Hi, my name is Michelle, and\nI am angry. But angry is not bad. Let me say that again, angry is not bad. As women we are taught from a young age that\nangry women are many things, none of them positive. Angry women are ugly, hysterical, crazy,\nirrational, overly emotional . . . bitches. \nI\u2019m just calling it like I see it. \nThere is an anger double standard. \nAngry men are passionate, confident, powerful, competent . . . leaders. You\u2019ve seen this double standard before many\ntimes, and we watched it play out in the national media in the 2016\npresidential election. The election was\nangry, Trump was angry, Clinton was angry, and that anger worked for Trump and\ndestroyed Clinton. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anger is not bad. Anger is an exuberant emotion, and it injects\nenergy, urgency, and intensity into situations. \nAnger can be your super fuel; anger can become your super power. The anger of women fuels movements. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat becomes clear, when we look to the past with an eye to the future, is that the discouragement of women’s anger–via silencing, erasure, and repression–stems from the correct understanding of those in power that in the fury of women lies the power to change the world.\u201d<\/em> A few examples from\nhistory. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Susan B. Anthony and\nElizabeth Caddy Stanton were leaders of the women\u2019s suffrage movement. They were also abolitionists. They were willing to put aside their fight\nfor women\u2019s rights to partner their efforts with the abolitionists. In post-Civil War American, they asked the\nabolitionists to partner with them to fight for women\u2019s rights and they were told\nno. Their abolitionist allies had abandoned\nthem and their cause. They were\nangry. And they used this anger to\ncontinue to fuel their fight for women\u2019s rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sojourner Truth was a freed\nslave and abolitionist living in the north when her 5-year-old son was\nillegally sold to a man in Alabama. She\ntook her anger and her fight to court. \nShe sued the white man who \u201cbought\u201d her son and won. A black woman won in court against a white\nman. This was a HUGE victory for Ms.\nTruth and for women everywhere. She\nremained a staunch advocate of equal rights for people of color and for\nwomen. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Carmita Wood was an\nadministrative assistant at Cornell who was sexually harassed by her boss for\nyears. She reported the harassment to\nCornell and was told that \u201ca mature women knows how to handle these situations.\u201d She requested transfer to a different\ndepartment and the request was denied by Cornell. Ultimately, she quit. She filed for unemployment in the state of\nNew York and the request was denied. She\nmet with female activists and female attorneys and together they developed the\nconcept of what we now know as sexual harassment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Angry women fuel movements:\nMillion Women March, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, Women\u2019s\nMarch. Our anger is valid and holds\npower. I want to encourage you to\nvalidate your anger and use it to your benefit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I decided to use my anger to\nimprove my leadership and communication skills. \nIn my opinion, national leadership is a road to change. I consider myself to be a natural leader. I have held many leadership positions in my\nlife \u2013 team captain, student body president, chief resident, etc. I knew that to truly impact change, I needed\nto push myself further. I was already\ninvolved in the Academy for Women in Academic Emergency Medicine (AWAEM<\/a>) doing some committee work, and\nthose I was working with encouraged me to do more. They encouraged me to run for President of\nAWAEM. I was nervous and anxious;\nfeeling imposter syndrome rearing its ugly head. But in the end, I decided to run. I was elected President and served my term\nfrom 2018-2019. While serving as the\nAWAEM President, I was approached by a senior woman in Emergency Medicine who\nencouraged me to run for the Society of Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM<\/a>) Board of Directors. Again, the imposter syndrome, I thought she\nwas nuts. There was no way I would\nwin. I am too junior, too loud, and\nmaybe too angry. But I did win and am\nproud to be a constant voice of gender and racial equity on the Board.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To be a national leader, I\nneeded to become a more effective and impactful communicator. Through professional development courses and\nworking with a coach, I continue to work on my communication skills. An angry woman must communicate effectively\nto be heard and taken seriously. Ruth\nBader Ginsburg eloquently describes the type of leader I hope to become. “Fight for\nthe things that you care about but do it in a way that will lead others to join\nyou.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Watch the full FIX19 talk below!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2015 Rebecca Traister, Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n