Angry Woman

They told you that you weren’t beautiful and that made you angry. Then they had the nerve to call you manly and that made you angrier. Next, as if that weren’t enough, they chastised you for being angry, berating you with appellations such as attitudinal and bitter, and that sent you into a rage. It was a rage that you have every right to be in, because you are, essentially, a victim who has been disrespected in every way. But, while before mentioned folks might be causing you quite the angst, quite the annoyance and are factors you could certainly do without, in all totality, they are actually correct.

See, sis, if I can call you that, you are actually very, maybe even extremely, angry. Yes, I said it. I know you hate being told this, particularly because you’ve been told this an undue amount of times in the past and I know that hearing it, and hearing it so often, has transformed you and made you hyper-aware that everyone has casted, painted and stereotyped you as the angry one. But, again I reiterate, and reiterate with due caution, that you are, indeed, very angry. Now, if you’re still listening and haven’t become too angry by my assertion, I would like to give an explanation, one that I feel you are owed. You, Sis, have to deal with a lot, quite a bit and arguably much more than others. You and, often, you alone, exist at the junctures where intersectionality intersects. You must deal with sexism from other types of men and me, racism and micro-aggressions from the general society and, yet, on top of all of that, even other women challenge your womanhood by leaving you out of their movements or by taking your participation and efforts for granted. So, again, you have every right to be angry, and if you weren’t angry it would be because you didn’t have a pulse. And you do have a pulse.

You are sentient and feeling being, a passionate and feeling woman, your anger sprouts from your passion; that passion pumps through your pours and exudes out of you. Feeling is what you do and you feel strongly and with much vigor. Often our vices are the dark sides of our virtues. Don’t get angry when people verbalize the fact that you are aflame with anger because you have to deal with so much that others don’t have to deal with. Looking at it from a purely existential sense, a historical and very supra-personal sense, you gave birth to the world. I am not aware if it has always been this way but, now, the very world you birthed has caused you to bare some of the most blatant and obvious vitriol.

They spit in your face, they deny you access, they look down on you, and they have historically beaten, mutilated and raped you, again and again and again. Incessantly, they imitate the very things that they look down on you for. If imitation is flattery, they must actually love you. Yet, their love, if we can call it that, usually consists of them coveting what nature gave you, what you organically display with such dignity, with a swagger and a sway of the hips that the makes the world swoon like one standing drunk in Georgia heat, but the covetous will never give you credit where it’s due. I know, I know, and I know how angry this makes you.

But I digress, because, that isn’t what makes you angry. Not really. Disrespect from them is tolerable and you could ignore it, but disrespect and betrayal from me, is an act of cold and unutterable violence. I am much of the reason that you are angry. When they put me in chains, you had my back. When they shipped me around the world and dehumanized me you soothed my soul, when they marginalized me and placed me at the periphery of society you, and you alone, made it a place I didn’t mind being. You, willing and by my side, made my segregation sacrosanct, my hell holy. When I took to the streets and marched for my freedom, you wanted to march right by me, but I, in my arrogance, in my ignorance, demanded that you stay in a “women’s place” ironing sheets and frying chicken. That made you angry.

Now, you aren’t trying to hear any talk of taking a back seat. Now, you aren’t trying to hear any talk about supporting me when my, no, our efforts only support mine progress, only advance my cause, and more importantly, put me in a position to forget that you even helped me in the first place, and I get it, and I know it makes you angry. Now, the world better beware, because when someone as powerful as you, as determined as you, possessing such force and magic as you, gets angry, and you are angry, then mountains can be moved and thrown into the sea, the course of rivers can be changed, and societies can be reshaped, dismantled and reconstructed.

I don’t blame you. In your magnanimity, you are a force of nature. You possess magic and a prowess that few understand. Your soul is encapsulated in a casing that does such a soul no justice. So that soul-essence pours out, with powerful potency, into everything you do, into everyone you love. When healthy, when happy, when loved, you give so much of yourself. You give and give and give, and when it’s all given, it’s too often taken for granted. And this makes you angry.

You gave the world life, and like the Polynesian creator Goddess, Tefiti, you gave the world your heart, and when they abused it and didn’t appreciate it you turned into the demon Te Ka, your being burnt black from bitterness, rendered ugly through hate, eyes seeing everything in red due to anger. When hurt, harmed, and unappreciated you can be a demon of mythical and biblical proportions. Yet, even this is justified. You didn’t take yourself for granted, they did, you didn’t abuse yourself, they did, and you didn’t turn on yourself and take you for granted. I did.

Despite all of this, despite how you are mistreated and despite everything that you go through in society, nothing is permanent. There is no bad thing that will last forever, there is no situation can defeat you. You are stronger than that and you know that the strength you have is not yours alone. Speaking of alone, I know how alone you feel right now, that no one has your back, especially the group of men you have traditionally seen as being “yours” or within your group. I know you feel as though all and everyone has abandoned you to be vulnerable at the bottom of the social ladder; with the pretense that you will never and should never rise above your station.

I do want to press upon you a positive note. Your righteous indignation is justified, legitimate and a normal human reaction. I emphasize the word human because you are a human, a being whose consciousness has developed to a certain point, designated to seeing what is in you, in others, and treating them accordingly. On an etheric level, the shock that you, the mothers of humanity, must feel when receiving such visceral treatment, from what could be pseudo-existentially your children, has to be more than you could coherently verbalize. The audacity of those who’s very existence, very history and whose very ancestors came from your loins, were birthed by your womb, the very audacity that they have to see you as ugly, as less than, as not feminine. They see the world as a product of progress, moving in a linear trajectory from primitive and ugly to the beauty of the civilization that they created. I won’t be telling you to not worry about the vicissitudes of this situation because you should worry, however you can’t let it defeat you. Just because they don’t see your beauty, your grace, your strength and your power don’t mean it doesn’t exists. When the blind man fails to see light, does it mean the world is actually draped in darkness? The fool doesn’t appreciate the worth of knowledge and wisdom, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have worth, don’t have value? They, and sometimes even I, fail to see your worth, but that absolutely fails to render you worthless. It just simply means we fail to recognize your value.

You shouldn’t let this phenomena float around in your mind too much, but I’m not saying that you shouldn’t worry because in this situation the absence of worry is the absence of care. Caring is what you do, for your life to become devoid of caring is to take off that tiara that sits upon that crown of coils. Don’t let them make you lose everything that makes you the beautiful and regal being that you are. Even if they don’t affirm you, that shouldn’t leave you infirmed. It’s not their job to recognize your worth; that’s your job. I can help, hopefully, by doing better by you, for you and with you, but I certainly will not be advising you to consider their judgments and estimations in regards to your self worth. They won’t, and can’t give you what only you can give to yourself. So, if they want to continue not seeing you for what you are, then fine. Hopefully I will. If they want to show all of their ignorance in relation to you, showing you the gaping chasms, and massive malfeasance in their own ability to recognize the humanity in other humans, then fine. Just, whatever you do, don’t stoop down to the level of those beneath you. If they go low, you go high.