Listening: Battle of Los Angeles, Rage Against the Machine

I've been looking around at other journals and things and finding other folks, mostly women, not only have radically different ways of voicing anger, they can get much more... furious than I think I can, or do. While I'm mildly amused by this - just this anger and its expression separated from any context - I'm also, well.. fascinated. And teensy tiny bit proud of myself that I don't recognize many similarities between their instincts for anger and my own.


Long ago I worked very hard to eliminate the instinct or at least to leash and collar it. When I was a kid I had a really short temper and took very poorly to being teased. And I got teased a lot (or at least it felt like a lot). My parents would try to ask me about my day, innocent questions about school and I wouldtry to avoid them. Of course there was no denying my parents, not when I was nine. But just thinking about lunchtime teasing would send me into such a rage I would choke up with tears. I remember very clearly the day my father tried to get me to let go of the personal investment I had in the negative things people said to me. Not very gently he explained that other kids felt like they had power over me by seeing me get mad when they said something. That they considered there to already be a fight going and that they "won" when I got mad.

Then he started picking on me.

My dad, for almost all of my life, was a junior high history teacher. He knew a few things about the dumb things kids did and said to each other. And there he was, a 60 year old man taunting a nine year old girl. He called me fat, he called me dumb, he made fun of my name (!) and I got really, really REALLY mad. I started to shout at him and he took a step back and looked at me quietly. I was raised to never raise my voice to my parents, to accept what they did and said at face value. His silence made me still. I think I started to cry when he hugged me and said "See, I win. Let's try again, this time I want you to win."

Eventually I caught on. I'm not the brightest bulb, but I can be taught. He showed me how to breath out anger. He taught me to let the irritation slide off of me and how to smile at my tormentors and even to laugh at them. There's a reason I regard my dad as the best teacher I've ever had.

This not to say that I got my interaction with anger purely from my father. I learned a lot about what not to do with anger from watching my parents. After years of their cursing, walking into the living room in the morning to find my dad spent the night on the couch, destroyed porcelain plates and mugs, my mother staying up late at night in the kitchen weeping into her coffee, after many a Christmas ruined by parents who wouldn't speak to each other and general blaming each other for things gone wrong, I don't really believe anyone has the right answer for how to play anger "the right way." Therefore don't you think that I know my way around anger.

I just don't tend to take things very personally anymore.

Another memory about anger from my childhood is a very dim one. I was listening to the radio and someone was talking about feminists and their "hysterical" anger about god-knows-what. I don't remember anything other than it involved angry women and the word "hysterical" repeated over and over and over again.

Today I don't like to eat asparagus. This is not because I hate the taste or anything. I used to eat it just fine, until this one dinner a few years ago where I was served some undercooked asparagus. I wasn't careful and ended up choking on it. I don't tend to eliminate food from my list of potential edibles just because of one bad instance (I have no food allergies, to my knowledge), but for some reason I decided to take this as evidence that I should no longer eat asparagus. The only person who has served me asparagus to date that I've eaten was my mother. This is how I am with the word "hysterical." It has its uses and there are occasions when its use is warranted. But when there isn't a REALLY good reason for it I look on its use in the same way I would regard any dinner I found some unexpected asparagus. And anyone who calls me hysterical is looking at a reaction from me similar to being force fed asparagus.

And while there are many men who have very irrational reactions to evidence of women's anger, there is some measure of accuracy in saying that a stereotypical scene of feminine anger is reminiscent of the hissing of a scalded.

So for me the first step to not letting the other kids win their stupid games was to laugh at their pathetic attempts to raise my ire. Step two was to keep a handle on my anger so as not to invite even more ridicule. Emotions, my father later taught me (more through action than any words) are powerful things, but they are very costly.




If I react to someone with anger, the rationale for my anger quickly ceases to be the subject and it's replaced by the anger itself.






Allow me to repeated that, pared down: Statement X pisses off person A. Person A gets pissy. Person B, who uttered statement X, can now focus on person A's pissiness rather than statement X.


Folks have a hard time with this lesson. I kinda understand why, but what I don't understand is why they think it's not a worthwhile lesson. If a police battlion destroys a home in your neighborhood on specious grounds and you retailiate by letting off stink bombs at the police HQ the news headlines will not be "HQ of Police that Destroyed a House was Target of Prank" It will be "Police Subject to Smelly Attack by Terrorist" And then everyone will be out for *your* ass. Someone tell me this makes some damned sense.


But anyway. Anger can be a gift. Zach and the boys have the right of it. Well-honed, Anger gives fuel to do the hard things that need to be done. At the very least, as some people are determined prove to me over and over again, it can be a force that makes me forget myself and my own troubles. It wakes me up, sets my jaw and forces me to *think* When not well-honed Anger will cause people to _forget_ to think. Which is when problems come in.

There are things in this world that so thoroughly infuriate me it's a wonder I can continue to operate. Systematic rape; lies, cheating, and thieving perpetrated, aided and abetted by those selected to govern; racism; homophobia; poverty; endemic illness; sexual inequality; degredation; oppression; rampant greed and the general disdain of the status quo for those who want their fair share of the American dream.

I don't know why I don't take deep and abiding offense at negative things people say to or about me. It's not like I haven't been directly insulted as an adult. But things that are direct just don't upset me. Maybe I'm just not wired for it. Sorta like how I'm not really wired to want to get married and have kids. *shrug*

Now indirect things...That's totally different.

But still I wonder if I'm missing anything by not making clearer, more defining lines. Maybe by not taking things personally I don't quickly recognize and respond to personal attack. Maybe if I did my boundaries would be made more clear to me and those around me. Maybe.