Elif Shafak: I used to feel my rage was righteous. But on its own, it can be toxic
anger, when left alone for too long, is
highly corrosive. And, most important, it is addictive. It must be diluted and
counterbalanced with more powerful, positive feelings: empathy, compassion,
kindness, sisterhood and love.
.. Patriarchy made my blood boil. The fact that you couldn’t walk along the street without being harassed, you couldn’t take a bus without being molested. In those days, a horrific article in the Turkish penal code – article 438 – had started to provoke a massive backlash. It stipulated that punishment for rapists would be reduced if they proved that their victims were prostitutes and not “modest women”. After all, the lawmakers argued, a prostitute would not be affected by rape – physically or psychologically – why would she?
This was in 1990. We students
were furious. Women of
all backgrounds reacted strongly, supporting the rights of sex workers.
Something that never happened again in my motherland. It was one of the last
gains of the women’s movement in Turkey. Today, when
progressive-minded people say we must make anger our primary motivation, I
flinch a little. For in between times I have learned something precious: that
while the beginning of anger might feel wonderful, the rest of it is, in fact,
quite toxic, repetitive, shallow and backward.
Early this autumn I
was at an event in a famous literary festival in Europe. The journalist who
interviewed me, a feminist with whom I had a lot in common, got upset when I
said that patriarchy made women unhappy, but it also made many men unhappy,
especially those who did not conform to conventional masculinity – and we
should connect with those young men. Her response was full of anger: “I’m not
allowing men into my movement. Let them deal with their own toxic masculinity.”...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/30/anger-female-rage-empathy
