Don't dismiss angry women as "crazy"

I will never forget the time during my freshman year when an older residential advisor called me “bat shit crazy.” It was the last night of school, so even though I wanted to say something, I felt starting a conflict would be pointless. Instead, I responded the way most “good” women do to being insulted: I cried, internalizing my frustration. 

Only in retrospect did I realize that insult made me angry because it was sexist. I had just started to become aware of my political oppression and emotional subjugation as a woman, but hadn’t recognized that I still didn’t have the freedom to express my anger. In fact, I had spent my life suppressing my anger, which I believed was reserved for men. Our society rewards men for their rage, while women are punished when we express indignation. Our legitimate concerns are often minimized as emotional outbursts, discounted as irrational and hysterical. 

In Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger, author Soraya Chemaly argues that human emotions have been systematically and unjustly gendered. Anger is one of those highly gendered emotions and, as an emotion categorized as male, has long been denied to women. That’s exactly what makes it one of the most powerful resources women have to combat our oppression — it is the fuel for our liberation. 

I agree with Chemaly that women expressing anger in the face of its sexist connotations is liberating. I’d also argue that reclaiming our anger pushes back on the mental health stigma associated with women’s anger as well. Gendered insults wielded at angry women are often rooted in masculine religiosity that justifies them as regulating morality.  

Let’s break down the insult “bat shit crazy.” Originally derived from the phrase “bats in the belfry,” this term refers to bats that flew to the tops of bell towers in churches in an erratic manner. In the 1950s, this pejorative phrase was renewed based on the scientific discovery that bat excrement has a fungus that causes animals or people infected by it to act psychotic. Today, “bat shit crazy” is thrown around as an insult frequently wielded at women, who are also often accused of being “psychotic.” 

The dismissal of women who express “unfeminine” emotions as mentally ill not only frames what is actually women’s self-awareness as irrationality, but further reinforces the idea that rationality is itself a masculinized concept, one that wouldn’t have credence without the simultaneous denigration of women’s emotions. 

Of course, “bat shit crazy” isn’t the only insult with sexist and ableist roots. Follow the etymology of insults like “slut,” “ho,” “psychotic,” and “whore” to see how these terms are also embedded in mental health stigma and masculine religiosity. For example, the term “slut” originally referred to a dirty or unkempt woman, but eventually took on a sexual connotation, and now is a decidedly sexist term referring to an “impure” woman who has no disregard for herself — an understanding impacted by religious pedagogy. 

Ultimately, microaggressions like pejorative phrases might seem trivial, but oppression builds. I was crying in a dorm room, unable to express my anger, but countless women are affected in far more life-threatening ways as a result of the problematic ideas our patriarchal institutions have constructed. 

While we need to change the way we use oppressive language to diminish the power of other women, it would be naive to assume that the systemic issues at the core of these insults can be solved through individual confrontations. There must also be a cultural and structural shift in which we take back the monopoly men have on anger. We must challenge the ideas concerning mental health stigma and religiosity that undermine our credibility, and reclaim our political and emotional agency.