That Takes Ovaries! (29 page)

Women, Niceness, and Anger Myth One: Anger is unladylike. (Like
ladies
don’t get pissed off, too? What about when our tea gets cold?) Myth Two: Women are nice, nurturing caregivers. (Well, yes. All the time? Hardly—and if so, perhaps to our detriment.)

Feeling angry is a healthy human response to being hurt. Whether one person disrespects a girl, or lots of people build institutions that leave her out, she is justified in being mad. No hesitation, no apology necessary. Part of what makes a person whole is the ability to
express
anger. It is natural to pound a fist on the table every once in a while. Expressing anger keeps a woman from turning it inward—a contributor to depression.

But the Be Nice, Dear finishing school many attend—simply by growing up in our society—trains girls to not show anger. (Kind of like how the Be Strong, Son prep school trains boys to not show sadness.) The school’s rules are unrelenting. Take Number 752:
Being nice means being accommodating.
(After a few years of that, a girl might need re-educating to simply learn how to say
no.
) Girls are taught to be understanding, to make room for why someone may
act inappropriately. When a man “acts out” (warning: euphemism for
harasses
), a girl is to sit quiet, let it go, just take it. Here’s the distinction they forgot at finishing school: Being nice is a good thing. Being nice
all the time
can keep a girl complacent.

“The first thing they taught in my self-defense class,” one chapter contributor told me, “is that before we can defend ourselves, we have to give ourselves permission
to not be nice.”

What? You mean saying please won’t stop a rapist?

Like a mama bear defending her cubs, women defend their babies. So why don’t more fight back in defense of themselves? Women are smart. They can assess when talking or fighting back will be too risky. But when it’s worth the risk, what’s the hesitation then? Self-defense is innately human; could it have been conditioned out of women to protect themselves? Rule Number 3,004:
Don’t hit back.
It is considered stepping out of Girlie Line even if a woman responds to violence someone else started.

The question is, when does it make sense to shrug off this conditioning? When is it justified to yell, hit back, retaliate, match the level of violence the assailant already started? When is it escalating the violence and when is it self-defense, or the firing of a warning shot that says, “Stop—or else!”? Right now, abusive men know: It’s a safe bet when you target a woman that you won’t have a fight on your hands. That’s why women are targeted so much more than men. If there were consequences for inappropriate or violent behavior (that is, if women verbally or physically fought back), would abusive men be less apt to target women?

Anger is tricky. A woman needs to decide when and with whom it should be expressed. If she wants to “reach” someone, have them understand how their behavior hurt her, if she wants to change their heart and mind, anger may not be a useful tool. It may trigger their defense mechanisms and keep them from being able to hear her. But sometimes a girl isn’t trying to “reach” a perpetrator or someone who mistreats her. Sometimes a girl just wants to fight back or make the statement,
This behavior has got to stop!

This chapter is full of women who choose to act on, instead of swallow, their anger. They are not settling a conflict with nice talk,
compassion, or understanding. Some stories are about self-defense; most are about retaliation for being wronged. Some may go over the line of what is generally considered acceptable or principled behavior—perhaps readers will see them as overreactions to originally justifiable anger. But these are real women in the real world. Their acts are not prettied up for our benefit. These women have just had it. Fed up, they refuse to be used or abused another minute without taking a stand.

The main message in this most controversial chapter is: It is liberating to know that females can express anger. Thinking that they must always be nice keeps them accepting abuse way longer than they should. Keeps them from fighting back when it makes sense to fight back. If women and girls know they don’t have to be nice all the time, then they will not hesitate to stand up for themselves when mistreated or to fight back if attacked.

Working the night shift at a truck stop in rural Maine meant I served “breakfast” to all the drunks who came in after the bars closed. On this particular night, my section was packed. I didn’t have time to clear a table before the next set of customers sat down.

At one point, two men came in and sat at a table where some of my regular customers had just been. The regulars always tipped me well, but on this night, after the men sat down, there was nothing. I was pretty sure the two guys had stolen the money, but I wasn’t positive until I was out of their sight behind the coffee machine and overheard one (the instigator) tell his buddy that he should get the money off the next table, too.

I knew what I had to do. I filled a pitcher to the top with ice water and went to their table. I was nervous, but as I poured the
jerk’s glass full, I “accidentally” dumped the entire pitcher of freezing water into his lap. As he stood up in shock, I got right in his face and told him that if he ever stole money from me again, it would be “f
^***
ing hot coffee.”

Swimming in water, he paid for his untouched meal and didn’t complain to management. As you can imagine, they found out anyway and fired me. Let me assure you,
it was worth it.

Plain-looking and out of touch with the latest fads, I wasn’t popular with the girls at my high school. I probably would have cared more about their rejection if I hadn’t had The Boys. The Boys were my everything. They asked me how I was doing and cared about the answer. They were impressed with my smarts and complimented me when I actually managed an outfit not too far out of fashion. We teased each other, supported each other, and helped each other kick major butt on the athletic field. That was why they liked me. At seventeen years old, I benched more than 90 percent of the guys on the varsity football team. Unfortunately, I did not attend a school that allowed girls to play tackle football. But The Boys knew my skills. I taught them a thing or two, and they smiled when they saw me in the hall: an even trade. The girls didn’t get it. They figured there could be no possible reason to justify my popularity with the members of the football team, except that I must be sleeping
around. In fact, I was a virgin, and I planned on keeping it that way.

One evening after practice (track and field for me, football for them), I drove three of the team’s finest to their respective homes. One, Alexi, demanded he sit shotgun. As I rounded a dark street corner toward his family’s apartment, he ran his fingers up my inner thigh and with his other hand tried to grab my right breast. Alexi was my friend, so I was more pissed off than scared. Mostly I was trying to figure out how to get out of this situation. I pushed his hands away, downshifted, and steered around the corner all at the same time (a feat of which I am particularly proud). The two in the backseat laughed. Encouraged, Alexi tried again. I again pushed his hands away, finally stopping the car.

“Get out, all of you.”

The two in the backseat were quick to exit. Alexi remained shotgun and turned toward me. Leaning in for a kiss, he whispered, “You know you want me.”

Others surely would have; after all, he was the star of the football team. And I did consider it, for a second. I looked at his soft, pouting lips, his dark eyes, his nearing, muscular body. I imagined what it would feel like to have his mouth upon mine, his hands roaming all over me.

Nope,
I decided.
Not today, and certainly not this way.

“Get out,” I demanded. I had said that before, however, and it hadn’t worked. This time, to make my point perfectly clear, I went for the only vulnerable spot on his impervious body: I grabbed the crotch of his pants and squeezed lightly.

“Let go, Kathleen,” he ordered, clearly shocked.

“Unlock the door,” I growled. I was not going to let go, I told myself, no matter what might happen.

“Let go, first!” Alexi commanded. But as I squeezed tighter, he gingerly released the lock.

“Now open the door.”

Alexi complied and asked, “Are you going to let go now?”

“Get out,” I seethed. Still holding onto his package, stretching my long arm across the passenger seat, I guided him out of my car and into a stagnant puddle near the curb. “Now lock the door, and close it.”

“You’re still holding onto me,” he whimpered.

“Lock the door.”

Alexi looked sheepishly into my burning face, his pitiful round eyes stained red with tears. There he was, the delight of high-school football fans across the state, looking ready to collapse.

“On the count of three, you’re going to push the door closed,” I said. “And on the count of three-and-a-half, I’m going to let go. Ready?”

“Wait, wait, wait!” Alexi pleaded.

“One, one-and-a-half, two, two-and-a-half, three.”

Alexi pushed the door to swing it closed. At the same time, I let go and drove off.
Three-and-a-half, four.
I felt relieved. I also felt sad. After all, this was a friend I had trusted.

I never drove any of The Boys home again. The girls at school were certain I must have taken a vow of celibacy. In fact, they were sort of right. Determined that it would happen on my terms, and with the right person, I remained a virgin until long after graduation.

We had just finished eating dinner when the first call came. It was my younger sister. She usually kept her life private, but this night she was asking for help in whispered tones. Before she could finish saying what was going on, I heard her boyfriend, Mike, demand she hang up. After the call, Sue and I discussed whether to go to her apartment or just wait. Mike had a drinking problem, and like many others with his addiction, he became abusive after enough alcohol coated his cowardice. The phone rang again. More whispering: not because Mike might overhear, but because he had choked her, damaging her vocal cords. Her three youngest children were crying in the background.