The Power and Importance of Righteous, Inspired Anger
Trigger Warning: Gender-based violence, sexual violence, patriarchial violence and harm
Happy Spring Equinox and Ostara! I hope this season brings you new beginnings and fresh starts as we welcome in Aries Season with the astrological new year.
I had a wee getaway over the weekend to Gothenburg, which I will be sharing in my next newsletter to you. Here’s a gorgeous image from the Gothenburg Garden Society:
In the rose garden of the greenhouse, you can see a still of the gorgeous buds as well as footage of me walking around.
A few weeks ago, I gathered with the women of Tribe Porty and other assorted guests to celebrate International Women’s Day. Just prior, I had been a guest on Tony Kearney’s BBC Radio Scotland Sunday Morning show to discuss IWD, the word ‘woke’, and the rise in Islamophobia. I have been a contributor to the Sunday Morning show for nearly 10 years, and every time I am invited on I am asked to discuss the ‘controversial topics’ of the day. In many ways, I still get a thrill from speaking on the radio. I love the early start - making my way to the Tun, putting on the headphones, and getting ready for a whirlwind 10 minutes-to-an-hour. However, everything happens in a flash when the show is broadcast live, and it can be very hard to get into an actual nuanced conversation.
In my many years of public speaking, my approach has always been to ‘wing it.’ I know this isn’t the best advice to give someone looking to improve their public speaking skills orto get tips on how to temper stage-fright, but I inherited this approach. My mother is a big ‘winger’ when it comes to public speaking too. I put this down to our shared need (and ability) to verbally process. I have no trouble in allowing the words to flow in coherent waves from my brain to my audience. I find that I learn as I speak and, even if I have several points that I would like to cover or key statistics that I would like to share, I only keep those on a small piece of paper just in case. I have, over the years, written a speech and read it to a willing audience verbatim. It comes in handy, but these days - especially when I am speaking on a topic as complex as intersectionality with years of experience to refer to - I would rather wait to see what my other panelists or broadcasters have to say. In this case, I am happy I did.
Another element that makes winging it fundamental to a successful broadcast is that the BBC rarely gives you much notice to appear on any of their programmes. Unless you have a segment scheduled with them months in advance, I tend to get a phone call from the producer on a Thursday asking me if I am available to appear on the radio three days later. My fellow broadcasters this time around were Professor Mona Siddiqui of the University of Edinburgh and Dr David Goodman, a member of the Jewish reform community. Professor Siddiqui. I used to join my friend to sit in on her Islamic Studies lectures.
I am a seasoned and a comfortable debater, so I am used to the fast pace with which a discussion can move, especially when on air. However, this experience brought up some deep feelings I have around anger, and that is what I want to discuss in this week’s newsletter.
Anger is an emotion that we demonise. By making value judgments and labelling our emotions on a binary spectrum of either “good” or “bad”, we create the conditions for us to rank our emotions on a spectrum - those that are “OK” to feel and emotions that need to be suppressed. Historically, the knowledge that our emotions are not simply “feelings”, but living things that express themselves in our bodies has always been understood (especially in indigenous and ancient wisdom traditions).
For those of us that experience anger more regularly because we are marginalised or facing multiple, overlapping, and compounding experiences of oppression, anger is something we live and breathe on a cellular level. The impact of this anger contributes to the specific types of chronic illnesses and conditions that marginalised communities face. When you occupy a body that is constantly in “surveillance mode”, is not accepted by our society, and is at higher risk for multiple forms of violence, the impact of this anger on your body is tangible. Coupled with the structural and systemic reasons that a marginalised person may experience anger (lack of access to healthcare, lack of access to a healthy food system, lack of access to education, lack of access to safety, etc. etc.) experiences of oppression are compounded, overlapping and amplified. This is why intersectionality is so important. As I sat in the Tun waiting for our segment to start, I knew that the topic of intersectionality would come up, and I sat there thinking to myself: for the love of all that is sacred, I do not have it in me to explain once again why intersectionality is not only relevant but a fundamental tenet of the feminist movement. There is no feminism without intersectionality.
However, our BBC Radio Scotland Sunday Morning audience may not feel that way. Not only that, but they might not have even come across the term beyond some buzz word they had seen referenced in a news article, or as a term they could dismiss as too academic, inaccessible, and irrelevant. Thankfully, I had woken up in a good mood and was prepared for anything to come my way in our discussion. I knew that I had agreed to appear on the radio, an opportunity I love, and that I would have to see which direction our conversation took us. A lot of this came down to how much my fellow guests would engage with these terms in the process of our discussion. You are welcome to take a listen for yourself here (scroll to one hour in).
In my mind, there is always a balance to strike. It is important to know your audience. Not just so that you get your message across clearly, but so that your audience can engage with what you have to say without shutting down or tuning you out. I could put this down to my childhood in Washington, DC, amongst politicians and diplomats who had crafted their careers around knowing their audience, whether trying to get policy passed or negotiating hostage situations. I could also put this down to being a neurodivergent, highly sensitive, and highly perceptive child growing up in a household where I had to navigate all types of non-verbal cues to get by. I could also put this down to my Libra Rising, Libra Moon, and Cancer Sun. Whatever the reason, this is my instinct whenever I open my mouth. I jump to the following thoughts, in this order: what do I want to say? Who is listening to me? Who is around me? And who could overhear or misunderstand?
Now, without wishing to psychoanalyse the reasons why my subconscious mind goes through this process of discernment every single time I open my mouth, it is important to remember that I wanted my audience to engage with words and terminology they may have projected all sorts of negative connotations onto. I made it through the segment unscathed, but as usual I was not pleased with my performance. It was OK. It was not firm enough, direct enough, nor did I feel I had really pinned my colours to the mast. It felt watered down and not at all what I actually thought or felt. I listened back to the episode the next evening and it was not as bad as I had initially thought, but all I could focus on was the points made by the other contributors that I had not refuted, rebutted, or debunked. It was only about 30 minutes of airtime in total, intercut with music, the host’s comments, and the other contributor’s responses.
So, you can imagine that when it came time for me to show up for an International Women’s Day Event at Tribe Porty, I was feeling deflated about the entire topic of ‘Inspiring Inclusion’. Plus, as a feminist that has spoken at a number of IWD events in spaces where intersectionality was not a new concept, and where no one was in two minds about the impact patriarchy has had on our society,, I had already spent years feeling angry and, though I felt it was better that I did this work, I was feeling exhausted.
Then I remembered the centuries that women, women of colour, queer women, transwomen, disabled women, refugee women, and migrant women had spent suffering, fighting, and disrupting the world in order to make it more safe, more liveable, and more joyful in order for me to be able to channel that anger. Over the years, I had been given this privilege in my day job, my voluntary work, my writing, and in finding community in Sisterhood. My feminist awakening (that is, my real, earth-shattering, non-tokenistic) feminist awakening came in 2014 when I was sitting at an arts sector event in Dundee. A man was sitting in front of me taking up two seats and leaning with his arms behind his head in a way that only someone used to taking up space can. This was my boiling point. I’d had enough. I posted about it on Facebook and the post went mini viral in my tiny online community. A ‘debate’ kicked up and I spent days angrily typing on Facebook sharing statistics, quotes, and responding to every single comment that came up, mostly from defensive men, in my feed. I spent weeks reading. I started with Everyday Sexism by Laura Bates, through Do It Like A Woman… And Change the World by Caroline Criado-Perez (who I now do not stan for her transphobic views), then I moved onto Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche (who I also now do not stan for her transphobic views) and I began to do more research. At this point I had already worked for The Young Women’s Movement (formerly YWCA Scotland), who had collaborated with Engender Scotland for the first ever Feminist Festival as part of the Fringe Festivals. Zero Tolerance Scotland had been running the Write to End Violence Against Women and Girls (WEVAW) Awards to shift the narrative of how men’s violence against women and girls is reported in the media. These organisations and others (such as Rape Crisis Scotland, Scottish Women’s Aid, and Reclaim the Night) do a huge amount of incredible work.
So, what does this have to do with making good trouble? To quote Angela Davis: ‘You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.’ So, it is time to get angry and keep being angry. Anger is a valid and important emotion. Anger shows us where we care, and where it hurts. As a wonderfully wise therapist of mine once said: ‘anger shows us where our boundaries are being crossed.’ It is an important teacher. If it wasn’t for scores of people getting angry about injustice and the patriarchal, post-colonial, white supremacist, ableist, capitalist and imperialist structures that persist (and under which we are forced to live), we would not have any form of equality. When we think about the erasure of indigenous wisdom, the dehumanisation of hundreds of thousands of people through white supremacy, and the ways in which the gender binary harms us all by peddling the fallacy that there are ‘only two genders and there will always only be; and the myriad of ways that systems of oppression harm and separate us from ourselves, we would need to disrupt all the systems that harm us because they are deeply interlinked and interconnected. I know this might feel like I’m going big, but if you want to know what I stand for, unfiltered and in a space in which I can speak my mind, then this is it.
What I would like to know is: how are you getting angry, and how will you Make Good Trouble?
✨Make Good Trouble News ✨
An excerpt of Make Good Trouble was featured in this month’s issue of Psychologies Magazine. Please read the spread titled ‘Trust Your Intuition: Let go of logic and listen to your body, to tap into your true sense of purpose’ on page 92 here. See the magazine here!
See the Make Good Trouble official book trailer here created by the lovely team at Watkins Publishing.
Watkins Publishing was also at the London Book Fair last week! If you were at the London Book Fair you would have seen a copy of Make Good Trouble in the flesh!
✨Upcoming Book Events ✨
Book events galore, as April 2024 is publication month! You are the first to know which events will be popping up in Edinburgh, St Andrews, London, and Philadelphia. I hope to see you at one of the events in a few weeks!
Monday 08 April Make Good Trouble kicks off publication month at Typewronger Books. For those of you that don’t know this glorious indy book shop, founder Tee started out selling books at the top of Leith Walk, in the famous Leith Police box. Kicking off the shop with a book bundle delivery service, Tee’s business grew so quickly that they had soon moved into a space within McNaughton’s Books. McNaughton’s split their space and a portion of the shop became Typewronger Books. This thriving creative community is also a typewriter repair shop as Tee is a typewriter specialist (hence the name Typewronger). They also run a small press, risograph print studio, and events space with vibrant poetry nights, book clubs, and all sorts of creative gatherings. Support Tee’s shop and pre-order your copy from Typewronger. The event is free! Sign up here.
Tuesday 09 April The team at Golden Hare are hosting me for an evening to talk about Make Good Trouble on Publication Day! This beautifully curated bookshop won the Bookseller's UK Independent Bookshop of the Year award in 2019.
When Golden Hare was set up on West Bow in the Grassmarket, I spent most of my Saturday mornings wandering through its stunningly curated book collection. Then, when the shop moved to St Stephen Street, my pre-pandemic routine included a wander to Stockbridge Market on Saturday mornings followed by a trip down the road to see what was new on their shelves. It feels only right that Golden Hare would host me for my book tour on publication day.
Join us at Golden Hare and get your tickets here. Tickets are £5!
Sunday 21 April Get ready to Make Good Trouble Philadelphia! Harriett’s Bookshop is an avante-garde bookshop based in Fishtown in Philly that celebrates women authors, artists, and activists. Join me for our event to celebrate Make Good Trouble. Tickets are free! Register for your ticket here.
Friday 26 April Join me at Toppings and Company in St Andrews for a discussion about Make Good Trouble. This beautiful bookshop in idyllic St Andrews is a local favourite, and a favourite of book lovers from all over. I spent many weekends wandering North Street after brilliant nights out with my dear friend Tessa Stokes during my university days. Join me for a wonderful event. Tickets include the book. Book here!
What I’m Currently Reading:
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark ⚡️
Set in Edinburgh, this book was my grandmother’s favourite.I cannot believe that it has taken me 14 years of living here to get around to reading this. Given that this book is about a school teacher, there isn’t much mystery regarding why my grandma loved it, as this was also her profession. Who could have foreseen that her own granddaughter would make Edinburgh her home as an adult. This stunning Penguin edition also sports a gorgeous, simple, and well-designed cover.
Until next time!
Briana