British psychotherapist, author and podcaster Jennifer Cox thinks anger and rage are totally normal and that we should express, not repress, these emotions. What with Trump, online misogyny (and, for some of us, perimenopause), we thought now would be a good time to ask her to chat about female rage!
Women have plenty to be hopping mad about, and Trump’s win has exacerbated anger for many of us. I’m still feeling apoplectic about the U.S. election result, the continued stripping away of women’s reproductive rights there, the emboldened online misogyny – and the looming political, economic and environmental ripple effects of Trump 2.0.
But I feel like I’ve got nowhere to ‘put’ that rage. I’m just carrying it around. So I Googled ‘female rage’ and found a Guardian article about London-based psychotherapist Jennifer Cox: author of the recently published book Women Are Angry: Why Your Rage Is Hiding And How To Let It Out and co-host of the popular Women Are Mad podcast. Jennifer kindly hopped on Zoom one evening; I half-expected her to look as enraged as I feel but she’s very much a “joyful warrior”.
The Post-Trump Surge of Female Rage
Has Jennifer noticed a surge of female rage following Trump’s victory and the online misogyny it’s triggered? Because between that, abortion bans that endanger women’s healthcare, and the president-elect being a foul-mouthed misogynist and adjudicated rapist – I think it all hits differently for women than it does men.
“Most definitely,” Jennifer says. Certainly, some men are sympathetic about how we feel. “But I’ve seen some women outside the U.S. feeling they don’t have a right to their feelings about this. Their partners are saying ‘Why are you looking at the news again? You can’t change anything. It’s not happening here. What are you so upset about?’.”
“That makes me spitting furious,” she says. “I feel it’s part of this ‘calm down, dear’ gaslighting. Men are saying ‘it’s not happening to you’. But in a sense, as women, what happens to other women is happening to us. There’s a shared outrage.”
“Also, if it’s happening in America, what the hell does that mean for countries where women’s rights are already on the floor? America is the superpower and its top-down culture will inform the conversation.”
“My worry is that if we don’t keep this conversation really alive, women’s rights will keep getting squeezed around the world.”
Normalising Female Rage
Over centuries, women who showed anger have been called overly emotional, crazy and hysterical, Jennifer says. “We’ve been conditioned to think women’s rage is suspicious, scary, witchy, uncontrolled, unpredictable.”
“And as women still living in a patriarchal society, we’ve been socialised and conditioned not to show anger publicly. It’s taboo.” Jennifer thinks women sometimes call their anger ‘frustration’ or something similar, because that’s more socially acceptable.
The challenge is to normalise female rage – and normalise expressing it. According to Jennifer, “the majority of research shows the real damage is not addressing anger and not discharging it from our bodies, which is something I’ve also seen with patients”.
“Anger is energy. It’s cortisol. It’s adrenaline. Those hormones don’t do us good when they’re left to sit in our system.” She says that suppressed rage can burst out with toxic consequences and affect, for instance, your health or your relationships.
Ways To Express Your Rage Healthily
Jennifer suggests various ways of expressing rage: whack a mattress with a tennis racket, hit a pile of soft furnishings or cushions with a wooden spoon, hurl ice cubes at a patio, yell from a motorway bridge, and… scream underwater? Won’t you swallow water, I wonder? “You have to inhale above the water, then go under but make sure you don’t inhale.” A pool is good but a bath works too.
All this involves muffling the sound of our rage. But what if we could stand up from our desks at work (or from the couch at home), scream, then continue going about our day? “I mean, if it’s couched in a laugh, like ‘I know this is absurd, but I’m doing it anyway’, then I think that’s fine!”
Exercise helps, Jennifer says. “Exercise is an active kinetic discharge of energy. It’s a great way to get your initial anger out, then your brain can come back online and you can reclaim your thoughts.”
How does Jennifer let out her rage? “I run crossly, flailing about. I go for long walks with the dogs, listening to music.” She lets her mind go where it will. “I don’t try to block anything. I also have therapy. I’ll never stop having therapy.”
She says emotional processing like crying, journaling, therapy or talking to others really helps. “It’s important to have almost a ‘conveyor belt’ of processing, so we get closer to our own feelings, rather than being far away from them.”
Is Anger A Root Cause Of Women’s Suffering?
Women can experience IBS, migraines, anxiety or other health issues and – while these things are happening – rage is sometimes at the core of things. Jennifer’s seen this with many clients. “When the penny drops that this is anger, it’s this powerful thing.” For instance, a woman might be angry about being paid less than a male colleague, or having to shoulder the mental load. And it’s not necessarily only one big thing. “Micro-moments can pile up to systemically grind us down.”
As women, Jennifer says, we’re told we can have and do everything but, in reality, we can’t. “I think that’s the major thing that underlies women’s rage. In the book, I primarily focus on the ‘gaslight’. Part of this ‘gaslight’ is when women start feeling there’s something wrong with them. I’ve had so many patients who say ‘my husband says that his friend’s wives are fine managing all of this’. Is that bro code?”
Jennifer says she isn’t piling on men. “It’s really important that we do this work together.” She notes that, while women are socially conditioned not to show anger, men are socially conditioned not to cry.
But hey, men don’t have to go through pregnancy, childbirth, periods, and menopause! Perimenopause can make us enraged – between the physical and mental side-effects, and just not wanting to go through this shit.
In her private practise, Jennifer sees many women who are going through perimenopause. “I think the drop in oestrogen exposes us to what should have been making us angry all along. As women, we’ve been biologically wired to look after people and care what they think. And once we’re freer from that [after menopause], I think we wake up and think ‘why did I live that way for so long?’.”
Then, some women decide they’re done with sacrificing themselves and suppressing their emotions. “So, I don’t think women going through perimenopause are getting angrier. I think they’re seeing their anger clearly for the first time.”
Creating a community
Realising through her practise that many women aren’t recognising or expressing feelings of anger, Jennifer wrote the book Women Are Angry: Why Your Rage is Hiding And How To Let It Out. It’s structured around case studies – who are ‘anonymised amalgams’ of patients she’s treated – and it’s divided up by life stages, from childhood through to old age. The anger-inducing life experiences described include unresolved feelings about a miscarriage, the difficulties of looking after young children, feeling undermined at work, partners not pulling their weight at home, and sexual harassment.
Unsure how long publishing the book would take, Jennifer wanted to spread the word right away – and her best friend, actress Salima Saxton, suggested they start a podcast. Since May 2024, they’ve released nearly 80 episodes of Women Are Mad. Each week, they invite one impressive guest – from actresses and activists through to a 63-year-old TikTok star – to discuss what makes them mad and to help process their emotions. “There’s a therapeutic element,” Jennifer says. “The podcast platform encourages people to ‘say the stuff’, and also helps it land with others, but not as a ‘raw scream’. It’s contextualised.”
Among podcast guests, there had been a mix of those who were and weren’t comfortable talking about rage. Now, following Trump’s win and a surge of misogyny, they’re asking to come on – and they have things to say.
In bonus “we need to talk” episodes, Jennifer and Salima address listeners’ emotional problems. And they’ve created an online Women Are Mad Substack community, where Jennifer and Salima each write about their thoughts on certain topics, and readers can post comments. Women Are Mad (WAM), which also has online meetings and retreats, has become a movement.
“Something about all these conversations,” Jennifer says, “has helped me process my rage, and it’s helping our listeners, and readers who write to me. I encourage women to own our feelings and tell each other what we’re feeling. We have to talk, unite and strengthen our voices. Like, how cool is it that we’re talking from different sides of the world? We need these conversations in order for things to change.”
