Anger is a powerful tool when discussing issues of inequality, racism and misogyny. The people who have to deal with these problems every day of their lives have every right to be furious and every right to vent that fury, to articulate their anger at injustice. Personally I’ve read amazing pieces by women of color that have, in their fury, illustrated issues, injustices and crimes in a way that I might not have otherwise been able to really grasp as a white person.

Anger is also a controversial tool. Recently, a friend of mine on Facebook posted an article called “Shit White Feminists Need to Stop Doing” that was angry and abrasive but also educational and very accurate. The comment thread on his wall in response to the article was a painfully ironic fulfilment of almost everything the article was railing against: a thread of #NotAllWhiteFeminists that was infuriating and embarrassing to read. Most of the whitesplaining and debate on the thread wasn’t about the content of the article, it was “tone argument” almost all the way through. The author’s angry delivery of these very true points were what people focused on instead of the points themselves, which certainly wasn’t the fault of the writer, but the fault of the readers.

For me, anger is an exhausting tool. I currently work in a sector rife with institutionalized misogyny. I’m a victim of the wage gap and it’s by a lot more than 70 cents. Every week brings another instance of being talked over or not being held to the same standards as my predominately male peers. I can’t keep being angry about these issues every day, though, because I’ll exhaust myself. For me, it’s easier to be apathetic while attempting to better my situation than it is to stay angry.

One of the reasons I write and discuss representation and equality in pop culture (comics, games, TV, movies) so constantly and so passionately is because it’s one of the few areas where I feel like we’re making a noticeable difference. Where we can *see* the change. When I opened Marvel Puzzle Quest a few weeks ago and the loading screen was filled with only badass female superheroes, I nearly cried. I remembered being a little girl who couldn’t find a single female X-men action figure and having to pretend Shatterstar was a girl because he had long hair.

And yeah, that’s still a huge problem, as evidenced by the missing Black Widow toys, but my god, the free to play mobile phone game had a loading screen filled with only women for nearly a month! That IS change and I need to see even that smallest evidence of improvement or else the apathy takes over in every aspect of life.

Back to anger.

I rarely use anger in my writing or discussions because I’m also *bad* at being angry. Sitting at my computer infuriated, I have a much harder time clearly articulating my thoughts, I mash the keyboard without skill and I swear constantly, which just makes me sound immature. In person when I get angry, I can feel myself becoming my father. My jaw seizes up and I go silent, I look away from the situation and I desperately struggle not to lash out. Anger issues run rather explosively in my family, which is at least something I’m cognizant of, but anger certainly doesn’t make me more articulate or elegant in my arguments as it does with writers I greatly admire.

As much as I joke about the “Not All Men” defense (and I do, a lot), I actually try really hard not to over generalize when I write about misogyny. I strive for an educational and sympathetic tone to my writing and conversations, I try to make people (and really, I think when I say people, I really mean ‘straight white men’) understand the issues.

I’m reminded of a conversation I had on Reddit not long ago - a male fan was in a comic book club and obliquely used the phrase 'strong female character.’ He wrote about having no idea why the women in the group got offended at the term and that he was yelled at for using it, but never understood why.

Obviously I understood not only exactly what the problem in using that phrase was, but also why the women in the group got angry and I got a little angry, too. I thought, “How oblivious can you be?” But reading this guy’s post, he really seemed to honestly have no idea what the problem was. So I explained it to him. I set my anger and exasperation aside and spelled the issue out clearly. The guy surprised me by being grateful for the explanation and talked about finally understanding why that’s a problematic phrase to use, what it represents and even agreed; but only once he was educated. Once he understood.

Though I don’t deny those women in his comic book club the right to their anger (and, in fact, I certainly shared in it), I can’t help but think how helpful it would have been had they used that fire to explain the problem to him instead of yelling at him for something he didn’t understand. I don’t think those women had an obligation to explain the problem to this guy. No woman (or person of color, or LGBTQI* folx) is obligated to educate the public. However, their anger without explanation alienated a person at the start of their journey of being an ally.

We all started somewhere. At a point far more recently than I’m comfortable with admitting, I was a walking example of internalized misogyny. I bought into the idea that there were 'fake geek girls’ who only wanted the attention. I remember being young and talking nearly proudly about how I only really had male friends and I 'just didn’t get along well’ with women. I’m grimacing while I’m writing this because it’s not only embarrassing to think about, it’s also horrifying to know how much I played into the problem.

I learned, though, because I was fortunate enough to become surrounded by intelligent, passionate, amazing women and thoughtful, vehement allies. I did take it upon myself to get educated (a constantly ongoing process) but my journey would never have begun if it hadn’t been for the people around me: their compassion and their intelligence.

So I guess what I’m saying is that the anger of marginalized people is incredibly powerful. It can be a sledgehammer or it can be a scalpel. Neither way is wrong.

While I am doubtful about my own ability to properly wield anger as a tool for expression and education, when YET ANOTHER asshole tells me to 'get over it,’ all I really want to do is scream in his face for five minutes. It’s worse because I feel like I can’t just *be angry* for the sake of being angry: I *have* to think of my anger as a tool, because I want to see change and I want to make change.

But some days I’m so tired of it that I just want to tell guys like that to get off their entitled asses and fuck off and die.

I guess this should probably have a .gif since, y’know, GiF Fighter. This is the first appropriate one that sprang to mind.