Women have been taught to suppress their rage and act politely for as long as patriarchy has been installed. “Male rage” isn’t a term in the same way “female rage” is. Men are expected to carry their rage openly, like a torch. Female rage is distinct because it’s been concealed and suppressed and quiet, like embers, but once they catch it’s a wildfire that grows. Every woman feels the pain of women’s history and across the globe, we are all fabric in this collective tapestry.
“I am the firstborn daughter of a firstborn daughter of a firstborn daughter — each born on a Tuesday,” is a sentence I’ve started personal essays with before, and find I keep coming back to because it so accurately portrays who I am: I am the women who came before me. Their flesh and blood, their rage and trauma, their lessons and beauty are mine to carry forward. My grandmother and my mother both fled their communist countries to take refuge on land they had no prior tie to, and I’m the first woman in many generations to have this level of privilege, education, and freedom to pursue my life. I carry all of this in my spirit; although I haven’t experienced the same hardships, I have to unlearn some of their mechanisms of survival and I have felt and embodied some of their rage. I’ve been learning, in my past 23 years on this Earth, that I carry so much more than just the history of my family. As a woman on this planet, I also carry and feel the rage, trauma, lessons, and beauty of all women. That being a woman is a magical experience. We can be portals to life, we walk and live in beauty and strength as the “controlled” species in a society where one gender rules over the other.
The archetype of the Rageful Woman flares throughout history, in religion, media, books, and culture. Social media has given us a new way to stand together, with #MeToo originating on MySpace in 2006 and growing into a global movement in 2017, uniting women and igniting a conversation about sexual abuse, harassment, and rape culture. The Women’s March was largely organized online, and social media continues to be a way for women to openly discuss our experience. Paris Paloma’s 2023 song “Labour” became viral on TikTok for giving voice to repressed female rage and sparked widespread cultural conversations about the masks we wear and the invisible domestic and emotional work expected of women, playing roles like “therapist, mother, maid / Nymph, then a virgin, nurse, then a servant / Just an appendage, live to attend him.” As a reaction to this new age anger, women are decoding the Voynich Manuscript and putting their period blood in moon water and growing plants with it, rediscovering their inherent magic and connection with the Earth. Women are the original creators; Jesus was born from a woman, after all.
The rigid patriarchy has stripped women of more than just rights, but also our realization of our magic and interconnectedness with each other and Earth. The book The Great Cosmic Mother by Monica Sjoö explores ancient cultures of worship of a “Great Mother” or goddess and argues that early societies were more centered on female power and fertility before patriarchal religions developed. Another author, Kristen Shelt, says, “Patriarchy is not natural. It was installed here on earth approximately 5,000 years ago. Prior to that, for most of human history, for tens of thousands of years cultures were matrilocal and matrifocal. They were women centered, women as the original creators.” As the original creators, it is natural to feel a sense of rage when it is stripped away from us, and that rage has followed generations of women. We ourselves are not free from it and must work to remember our creativity, wisdom, and inherent instinctual magic in a society that aims to tame it.
Female rage has the power to swing the pendulum. Our world feels daunting right now; controlled by masculine energy, full of war and violence. The old world is falling, systems are crumbling, and the collective power of female rage has been bubbling and is ready to erupt. We can create community, serve justice, protect our children, and bring humanity and the Earth back into the energy of love and oneness. It’s oxymoronic how this force is labeled as rage, when it’s the fuel to bring about equality and peace on Earth. Female rage is absolutely necessary for the progression of humankind, and I believe that it is the key to a new reality that reflects the true nature of humanity — one that is interconnected, loving, and harmonious.
