At the most recent Scholar’s Convocation, bestselling author Rebecca Traister guided a crowd of over 50 people through the history of the key role that female anger has played in shaping the country’s political upheavals.
Professor of French, David Harrison, who stated that he invited Traister to Grinnell in a fan letter after reading her profile of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., presented her with a shirt that read “Iowa: We’re all going to die,” a tongue-in-cheek acknowledgement of the heavy political concerns that hung over the room.
Traister, who is currently a writer for New York Magazine, frequently covers politics with a focus on women’s issues. During the talk, titled “Expressive Rage: How Women’s Anger Shaped the Nation, and Where it May Take Us Next,” she didn’t shy away from expressing her political opinions with humor, addressing subjects like Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s claims and Stephen Miller’s speech at Charlie Kirk’s funeral — mentioning Miller’s wife’s description of his anti-liberal speeches upon waking up in the morning. Many in the crowd laughed along.
“This is obviously a moment in which we are stewing in anger, boiling in it,” she said. “And while it may indeed be reshaping our nation, it does not feel valuable, or good, or helpful at all.” However, she drew a line between this kind of anger and clarifying anger, moving from the oppressed towards those in power. When women are angry together for a cause, Traister said, the anger can be enlightening.
“We’ve been trained to think of women’s anger as something vulgar, loud, divisive and destructive, and it certainly can be all of those things. We’ve been actively discouraged from considering that it can also be connective,” Traister said, detailing the ways in which women have been forced not to be angry, from medieval torture devices to female politicians being told to smile.
She told the story of Elizabeth Freeman, also known as Mumbet, the first woman to file a lawsuit for her freedom and win in Massachusetts. Freeman’s case served as the basis for the Massachusetts law that abolished slavery, but very few people had previously heard her name, as Traister illustrated through a show of hands.
She highlighted the stories of multiple other women, including Abigail Adams, who famously wrote to her husband to “Remember the ladies.” Traister said that this is a watered down and less angry version of the full quote—“Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.”
Traister highlighted the fact that men’s anger present in slogans, where phrases like “Give me liberty or give me death,” are seen as inspirational and generative.
Rosa Parks, she said, is another woman whose anger is minimized. “It was conscious political action born of rage at complex and long lasting patterns of oppression and violence,” Traister said. “Yet the reasoned fury behind it has too rarely been acknowledged or admired.”
Those in power are afraid of this anger because it has the potential to be transformative, said Traister. She further acknowledged that throughout history this change has taken incredible amounts of time, attributing both leaps forward and steps backward to the anger of groups and individuals.
Some members of the audience asked her about anger from conservative women. “There have always been incentives in place for members of a marginalized or oppressed majority who want to do the work of defending the powerful minority,” she said in response. “And white women have really responded to the call.” She emphasized that this anger has a different directionality than the constructive anger that she spoke about.
Following the talk, Owen Sterup `29 expressed his inspiration. He said that he was going to buy a copy of Traister’s book, Good and Mad, for his mom’s birthday.
Liz Rodrigues, associate professor of humanities and digital scholarship librarian, said that she came to the talk because she had been following Traister’s work for a long time. “I guess I felt really reaffirmed in the belief that current struggle doesn’t always pay off in the moment, but that these long term struggles are really important to keep pushing.”
“If people who are marginalized, who have no power, are quiet and cowed, they will remain isolated, more likely to be hopeless. If they howl in rage, someone else who shares their fury might hear them, might start howling along,” Traister said.
