The wrath of women
For years, the media has chronicled the phenomenon of the ''angry white male.'' This is not unreasonable, since a story about a school shooting or a violent resignation from the U.S. Postal Service almost invariably reveals the culprit to be an individual who is male, white and very, very angry about something.
But if the vast majority of us are fortunate enough to never have any degree of contact with such explosively angry individuals, we encounter a less violent and more pervasive form on a much more regular basis. While it may contradict the feminist dogma which states that men and women are exactly the same except for women's complete moral superiority, inability to lie and greater monetary value per hour of labor, no one who has actually spent more than a week in the vicinity of one or more women will be surprised by the results of a recent British study on anger and the sexes.
In that massive survey, researchers interviewed more than 20,000 people in determining that women are more likely to feel a sense of persistent anger. This is, of course, inherently subjective but then who is better qualified to report on the presence or absence of an emotion than the individual feeling it? And it also corresponds with most adult experience; while male anger tends to be more calamitous and is more likely to produce headlines and criminal charges, female anger is more ubiquitous and more likely to produce lingering psychological fallout.
It is good to see that this issue is finally being opened to public discussion, as the myth of female martyrdom is a pernicious one and damaging to men and women alike. The destructive cycle of female verbal aggression provoking male avoidance which then inspires more female hostility and verbal aggression is a very familiar one to every marriage counselor and divorce lawyer. Without a serious and dispassionate examination of this sort of cycle, it will be difficult for those trapped in one to break free from it, even with the benefit of the best intentions on both sides.
I don't pretend to know what so many women are so angry about. But it is ludicrous to pretend that it is the result of male oppression, considering that it is the politically and economically liberated American women who are the most poisonously furious women on the planet. One simply doesn't see the sort of ever-simmering hostility that is all but inescapable in suburbia when speaking with apartment-dwelling housewives in Japan or Muslim women in Britain.
And while the responsibility for their actions lies solely with women, since the mere fact of being angry doesn't excuse bad behavior for a child, let alone an adult, men must understand that they have been complicit in coddling and enabling this anger on the part of their mothers, wives, girlfriends, and daughters. As I have previously written, the Golden Rule is only a summary and a starting point, it is neither a comprehensive morality nor an effective guide to human behavior. Positive reinforcement is only half the battle and setting a positive example is pointless as a means of behavior modification if the other party has reliably demonstrated an unwillingness to pay it any notice.
In short, her anger isn't about you. And, in other news, the universe doesn't revolve around you either.
Both men and women use anger as a means to assert control within a relationship; the particular problem for men is that they are socialized to submit peacefully to this particular form of control. So, for men who find themselves dealing with a woman who uses the threat of her anger as a control mechanism, it may be useful to keep the following in mind:
- She is responsible for her feelings. You are responsible for your actions. These two things are not identical and in most circumstances are not even related.
- If she is angry no matter what you do, then her anger is unrelated to your actions and there is nothing you can do to resolve it.
- If she gets angry over crazy and petty things, she is using her anger to control you.
- Women despise men who allow themselves to be controlled.
- A no-win position is actually a can't-lose situation. If she puts you in a position where you cannot win regardless of what you do, then you are completely free to do whatever you want without taking her feelings into account at all. Enjoy the freedom.
- Life is too short to waste it with the angry. You're going to be spending a lot of time in avoidance anyhow, so you'd do better to avoid the entire relationship from the start.
- If a woman is always angry with her work, her family or her friends, she will always be angry with you as soon as you become a part of her life.