'm going to start with this paragraph here, which felt like, like a, ah good jumping off point for the discussion, particularly from the perspective of us, you and me being white women and having a certain privilege, but also having certain cultural influence.
00:12:49
Speaker
And like, we can get into that a little bit more later, but like, This is what this paragraph says.
00:12:57
Speaker
Middle class white girls appear to be the most likely to suppress negative feelings and the least likely to be openly angry. A distancing from emotions like this is necessary to maintain standards of femininity built around relative helplessness, vulnerability, sadness, thinness, and passivity as the dominant norms.
Anger as a Resource for Justice
00:13:23
Speaker
This is also an ideal of femininity that can be easily weaponized. The need to protect white women, portrayed as frail, innocent, and defenseless, is a centuries-old justification for terroristic racist violence.
00:13:43
Speaker
For example, in news media, the exaggerated vulnerability of white girls and women is called, quote-unquote, missing white woman syndrome. An almost fetishistic fascination with violent stranger dangers to white girls and women at the expense of missing and murdered women of color.
00:14:05
Speaker
Young white girls are seen as and portrayed in American culture as the apex of innocence in need of masculine protection. It is no accident that these are the girls and women who are seen as least capable to lead or to feel as though they can.
00:14:23
Speaker
hmm. So one of the things that this book does is consistently point out and like draw direct parallels between women not expressing their anger and their negative emotions and women's low self-esteem.
00:14:47
Speaker
And that is sort of the reason for that last sentence where women are seen as least capable to lead or they feel as though they can or to feel as though they can.
00:15:00
Speaker
Like it's it's they continuously hearken back to that. And like through every facet that I have read about this so far, like they keep finding and drawing that correlation.
00:15:15
Speaker
And it's that part of the reason that I expressed how like, there's like a particular reason why white women are singled out as a culture that has the like the darkest, like the most stark correlation between
Health Impact of Suppressed Anger
00:15:33
Speaker
expression of anger and self ah confidence is because of studies done that have shown, well, I shouldn't say least because actually it was Asian women,
00:15:44
Speaker
and girls who had the least corresponding self-confidence corresponding to Asian men and boys. And so, you know, it's, it's culture as much as it is like overarchingly societal socialization, I guess, but there was less of a correlation or less of a difference in confidence levels between women and boys, women and girls and boys and men in the African-American communities.
00:16:18
Speaker
And i have not gotten into like the sections diving into like the reasons behind that. But I do, i have noticed on like an external level or an external, like technically unrelated, what the fuck word is, um what is it I'm looking for?
00:16:38
Speaker
and unrelated note that white women and girls are like uniquely abused by their white parents and in a way that like kills their self-confidence and like self like sufficiency and like ability to like self-reliance I guess that's the right word that makes sense yeah because like you know and i'm i'm I'm witnessing that through like on you know videos across the internet of like reaction videos ah ah response videos of like black content creators
00:17:18
Speaker
reading about the experiences or hearing about through other videos, the experiences of white girls or kids in general who have been so mistreated in ways that black parents generally don't like culturally don't mistreat their kids.
00:17:40
Speaker
hu And ah so like, I feel like that's partly it's like, cause like, Women and girls
Expressing Anger for Self-Care
00:17:50
Speaker
being socialized to stamp down their anger and negative emotions in general in and of itself is at its core abuse.
00:18:02
Speaker
Yeah. And it happens across all cultures, across all ethnicities, but at different scales. Yeah. Okay. I have a, I have an example. Yeah.
00:18:15
Speaker
Yeah. This is a very interesting example. um And it's not entirely about me expressing anger, but like expressing. But like negative emotion. Yeah. yeah um When I was around seven, my grandfather, who was like my step grandpa, got me a kite ah And wanted me to go out to the field that was next to like the townhouses where I lived at the time. Okay. and go fly this kite with him.
00:18:48
Speaker
Sorry, Gael. Do you hear And. do you hear that? Oh, just turned on the volume a little bit. So I don't think, I don't think I did.
00:18:59
Speaker
Oh, it's bowling hour again. oh God. So. um so my So my grandpa and I were out trying to fly this kite and I guess there wasn't much wind and it wasn't really working.
00:19:12
Speaker
And I got frustrated with it and I i don't remember stomping away. i don't remember exactly how I behaved, but I just like left and went right back to the house, which was like, you know, you could see the front door from where we were, you know, it wasn't like yeah he couldn't see where I was going or like they like he lost me somewhere or, you know, anything like that.
00:19:34
Speaker
So I went right back to my house and um i think I went upstairs to my room. But I just remember it must have been a little while, maybe not even a little while, a few minutes. I don't even know.
00:19:49
Speaker
Like after that, when my grandpa got back, must have told my mom that I had a little temper tantrum and stomped off or whatever. She came upstairs with a wooden spoon and beat the shit out of me on my ass.
00:20:01
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, she spanked me like with this wooden spoon and she broke it. I mean, wooden spoons can technically break pretty easily. Yeah, they can snap. but like still for On seven-year-old child?
00:20:15
Speaker
Yeah. because i Because I was upset or frustrated and lost my patience with it. um Wow. And that was you know that was a big, huge, what the fuck moment for me.
00:20:29
Speaker
Yeah. um Well, yeah. Jesus Christ. So, yeah. So, yeah. So, like, when my son has his little temper tantrums, it's like I try to have my i had tried to keep patience.
00:20:42
Speaker
Like, to have patience with it and let him get over it. But also, if he gets a little out of line or carried away, I'm going to say something, you know? Yeah. Sorry.
00:20:54
Speaker
Oh, shit. I hope it's not one of those nights where I'm going to be yawning constantly. um I just think that's not fair. yeah You know, yeah because she could have, that was, it was one of those things they call a teachable moment. My mother could have sat down on my bed and been like, do you want to talk to me about what's wrong or why you, you know, stopped back home and whatever, whatever, like talk about it you know?
00:21:21
Speaker
Yeah. And then tell, and then teach me how I could have better handled the situation. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. yeah so But instead she decided but the course of action was to literally beat you into submission.
00:21:35
Speaker
Yeah. This is what we're talking about, guys. Yeah. And and actually that's, you said you were seven and that's perfect because actually this, what this little sticky note here was, was I was writing down a question as somewhat of a prompt, just saying, can you recall when you first felt opposition to your anger from the adults in your life?
00:21:56
Speaker
There you go. And whether or not that was actually the first instance, it was certainly like. The first one I can remember. Like, yeah, massively memorable instance in a bad way.
00:22:08
Speaker
yeah And so, like, this is why, again, this is why I, like, wanted to jump off from this particular paragraph talking about middle class white girls.
00:22:22
Speaker
Because that is how you and I were both raised. Mm And it's, you know, it's where we, where our experiences stem from. And so, you know, and that's, that's what we do on this podcast is we primarily, we're not here to educate. We're here to talk about our experiences and the way that we have learned and grown in spite of our experiences or because of our experiences.
00:22:54
Speaker
And in particular, with The ways that we've learned and grown through these kinds of adversarial circumstances.
00:23:06
Speaker
I don't know if that's for exactly the right word. so these These circumstances that were abusive.
00:23:16
Speaker
Abusive. And I was never beaten with a wooden spoon, but I was spanked. with hands on like not a huge number of occasions, but like each occasion was traumatic.
00:23:27
Speaker
Yeah. And so, you know, and and I had the same, like i unsurprisingly had a lot of huge emotions as a kid.
00:23:39
Speaker
and again, whether you believe in astrology or not, like it's the Leo moon and Aries rising in me, we're always more so our moon and rising signs when we're children. Yeah. than we are our sun signs and those you know it's a combination of fire signs especially a leo moon where the moon is tied to emotions specifically and leo is highly expressive um like it was i i expressed in huge ways because i felt everything in huge ways and aries rising really brought anger to the forefront
00:24:16
Speaker
And so many of my reactions either were pure anger or at least appeared as anger. And i would say that it was, you know, quote unquote, beaten out of me, except for the fact that like, it was so a part of my nature that it couldn't be beaten out of me. So instead I just built a lot of shame around feeling the way that I felt, whether I could express it or not. Yeah.
00:24:44
Speaker
And So it's like both the anger and the shame built up in my body. um And i actually want to talk about bodies because this book talks about bodies.
00:24:57
Speaker
But I actually didn't want to move away from this paragraph without pointing out another part ah portion of it. Because I wanted to, this is, I mean, it's not referenced in this book, but it's the very first thing that came to mind um when reading this paragraph.
00:25:14
Speaker
or at least it's not referenced in any part of the book that I've read yet. But in the portion of this paragraph that I read where it talked about the exaggerated vulnerability of white girls and women and like and what it says, almost fetishistic fascination with violent stranger dangers to white girls and women at the expense of missing and murdered people of color, women of color.
00:25:43
Speaker
One of the first things that popped into my head was, and I don't want to get too deep into detail because it is very triggering, but the story of Emmett Till.
00:25:56
Speaker
I don't know that one.
00:26:01
Speaker
I believe it occurred in 1955, but it was a a boy, a black boy from Chicago who visited family in, I believe, Alabama.
00:26:14
Speaker
And being from Chicago, was not aware of cultural taboos or things that might get him in trouble that wouldn't have done in Chicago.
00:26:28
Speaker
Right. and he wolf whistled at a white woman. Uh-oh. in in the middle of the night was kidnapped from his family's, his relative's house, brutally beaten to death and drowned in a river. Holy shit, dude. And he was, i believe, 14 years old.
00:26:49
Speaker
Wow. and that, like, like we have said, and I'm going to end up, keep, I'm going to keep repeating this. There are so many facets to this topic and that,
00:27:03
Speaker
is a facet that like, like I have like stress chills from, from drawing this parallel where that level of ah like violence and toxicity, that example, that, that instance, that, that, uh, event that,
00:27:25
Speaker
is very literally what this book means when it says justification for terroristic racist violence. Mm-hmm.
00:27:38
Speaker
So... It's like negative emotions are socialized out of expressing negative emotions are socialized out of a white woman's like, fuck.
00:27:53
Speaker
I was, I had like the right word in my head, but it kicked itself out and immediately replaced itself with the word Rolodex, which is not the right word, but it makes sense in a white woman's Rolodex of expressible emotions.
00:28:07
Speaker
Okay. okay Yeah, I get you. Yeah. repertoire repertoire i can't remember it's something to do with like you know archives like that kind of a word yeah um but like it's it's both socialized out of us of all women not just white women and weaponized against us and against all other or any other minority group or oppressed subcategory of society to perpetuate the the dominance of the patriarchy.
00:28:49
Speaker
Because the patriarchy is not only about the subjugation of women, but it's about the subjugation of all people who are not white, heterosexual, cisgender, Christian men.
00:29:01
Speaker
Mm-hmm. So that's the first paragraph that I fucking have here. So I wanted to say something else that I just thought of because please earlier today when we could have been recording and I was laying on the bed watching a
00:29:23
Speaker
series, if you will, on Netflix, it was, you remember Gabby Petito? Yes. Oh my God. I added that new documentary but docuseries to my watch list.
00:29:36
Speaker
Yeah. I watched it today and it's like three episodes long. Oh man. But like the, the end of the last episode was talking about how some, somebody had brought up in a, like a morning news show or whatever,
00:29:55
Speaker
how her story dominated the news. And like the point that this person was making was how the media always spends so much attention on white women when they're missing or when there's, ah you know, something happened to them.
00:30:13
Speaker
And, and then they don't ever talk about any, you know, Brown, black, indigenous women. yeah how many has happened to How many non-white Gabby potatoes are there out there?
00:30:26
Speaker
Exactly. yeah And that was a thing that was mentioned. And I guess the dad, her dad was watching that or saw that on TV and was like instantly he was upset and mad about it.
00:30:38
Speaker
But then he thought about it and he wanted to see if it, how true it was, not that if it was true, but how true or how, yeah you know, blatant that actual occurrence is. And he did the research and found,
00:30:53
Speaker
so many brown and black and indigenous women stories that had not been yeah just like you know blasted out on the media yeah like missing persons yeah yeah yeah and uh so that that paragraph that you read also reminded me of that that i just saw that today and i was just like holy shit holy shit you guys this is so fucking prevalent oh my god i like i've both been anxious and excited to watch that series because I remember actively following the story as it unfolded yep I remember that that you had brought it up to me ah you know before like you you know talking about the story and what the hell happened and stuff yeah yeah it's pretty eerie oh yeah I cannot i know i don't even know how to begin
00:31:51
Speaker
to I just like did her, I did a Google search for her last name because I couldn't remember it already from four hours ago. And, um and, ah and, you know, her Instagram came up and I'm just flipping through her Instagram.
00:32:09
Speaker
Fucking eerie. Oh, that's how they, that's how, that's how shit got solved. I think. Right. um Like her followers on Instagram were like finding clues through her posts.
00:32:22
Speaker
ah That's what I had heard about when the stories were unfolding. There was a little bit of that, but they were able to like kind of triangulate from her cell, her last cell usage.
00:32:34
Speaker
Oh, like what area she was in. and then also when they knew that she was in a specific campground, they blasted out to people in that town like texting, like texts.
00:32:46
Speaker
notifications were coming through people yeah yeah to say like go through all of your photos and videos and see if you find her in your background or like their whatever and somebody had been videotaping as they were driving on a little road in this campground and they passed the van that they had been using And it was in their video. So like, and it was on the day, the last day that they knew that she was still alive. So like they were able to, based on that video, they were able to like find the location of where that van was, had been where it had been. yeah And like where they had gone. And they started searching that area and that's where they ended up finding her body was over there.
00:33:33
Speaker
Yep. Yep. It's so fucked up, man. That's fucking eerie. It's freaky. It's eerie. It's... I just want puke, honestly. Yeah. And that's how I feel about all this.
00:33:51
Speaker
All of this. All of it. I mean, it's, you know, it's... it's yeah It's not even just the fact that she was one one of those poor white white girls, you know? Right. like Poor little white girl, but... Yeah.
00:34:07
Speaker
Just the fact, like the whole story of what happened to her because she was with somebody who was abusive. Yeah. Who was controlling and he purposely was trying to um isolate her away from family and friends.
00:34:23
Speaker
Yeah. And i was in a relationship like that for like four months or something at one point. And this guy was trying to um alienate me from my family and my friends.
00:34:35
Speaker
Didn't want me to be around them. And when I, you know you know, when you get older and you start seeing these, you know, hearing about the clues or the signs of and how abusers do their work and realize that you were in one of those.
00:34:51
Speaker
i mean, he did physically abuse me, you know, he did beat me kind of, you know, at one point. And I'm just really glad that i event it like, i kind of eventually just soured of him and like,
00:35:07
Speaker
basically stopped talking or seeing him or whatever and um that that that relationship just kind of naturally ended but that ah you know knowing all that stuff and seeing this show you know it was just like oh my god like how how um and easily could that all how easily could that have happened to you Yeah, to me, but I mean, it's just and it sad that this happened to her when all the signs were there, you know? Yeah, and that's the unfortunate thing is when people, you know, you have, a you yourself have a strong enough personality that you generally don't let people overpower you like that.
00:35:55
Speaker
And like, you know, and and and admittedly, like, I don't, I'm not trying to like, narrate your experience to you or anything but like my thought process with that was like how many people how many girls do i know who have been in similar relationships or if they were in a relationship like that they would kowtow to those demands and like continue to seek the abuser's approval Because of their low self-esteem.
00:36:29
Speaker
Exactly. That's exactly it. From their suppressed rage. Yep. Yep. oh And she was trying to formulate a plan to leave him before, like, like just a couple of days prior to...
00:36:46
Speaker
Maybe not, maybe a week. i don't remember exactly the dates, but yeah it was within, you know, within a week or two of ah before that, you know, actually happened. And, um, but yeah, that's exactly it. Like my, um, my stepdad who raised me, anytime anytime I was in trouble or he was just verbally abusing me for whatever reason.
00:37:12
Speaker
And I tried to like speak up for myself and defend myself in any kind of way He would just get worse and louder and more abusive. And so I learned to just shut up and take it.
00:37:28
Speaker
And I, that was when I basically, and I would, you know, let's put the age range on this. I want to say, yeah,
00:37:37
Speaker
11, 12, 13, maybe 14. um That was when I quote unquote learned to just shut up and take it because if I tried to speak up for myself, he just made it worse.
00:37:52
Speaker
And I really truly believe like that was when my personal ability to stand up to men,
00:38:05
Speaker
was taken away from me. Yeah. And there were other instances in my life where I was not able to stand up to men when I needed to. Yeah. Like as an adult.
00:38:17
Speaker
So that was when that happened to me. Like he took that away from me. And, uh, and so, yeah, like I totally get it. And like, I, i have had, you know, anger ah over all of that. And I've,
00:38:35
Speaker
gotten through some therapy about all of that but um that specific idea or concept i probably never really worked all the way through that like i i went to when i first started going to therapy when i was 19 i worked through general anger i worked through general anger that i had with him with the mistreatment, but never really had worked through the anger issues or the grieving of what he took from me and what happened to me as a consequence of that.
00:39:13
Speaker
Yeah. All the like the butterfly effect from it. Yeah. Yeah, i mean absolutely. And it's interesting too, because like when I started to go to therapy when I was 19,
00:39:25
Speaker
one of the very first realizations or breakthroughs that was identified in therapy for me was the, the fact that I had anger at all.
00:39:42
Speaker
Like it's like, it's mind boggling to me now to think back, you know, based on, you know, how i I, still don't even feel like I fully freely express myself, but I do i freely express myself far more than I ever used to.
00:40:01
Speaker
And like, from where I'm at now, it's, it's hard to believe the fact that I was ever in a place where like, I couldn't even to identify anger when I was feeling it.
00:40:15
Speaker
And that it was my therapist who had to say to me, you're really angry. And I had to sit there and digest that sentence and look at her and say, holy fucking shit, you're right.
00:40:34
Speaker
i am really angry. And I still didn't even start to express that anger. Because guess what? I was at BYU. Yeah. Yeah.
00:40:45
Speaker
do But I just i identifying that anger was even present for me. It was anger at so many things.
00:40:59
Speaker
It was like, I can't believe that that's even a step that some people have to take. Mm hmm. just naming it for what it is, let alone allowing yourself to feel it and express it. yeah um Yeah.
00:41:18
Speaker
And honestly, what you were saying about your stepdad and the way that his behavior conditioned you to just shut up and take it reminded me of, well,
00:41:36
Speaker
it brings me to like the next thing that I had underlined in this book, literally just the next page over. and And it's, um, it's more pertaining to anger being going against traditional gender norms, but the sentence that I had underlined where it says,
00:41:59
Speaker
many girls conform to Many girls conform to gender norms because it's easier and more comfortable for everyone involved, and they are conditioned to put others at ease. um
00:42:19
Speaker
That being, like, it's not only conditioning emotions out, but conditioning to identify and prioritize when somebody else needs to be made comfortable or be, or be, uh, catered to and automatically putting their demands or needs ahead of everything, especially yourself.
00:42:49
Speaker
I would say putting yourself last, but frankly, like, we're we're conditioned to not even include ourselves in the list of people that need things. Sure.
00:43:00
Speaker
Let's see. Cause I do what, there's so much good shit in here and it's like I said, it's so hard. It's so hard to like narrow things down.
00:43:11
Speaker
so what, what is most important to talk about? And have to remind myself, we're going to come back to it. Well, hold, probably eventually be able to touch on everything ah i do want to emphasize the correlation between suppressing anger and negative emotions with lowered self-esteem and let's see interestingly well one of the correlations that got made that i have under the underlined here we're still the first chapter
00:43:46
Speaker
page 23 explaining ah research that was done on basically like elementary school girls and particularly elementary school girls that like believed in a structure of fairness and like equality and equity and like what i mean like they use the word meritocracy which is a little bit I don't know exactly.
00:44:13
Speaker
i know what meritocracy means. And it's like, it fits in the situation. I just feel like it's a very specific. um But the sentence I have underlined here is the more that youngsters believed in meritocracy, the more they grappled deccu to turn to come to terms with their own experiences of inequality.
00:44:33
Speaker
And the more they began to lose faith in themselves. And it really highlights the, ah the correlation between experiencing inequality and oppression and internalizing it as a reflection of your own capabilities and your own worth. And that being the thing that leads to lowered self-esteem.
00:45:02
Speaker
And it comes from believing that a meritocracy or that, but like, you know, working hard and doing well, And like following all the rules is going to get you to a point of equal treatment.
00:45:20
Speaker
Yeah. When that has literally never been the case. Yeah. Crazy. Yeah. Yeah. I did also want to read the following paragraph from that underlined sentence um because it resonated with my own experience, even though I didn't necessarily act out.
00:45:47
Speaker
in the way that they describe in this paragraph, um, the way that I felt was exactly this. So, and it's referencing again, the researchers that were, ah studying,
00:46:02
Speaker
ah these like children as they develop. Um, and, grow up to start to lose their self-esteem.
00:46:14
Speaker
um The three researchers findings shed light on the wider experiences of girls, even those privileged by race and class. As girls approach puberty and silence their anger, many exhibit the troubling and risky behaviors found in the study, such as displaying signs of mental distress, self-harm, and hypervigilance, a state of anxious alertness to possible risk.
00:46:42
Speaker
In middle school, lying, skipping school, and social awkwardness became issues for girls who were previously quote-unquote good. Bullying spikes during this period as girls increasingly turn to aggression, sarcasm, apathy, and meanness.
00:47:00
Speaker
Early signs of emotional distress or forms of self-harm become evident.
00:47:07
Speaker
And... I did not start self-harming in middle school uh and and like I said like ah the external experiences the outward expressions that they describe here were things that I didn't even feel safe doing um ah you know for fear of getting further into trouble um But the mental distress, the hypervigilance,
00:47:40
Speaker
um social awkwardness, for sure And i can't remember what I would have lied about, but I know that I always felt like I was lying. Even when you weren't? or i feel like i I feel like I probably didn't have a total clear grasp on what was actually true.
00:48:00
Speaker
ah about my own experiences or how I thought or felt about anything. And, you know, in reading this paragraph really brought to mind The feeling that I've described, which I've previously identified in like a ah couple episodes ago, I've described it as like coming to the understanding that it was nervous system dysregulation, which is all of these things and more.
00:48:30
Speaker
um But like, i I think to you hurt like personally and privately, I've described the feeling that I always had as being like hogtied.
00:48:44
Speaker
emotionally and you know where girls who are socialized to stop expressing any negative or unfeminine emotions could start or did start to act out in these ways i did not even feel safe to act out in any particular way and so it was like an additional layer ah of suppression Um, and who knows what sorts of complexes, you know, evolved from that, but you know, that's why in therapy now.
00:49:24
Speaker
Yeah. no Why, why we're even doing this kind of a podcast. Risky. So we're talking about even like, okay. Engaging in risky behavior, risky behavior. It describes self-harm, um, lying, skipping school, bullying,
00:49:42
Speaker
um Things like that. But also probably promiscuity. yeah Which I wondered if that was where you were going. Yeah. i One of the first instances that I can remember where I was doing something risky was at age 14 when I snuck out of my house in the middle of the night to meet up with my much older boyfriend.
00:50:09
Speaker
And... um I was a freshman and he was a senior. Uh-huh. yeah Oh, you had one of those too? that's Like, did didn't everyone? I don't know.
00:50:26
Speaker
But, yeah, I mean, luckily he was a good guy. Like, yeah I mean, if you're... so As in, like, didn't pressure you? Well, he... I mean, I would i didn't i wouldn't...
00:50:40
Speaker
I don't know because here's the thing at 14, you cannot give consent, right? Legally. Yeah.
00:50:51
Speaker
Right. So, and he was was he 18 or 17? He was like 17. Okay. okay So I don't know. i don't know if you could say pressured, like I didn't feel pressured, but he also was, you know, with a minor,
00:51:08
Speaker
and But he was also a minor, technically. Yeah, but I think there is that age gap makes it, you know, it's a little difficult or different, but like, yeah you know, he was not 18. He was not 19. No, I know, but I think the legal... but Yeah, but like there's like a legal age gap.
00:51:28
Speaker
yeah is In Michigan, it's, I think, 17, but I could be wrong. I don't remember for sure. Okay. but So he could have been... literally charged with you know such and such of statutory yeah statutory rape or whatever even though it wasn't there was no actual all the way sex there was things that would lead up to sex yeah but um yeah but i never felt like it's not necessarily that you didn't want to the things that you did yeah yeah i get that i get that um ah definitely i get what you mean
00:52:08
Speaker
But that was the fact that I was 14 and, um you know, not capable of making rash decisions at that age. And like, I could have been rational.
00:52:24
Speaker
Yeah. Sorry. Not capable. I was going to say rash is probably the opposite of what you meant. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. yeah But putty brain. Yeah. Yeah. um yeah You know, i made a really risky, you know, decision to go and to sneak out in the middle of the night.
00:52:45
Speaker
And he took me back to his place. You know, he lived with his parents still. And like, yeah, um I didn't come home till it was almost dawn. And by the time I got back into my bed, it was like time to get up for the day. So I had not slept the whole night.
00:53:00
Speaker
And it was like really fucking scary because I was like so tired. I was just like, Oh my God, I just want to sleep now. And I can't i have to like pretend like I've been in my bed all night. Yeah. yeah Oh yeah. That's, you know, that's risky behavior. Yeah.
00:53:16
Speaker
Technically. Yeah. And it's, it's so interesting too, because like, you know, we don't get into this a whole lot or very often, but like the ways in which like we are similar, like you know being you know we were both extremely horny teenagers
00:53:38
Speaker
yeah and so in spite of all the ways in which i felt like multiple layers of like suppression ah like nothing could stamp that down and like it's so it's it's honestly kind of funny to me because so like the guy that was my like senior when I was a freshman.
00:53:59
Speaker
like I remember not being sure about like technology and how it worked. And so I didn't know if like my parents would be able to access like transcripts of text messages that I sent and received.
00:54:16
Speaker
like i I didn't know. And I felt like it was a risk to even text my best friend to say that I had held hands with this boy. ah because I would have gotten in so much trouble for that and yeah you okay laugh all you want people who hear that and they're like you call that horny like you know but that's not that's not the end of my point here the because only like two years later i was like actively sexting with a guy from my class like a lot for months
00:54:53
Speaker
um Like at 16? Yeah. And I was like, I wasn't concerned about parents being able to read the contents of my text messages at that point. Yeah. um But like, you know, I never actually physically did anything. But oh my god, the book, it's I'm like, sure okay, I didn't like take and send nudes, luckily, at that time.
00:55:18
Speaker
But, like, you know, like the like level of filth that was exchanged. Yeah.
00:55:37
Speaker
oh my god
00:55:40
Speaker
and that was risky behavior to me yeah and again and it's funny too because you talk about being like oh like i was up all night and all you wanted to do was sleep i'd be up all night texting these this guy all night and then have to pretend like i got a full night's sleep the next day ah It's the worst.
00:56:01
Speaker
I would have rather been doing the stuff that, you know, but to lose a whole night's sleep to not even actually have done anything. Right, right.
00:56:14
Speaker
Yeah, promiscuity, whether it was imagined or, you know, actual, you know, actions. Yeah. It was there. I'm surprised they didn't mention promiscuity in this book.
00:56:28
Speaker
Or least not yet. Well, risky behavior. Not in that. Yeah. Yeah. But like, you know, to even list it among what they have described as risky behavior, you know? Right.
00:56:40
Speaker
This next paragraph, once again, on the next page, page 24, chapter one. Yeah. This next paragraph, i will reread it because as like a sentence structure is a lot.
00:56:55
Speaker
So um I will do my best to accurately inflect.
00:57:04
Speaker
It is hard to overstate how problematic the transfer of anger as a resource from girls to boys and women to men is not only to us as individuals, but also to our society.
00:57:20
Speaker
This transfer is critical to maintaining white supremacy and patriarchy. Anger remains the emotion that is least acceptable. least ah acceptable for girls and women because it is the first line of defense against injustice believing that you have the right to use your anger with power reflects multiple overlapping social entitlements
00:57:50
Speaker
it's not a long paragraph but that's a lot so i'm gonna reread it again Because especially because there's parts that I do want to like dissect and and extrapolate on.
00:58:03
Speaker
okay
00:58:06
Speaker
It is hard to overstate how problematic the transfer of anger as a resource from girls to boys and women to men is.
00:58:17
Speaker
Not only to us as individuals, but also to our society. This transfer is critical to maintaining white supremacy and patriarchy.
00:58:29
Speaker
Anger remains the emotion that is least acceptable for girls and women because it is the first line of defense against injustice. Believing that you have the right to use your anger with power reflects multiple overlapping social entitlements.
00:58:52
Speaker
All right, everybody take a deep breath with me. I'm actually, I really am going to put this book down and we're going to all inhale on a count of eight. Okay. You, Christina, as well. Like we're all doing this because there's a lot in there.
00:59:09
Speaker
There's a lot in there. All right. Ready? On a count of eight. Inhale.
00:59:23
Speaker
Exhale.
00:59:47
Speaker
Anger is a necessary element in fighting the patriarchy. Exactly.
01:00:02
Speaker
And its so it's explained here as it even if it's complicated, it's still as simple as possible that there is a transfer that occurs but it's that it's taken away from girls and women.
01:00:25
Speaker
and put in the hands of men because it's taken away from us and then it's weaponized as we explored couple pages ago it's weaponized against all non-cis het white christian males yeah
01:00:44
Speaker
yeah because it's not like it just yeah it doesn't just go away like it doesn't disappear Right. So isn't that like a... That's like an expression of like one of the laws of like energy or whatever.
01:01:02
Speaker
Energy does not... It cannot be destroyed, only transformed. Yeah. i I don't remember what that is called.
01:01:13
Speaker
it a law thermodynamics? I don't know. Scientists. I know, right? Don't at me. Yeah.
01:01:23
Speaker
I had, you know, put brackets around that paragraph, but I had underlined the sentence, anger remains the emotion that is least excess acceptable for girls and women because it is the first line of defense against injustice.
01:01:43
Speaker
And, you know, when I was first reading this, I also didn't fully understand what it meant by anger being a resource. until I got to that last sentence where it says, believing that you have the right, and right is in italics, to use your anger with power reflects multiple overlapping social entitlements.
01:02:07
Speaker
So i I identified that as what it means by it being a resource. Mm-hmm.
01:02:20
Speaker
Okay.
01:02:26
Speaker
I feel like i I have to think of... i have to like... I'm sorry. okay. I have to probably like meditate on the idea that anger is a resource that is being stolen from us.
01:02:46
Speaker
It's a resource. It's not just like a normal function of us as a human, you know? Well, it should be... like normal and it yeah it's that's all that it should be yeah but it is also a resource you know yeah it's like and it has become a resource a commodity if you will did you hear that i did hear something that was so fucking what the fuck are they doing up there
01:03:16
Speaker
i don't know maybe you should start yelling hey motherfuckers doing like the highland games where they throw the like telephone pole you know yeah
01:03:29
Speaker
oh my god anyway um yeah in like a perfect society anger should be nothing more than simply a way that one expresses their emotions um
01:03:50
Speaker
But in the society that we live in under the patriarchy, anger literally is a resource. A commodity. need it as a resource. Being stolen from us, just like our time and labor.
01:04:05
Speaker
ah her yeah As women and as people, slaves to capitalism. But that's ah that's a different... um rant for a different day.
01:04:18
Speaker
I just, i wanted to say this before I forget about it. um i just keep remember remembering, and and this isn't completely related to what we're talking about right now, but like, even still,
01:04:29
Speaker
I mean, it's in the same... Yeah. No, please. That's... Please bring it up. but It doesn't have to be so perfectly correlated. ah It's good. Bring it up, please. There's the whole, like, mindset or whatever you want to call it ah around, you know, how there's so there's a racism Like there's such a racist mindset or I don't know what it, what it is, especially by white men about black women's anger and how black women are loud and angry. Yeah. Like a, like a skewed perception.
01:05:11
Speaker
Yeah. They're just like, you know, they, they, they call them crazy or they call them just like, I don't know what they call them all kinds of crappy, you know, names for, for the specific, you know, behavior of a yeah black woman getting mad and, you know, actually verbalizing it and showing it.
01:05:31
Speaker
yeah And it's like, Dude, they, you know, I mean, I don't know. i never lived as a black person, so I can't say I know this, you know, firsthand or whatever, but it's like, it seems like there's more equality between male and female African-American folks and are in our culture or in our like country.
01:05:58
Speaker
Yeah. And there is between male and female white people in our country. Yeah. And that's actually like one of the points that was brought up in the earlier pages that we were looking at because where it referenced specifically, like there is, there are variances, there's differences within, um you know, races and cultures that,
01:06:23
Speaker
in the ah gap between women's self-confidence and men's self-confidence within that ethnicity or like within that ethnic group.
01:06:38
Speaker
You remember when I said that, um, um it said this book referenced the fact that um Asian girls statistically have the lowest self-esteem proportionate to Asian boys.
01:06:51
Speaker
That sentence is actually at the top of this page from the paragraph that I just read. It says girls, girls of Asian descent have the lowest recorded self-esteem and one of the largest gaps between the sexes, a gap that may be tied to cultural orientation toward communalism and not individualism.
01:07:10
Speaker
And there's probably way more to unpack that have not been able to like dissect yet. But um the next paragraph, I'm going to go ahead and read this because I think it actually supports what you were just saying and what I was trying to um explain earlier.
01:07:31
Speaker
But this paragraph says black children in the United States exhibit a different pattern. they are much more likely to report high self-esteem and have ah the smallest gender gap.
01:07:44
Speaker
By 12th grade, African-American students are the only subgroup in which girls have higher self-esteem than boys do. The difference extends to adulthood, where fewer than 50% of white women strongly agree with the statement, quote, I see myself as someone who has high self-esteem compared to 66% black women.
01:08:09
Speaker
So you're actually on the nuggets there.
01:08:15
Speaker
but the And it's true. But the regarding white men looking at black women and saying like, you know, they're fucking crazy. They're bitches. They're this or that, you know. Right.
01:08:26
Speaker
Yeah. And i would I would go so far as to say that like, you know, subjugated white women do the same. True. Yeah. Yeah. Like the women who are...
01:08:38
Speaker
um they're like afraid of it they're afraid oh yeah like yeah and that's women's anger and stuff have you ever thought about the way that like it's i don't know if you experienced this but i can relate to this feeling of like having like a fear reaction and or a negative reaction of any kind um to somebody else having ah a freedom or a privilege that you don't have? Like envy almost, maybe.
01:09:15
Speaker
not sure. Because like i ah feel like I've experienced that like sort of gut reaction before of just like, oh, this person gets to do this thing and I am so mad about it because I wish that I could do this thing.
01:09:29
Speaker
i feel like maybe it's not the case all the time, but I feel like maybe that's partly what is coming up behind a white woman's reaction to a black woman's open expression of anger.
01:09:43
Speaker
is like, oh my God, they get to do this and I don't. Yeah. um And that's, you know, a cage of their own making, but also of the making of the patriarchy.
01:09:58
Speaker
But like, it could be a whole host of things. I don't know if I've ever necessarily experienced that kind of a reaction because I tend, I think of a black woman's anger and all I see is beauty.
01:10:12
Speaker
yeah I'm just like, oh my god, yes, girl. Fucking preach. But I don't know. I've been a socialist, communist, anarchist for too long, maybe, to remember what it was like to not be. um
01:10:32
Speaker
Fuck. Okay. Alright. And then there's the whole other thing, too, that You know,
01:10:46
Speaker
anytime a white woman does behave or act in an angry manner, she's automatically a bitch too. You know, she's automatically crazy. She's automatically like yeah too emotional. Hold on. We're backing up.
01:11:03
Speaker
Can't handle, you know, high offices like the presidency. You know what I mean? Oh yeah. All right. I skipped this paragraph, but we're going back to it.
01:11:17
Speaker
In women in particular, assertiveness, aggression, and anger are often considered one and the same. yeah Anger is an emotion, but assertiveness and aggression are behaviors.
01:11:30
Speaker
For example, I, the author, have a blunt speaking style. This does not mean I'm angry, but it can be unsettling to some people. Sometimes I joke that all I have to do to be considered aggressive is walk into a room, but it's not actually a joke at all because perceptions matter.
01:11:53
Speaker
Yeah.
01:11:56
Speaker
Yeah. When, and you know, you hear that trope too of like when a woman is assertive,
01:12:07
Speaker
She's immediately labeled as bitchy, bossy, aggressive, mean, a bully, whatever.
01:12:19
Speaker
When a man is assertive, there's a whole host of praises. Oh, yeah. That can be attributed to his behavior. Yeah, exactly. And that's what that paragraph is about.
01:12:32
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And we are, you know, weve we've been rolling for a ah hot minute here. So we do want to make sure that we wrap it up soon, but I didn't want to wrap it up without touching on anger in the body. Okay.
01:12:49
Speaker
And I'm going to start with this small nugget of a paragraph. um I believe this is chapter three of the book. The book, the chapter is called angry bodies.
01:13:02
Speaker
So yes. Okay. Researchers believe that the role of anger in persistent pain is probably difficult for patients to admit because of widespread denial of feelings of anger.
01:13:16
Speaker
Women in pain are often women enraged, but incapable of communicating that rage constructively.
01:13:25
Speaker
Incapable or not permitted. Right. At a certain point, it's the same thing. Too scared. Or... yeah You know.
01:13:37
Speaker
Yeah. I heard that.
01:13:42
Speaker
I heard that one.
01:13:47
Speaker
i This was another page where I was, like, really struggling to figure out, like, what to... be like what to bracket and come back and reference and what to like try to figure out a way to summarize but like the next two paragraphs go into the ways in which like anger like expressions of anger in correlation to pain it goes like both directions so like the ways in which anger like uns or suppressed unexpressed anger
01:14:24
Speaker
lead to chronic pain in the body is one direction. And the other direction is the way in which anger is usually the automatic first response to experiencing sudden pain.
01:14:42
Speaker
Like when you stub your toe. Oh, so like it, it actually then goes into the ways that swearing is,
01:14:52
Speaker
swearing has been like clinically proven to alleviate pain symptoms. I knew that it actually helped stress, like relieve stress. does. And it helps pain.
01:15:06
Speaker
arm There's a book that's referenced in here, which I might also need to read called swearing is good for you. The amazing science of bad language. And the author is named Emma Byrne, B-Y-R-N-E.
01:15:21
Speaker
What? Yeah. I might need to add that to my article. reading list but it this you know portion of this page this chapter forced me to also realize ways in which the expressions of anger at sudden pain or sharp pain or um such as swearing are disproportionately looked upon as negative when a woman expresses herself like that like swearing
01:15:53
Speaker
okay like Have you ever heard people disproportionately consider a woman swearing to be more vulgar than a man swearing?
01:16:05
Speaker
don't know. No matter the context, I have certainly heard that. like I can't give specific examples, but it's just sort of like been my lived experience as a woman who swears like a fucking sailor. Well, and so do I, but I learned it from my asshole stepdad, you know?
01:16:24
Speaker
yeah was He was ah all the bad boy things, right? I always talk about that. he he He was in motorcycle gangs. He was an army drill instructor. He was a truck driver. He'd been all those, you know I'm saying?
01:16:37
Speaker
So he was he had a vulgar mouth and I learned a lot of habits from him. But but also, like have you had people like disproportionately negative negatively react to you using swears?
01:16:54
Speaker
Like people like out in the wild. I don't know because I don't like swear randomly in public really loud where people are going to hear me and like, you know what mean? Yeah, I'm not sure if I do or don't because nobody's ever, like, nobody's ever approached me in, like, a restaurant or something. But, like, again, I don't know how much was, like, over overhearable in general. But, like, I have definitely, I guess there's also, like, I have picked up on particular social situations in which, like, swearing is definitely going to...
01:17:27
Speaker
probably be an issue and therefore i just don't such as at work i mean like i swear with like my my close colleagues but like yeah not with like my manager that's what i was gonna say is like i i feel like if i'm swearing like i'm only gonna be swearing around people that are also swearing and like people that i have a camaraderie with or whatever you want to call it but like yeah but it's like even if it hasn't happened directly to me i've like witnessed it too yeah you know i've witnessed like whether again whether it's happening to someone in front of me or someone's talking about it happening like i have witnessed it being like you know comments where it's like
01:18:15
Speaker
People, especially other women, you know, women who are subjugated themselves, ah complicit in their own subjugation, really, um who, you know, bad talk, shit talk a woman who they heard swearing a lot.
01:18:36
Speaker
Right. Yeah. But they would never they would never would say the same thing if they had overheard a man swearing. Right. I mean, I get, i I think I understand what you're saying, but I, I guess I'm not in enough situations where I've noticed it.
01:18:52
Speaker
but yeah But then again, there's probably been times when I've heard a woman cussing like a sailor out in public or like, okay, even at work in the, like in the lounge.
01:19:05
Speaker
Where I work, when people are hanging out, sometimes they'll say some pretty vulgar shit and I'll be like, God damn, like, you know, we're, we're in a workplace. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. But it's nothing to do with like their gender, right? Like it's more to do with where you are. no Yeah. it probably has more to do with that.
01:19:23
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And that's like, that's a situation where I'm like, that's, that's somewhat excusable, like to not verbalize that way in a, in a workplace.
01:19:36
Speaker
But like, you know, admittedly for myself, I've never been scolded for swearing directly to my memory by anybody except for my Mormon adoptive mother. And that, like, I've never even,
01:19:54
Speaker
actually sworn around her she just scolded me when i said the word pissed um oh my god
01:20:03
Speaker
and the supervisor i had who was a jehovah's witness ah and i think i might have said either hell or damn and she immediately told me to stop swearing Wow. And I was like, bitch, you ain't seen fucking nothing yet.
01:20:21
Speaker
But no, i I immediately shut the fuck up. um Yeah. But yeah, so like, it's like, yeah, even but even if it hasn't happened directly to me, like the fact I've been like hyper aware of the fact that it happens, that it is like generally happening.
01:20:39
Speaker
there is that prejudice there. um And it's again, in this context that the book it brings up where it's like, you know, swearing as like a reaction to pain.
01:20:53
Speaker
Like, even that is something that is suppressed. That kind of expression. i think um but Like in society though. Yeah. and I want to read this paragraph, even though Actually hadn't bracketed it, but I want to read it because it sums it up pretty nicely about the swearing part.
01:21:16
Speaker
um It says, how is this tied to anger and pain? Cursing numbs pain. The relationship between pain and cursing is not one way. For example, stubbing your toe and letting out a stream of expletives and rage.
01:21:34
Speaker
Those expletives in turn affect our perceptions of pain. Through a series of of creative experiences, Through a series of creative experiments, scientists have found that the stronger the curse words people use while experiencing pain, the higher their tolerance for that pain. Hmm.
01:21:55
Speaker
Byrne, the author of Swearing is Good for You, Byrne notes, depressingly, that women who curse when in pain, however, are less well cared for by those around them.
01:22:07
Speaker
Hmm.
01:22:10
Speaker
Women who say that again. Yeah. That last sentence just like punched me in the gut. Kind of.
01:22:18
Speaker
Byrne notes depressingly that women who curse when in pain, however, are less well cared for by those around them. Hmm.
01:22:29
Speaker
Now that sort of is like a, that's exemplary of negative reactions to women cursing. Okay.
01:22:41
Speaker
That, i was going to say, which one is affecting the other, which one is causing the other, which is the cause? I think in that, in that statement, it's referring to like intense, sudden pain, like stubbing your toe.
01:22:55
Speaker
Right. No, but which is the cause and which is the effect? Are people around her? People around them react, they react poorly to her choice of expression of,
01:23:07
Speaker
anger to alleviate the pain, whether consciously or not. I think most of this is subconscious because it's the way we're all socialized. But that's, that's the point that she's getting at is that like people around her, whether it's her family, her friends or whoever, like the people in that environment react negatively to that kind of an expression, even though it serves a physical function, a literal function of self,
01:23:36
Speaker
alleviating the pain that you're suddenly experiencing because it is perceived as being vulgar or more vulgar than if a man were to do the same thing.
01:23:51
Speaker
I get it. ah just, it almost came across to me like when she said depressingly made it sound like women are more apt to be swearing like that Because they live in an environment where people around you her are less likely to be caring of her. like you know what i mean? Like, which one is the cause and which one is the fat? and i and I get you I get you. But I think the depressing,
01:24:25
Speaker
the the point that she is explaining as to being depressing is the fact that this very natural expression in the reaction of pain
01:24:39
Speaker
causes people to be less cared for right or women women to be less cared for right homies we are ah approaching the finish line here i know this has been a lot it's been a really challenging emotionally charged episode for me, even though I have tried to keep myself level for the points of like adequately express it, expressing the ideas ah here.
01:25:10
Speaker
But yep, we are near the finish line. So at the beginning of this, this chapter, chapter three, angry bodies, the author starts out with an anecdote talking about a chronic headache that she experienced for, i think, years and years.
01:25:30
Speaker
And took ah watching her husband seek treatment for a single rare headache that he got for her to realize that this pain, this headache that she had was her normal.
01:25:50
Speaker
And then it was a rare occurrence for her to not have it. Wow. and so with that back the story a little bit ah this paragraph says the headache that i experienced is the result of what is called somaization in which a mental state such as anxiety or anger expresses itself physically despite there being no evidence of a known medical condition.
01:26:19
Speaker
It is particularly common in women who ignore, divert, or otherwise minimize their anger. Over time, those mismanagements are almost always unhealthy, and they frequently become physically painful.
01:26:35
Speaker
And there's another paragraph, but I wanted to just sort of like break it up here because... that word somatization, somatization, I don't know.
01:26:47
Speaker
i I can't pronounce it. Somatization, you know, related to somatic here is heavily tied to Somatic expression, somatic therapy.
01:27:06
Speaker
um it is what I have sought. And I think what I talked about actually at during our Anahata's 2024 episode. and learning through a workshop, the ways in which I could work myself through somatic therapy, through movement, dance, et cetera. Mm-hmm.
01:27:31
Speaker
As a way to process trauma out of the body. And like, holy shit, this fits right into that category. unprocessed, unexpressed anger, like, calcifies in your system as trauma.
01:27:51
Speaker
Yeah.
01:27:54
Speaker
And causes pain in the body. And causes pain in the body. And that leads to... this next paragraph, which will be my last one to reference for today.
01:28:09
Speaker
Anger releases specific stress hormones, such as adrenaline and cortisol, in the body that have a direct impact on health. Both of these hormones provide important clarity and energy that is useful in short-term stressful or threatening situations.
01:28:27
Speaker
However, long-term elevated adrenaline and cortisol are distinctly unhealthy. Cortisol results in increased blood sugars, glucose, affects the immune system, alters digestion, and influences growth and the reproductive system.
01:28:46
Speaker
Mood, behavior, motivation, and desire are all affected. Our bodies and brains process what we think of as irritations and daily hassles in the same way that they process threat.
01:29:01
Speaker
And that is yet another thing that I am going to have to sit and meditate on. her Because i have, like I've said, think I are even said it earlier in this episode, I have known for a long time that I spent my entire life in a state of dysregulation.
01:29:24
Speaker
and I've known that that dysregulation was because of hypervigilance anxiety stress effectively like low-key traumatizing me lower t trauma traumatized uh into i guess a diagnosable disorder like cptsd yeah i wish i could have realized on my own and i am now realizing because of reading this book
01:30:03
Speaker
That my unprocessed anger also contributed to that. And especially the fact that i had a lot of it as a kid.
01:30:15
Speaker
Yeah. And, you know, like, there's also a thing I heard recently about how, because women are the, i don't want to say main caregivers, but like, you know, we take care of all of the, what is that called?
01:30:32
Speaker
Mental load. Yes. Because of the the mental load that women carry and the extra stress that it causes. Yeah. um it It's contributing to women having, what do you call it? What we have.
01:30:48
Speaker
Autoimmune. Yeah. Yeah. having yeahimune oh yeah autoimmune disorder disorders are definitely referenced in this chapter. And we have multiple. Yay.
01:31:00
Speaker
Yeah. yeah weight gain, i mean, all of that shit. Yeah, like, yeah, weight gain, autoimmune disorder development, any any inflammation-based disorder, chronic chronic fatigue, lack of sex drive, like, lack of general interest in life, which is depression.
01:31:23
Speaker
Like, things like that. Good God. It all comes from the same place. Essentially, Yeah. um Yeah. Mm-hmm. yeah So how in the hell is it that we outlive men? but You know, it's so crazy because once men are gone, we're happier.
01:31:45
Speaker
And then we can start to like, you're so funny, live our lives the way we want to. I mean, there's always the the funny meme that men are so careless, you know, and and they also don't go to doctors nearly as much. oh yeah. that So they die sooner because they're, you know, yeah, because the dumber it's literal evolution.
01:32:05
Speaker
It's Darwin's theory. Yeah. But yeah, it's still, it's still does kind of boggle my mind. You know, the, yeah the health, health afflictions that come from yeah be us that we've had to deal with our whole lives. And how, how in the hell are we out living men? I don't get that at all.
01:32:26
Speaker
Yeah. We have all the stress. want to just, um, Remind the listener. i set it up at the top and I want to remind you again because I think this is going to be a long episode.
01:32:41
Speaker
you're You're going to be experiencing anger as a reaction to most, if not all, of this discussion today. And I want you, as a challenge, I want you to express it in any way that you can.
01:32:57
Speaker
ah You know, preferably a healthy way. Healthy. Please don't kill anybody. ah Please don't self-harm. Please do not self-harm. Please do not kill anyone. Please do not damage property that doesn't belong to you. Also, we are not responsible if you do any of those things.
01:33:18
Speaker
Yeah, we're not. I'm please we're We're begging you. Please be um legally or you know responsible in your expressions. But that the point here is We need to express our anger.
01:33:36
Speaker
And, you know, if it means going to Goodwill and buying a bunch of, like, 50-cent plates and smashing them in a parking garage, I've done that.
01:33:48
Speaker
Oh, my God. Okay, due to do tell. Well, not even only that, but, like, um one of the things that I did, too, after failing a class in college was... um I bought a bunch of sodas in glass bottles and like either drink them or poured it all out. And I like hurled the glass bottles at the concrete wall of a parking garage.
01:34:14
Speaker
So you did that and you said. it felt and And it just, it just felt really good. It was like, you know, that was probably one of the only times that I deliberately like channeled my anger, but it was also kind of like a little bit of like a social activity.
01:34:29
Speaker
you know, that me and my friends um took part in, you know? Yeah. But, ah you know, if if that's what you have to do or at the very least, like, you know, punch a pillow or scream into a pillow, express, express your anger. Yeah.
01:34:46
Speaker
You know, like, don't yell at anyone that might like get their feelings hurt, but like, yell at like, you know, a picture of somebody that you hate. What the fuck?
01:35:02
Speaker
i was gonna say like when you said yell into a pillow i specifically thought of screaming fuck you into a pillow well yeah scream anything scream scream like bloody murder into a pillow like as much as you can just like do like you know your best he heard me say fuck you um no oh no oops
01:35:27
Speaker
Yeah, like you don't even have to use words, but just like, you know, do your best like Wilhelm scream impression into a pillow. What is that? You know, you've never heard of the Wilhelm scream?
01:35:39
Speaker
No. Oh, it's like a it's like an iconic scream that's been used in horror movies like a lot. Okay. I'm like amazed that you don't know that. yeah'all i probably have I probably heard it, but I've never heard it called a thing.
01:35:55
Speaker
i think, okay.
01:36:00
Speaker
What was the like 1960s classic horror movie with the woman in the shower? Psycho. screams Psycho. I think it's her scream. Oh, that's, that was like cut and used in, you know,
01:36:15
Speaker
horror movies going forward i think that's the one i could be wrong it's but it's a scream that originated from like an iconic horror movie but yeah it's called the wilhelm scream i've never heard that before well i think that if you hear it you'll immediately know that you've heard it a hundred times or but i never knew that it had a name oh yeah oh yeah that's what i'm saying i've i've probably heard it but i don't i didn't know i never knew that it had a name yeah um It's also the the Wilhelm scream is also the title of one of my favorite James Blake songs.
01:36:49
Speaker
So, you know. Okay. Another singer I've never heard of. i will send you the song. You won't like it, but I'll send it to you anyway.
01:37:03
Speaker
Okay. Or you might like it out of spite. um Just because I said you wouldn't. Okay.
01:37:11
Speaker
In addition, I'll send you maps by the yayayas, since you apparently don't know them. I know, like, a song, I think.
01:37:23
Speaker
There she goes. Do they do that one? I don't think that's them. There she goes. I don't think that's the yayayas. That's the laws.
01:37:35
Speaker
Oh, the laws. Or six pence none the richer. Okay. Um... The Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Maps is one of their fa one of their like most popular songs.
01:37:47
Speaker
Or Heads Will Roll is another really good one. But no, Maps is like top top of the list. One of my favorites.
01:37:58
Speaker
um Anywho, any ho we got to split this joint. Is that the right phrase? You said what?
01:38:09
Speaker
We got to split this joint. a I don't know. We gotta get the we gotta get the fuck out of here. It's time to go to bed.
01:38:20
Speaker
We gotta blow this pop stand.
01:38:24
Speaker
oh Make like a baby and head out. Ew. I know. Ew. That's so funny.
01:38:38
Speaker
Oh my God. Yeah. It's getting late, you guys. I've enjoyed this, even though it's been very emotionally charged and we will be revisiting it because God damn, there's so much to talk about.
01:38:55
Speaker
ah But thank you again for joining us. We're extremely grateful that you're here. Yes, we are And ah before we go, I do also want to just, you know sort of soft launch the fact that we're starting a Patreon.
01:39:12
Speaker
I don't know if it's going to be out by the time that we release this episode, but it will be out soon. So keep your eyes peeled. oh Get the wax out of your damn ears.
01:39:25
Speaker
Yeah. Because we are about to bother you on other platforms. No, it's going to be great. I'm excited. I'm excited. But yeah, so we got that in the works. We will certainly make announcements when we have solid dates.
01:39:42
Speaker
But ah yeah, just stay tuned. And in the meantime, in between time, we'll be back again next week.
01:39:52
Speaker
Don't you know it. Oh, yeah. We love you guys so much. And have a beautiful night.
01:40:32
Speaker
like It's like, that's not an important thing to say. Yeah, yeah, yes. That's a band. Did you know that? Are you fucking kidding me? Okay.
01:40:42
Speaker
I'm offended. I'm offended. i don't know if you know that. my God. i love maps. I love maps. What's that? Isn't that by the ya yeah, yeah, yes? I don't know. Wait, they don't love you like I love you. You know, like that song? I don't know. What the fuck?
01:40:59
Speaker
I know a Yeah Yeah Yeah song that you don't know and you just thought I didn't know the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Ha ha ha. really their music at all.