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| Photo by Ferran Jordà |
Victimization: I have been injured.
Entitlement: I have a right to be angry.
Unspoken Assumption: I have the right to enact revenge and/or even the score.
This kind of anger feels dangerous, because it is so deeply rooted in a sense of righteous justification.
Instead of calling it "anger," it might be more accurate to refer to it as bitterness, resentment, or rage--an anger cherished, nurtured, held close.
I'm writing about anger not just because I drew it out of the jar as a writing topic (which I did), but because--
Anger is my Achilles' heel.
If you want something from me, try getting angry. I might just crack.
For whatever reason (maybe getting yelled at as a kid, I dunno), anger has an unpleasant effect on me: My throat tightens. I get quiet. I go numb.
I've learned that anger can be a form of manipulation and control. And it works. I can't think of a single abusive dynamic that I've been a part of that hasn't involved this kind of anger.
One guy I worked with would yell at me, then get even angrier when I responded neutrally instead of emotionally.
He would consistently tell me about how angry yet another guy was with me (triangulation).
This happened again in another situation, where one dude capitalized on the anger of another dude to overcome a break in our relationship (bonus points if it's someone in a position of power, authority, or influence):
"___ is very angry with you. You need to do something. I can help you fix it."
Essentially, Dude A used fear of authority, specifically fear sparked by someone in authority (Dude B) being angry with me, to get what he wanted.
I mean, it worked--maybe a little too well: I soon after entered into an abusive dynamic with Dude B, a dynamic centered around anger, fear and control. It felt a little too much like being handed from one abuser to another.
That was last year. This year, I found myself once again sitting across from one man telling me that another man was "very angry with me." I find this funny (rule of 3; first time tragedy, second time farce). If you find yourself in a conversation where one person is earnestly telling you that another person is angry with you, and what are you going to do about it, I can say with certainty that something is wrong.
But I digress. Achilles' heel.
This is about anger and Christian guys and being undateable.
I had an epiphany once, while working on this series: "Christian men don't actually respect women." And then that thought kept me up all night the way that 3am thoughts sometimes do.
I think there's some truth to it: some men and some Christian men do not see women as equals. They do not see women as fully human. And it's hard to respect someone unless you view them as fully human.
I've heard from a reliable source that "anger is a gateway emotion." If we think about shame as the root of this kind of anger (abusive anger), a disproportionate response to perceived slights* makes a lot of sense:
How would you feel if something not quite a person (that you don't regard as an equal) made you feel completely worthless? Especially when everything you believe about yourself and everything society encourages you to believe tells you that you are superior, the genuine article, the real thing?
It would be incredibly enraging. The balance must be restored. Someone or something must pay. Shame is an unbearable emotion, and it must be displaced onto the body of another.
In this case, violence is just settling the score, evening the debt, restoring the equilibrium.
Where does the shame go?
I've written before about how the burden of shame accrues to women. Even the way we talk about and think about anger contributes to this burden. Anger more than almost any other emotion is seen as "out of control" or "out of my control," serving as a justification for violence.
The less that men are "in control" of their own emotions or passions, the more women are responsible for the outcome of those emotions.
This is not to blame shame for the abusive anger of men--rather, the underlying belief that men are more valuable than women, more human than women, more entitled to respect, dignity, rights, justice, power, autonomy, etc.
Yes, I blame misogyny. I blame Christian teachings that emphasize complementarian gender roles. I believe that a system that enforces rigid, narrowly defined gender roles enables and encourages the abuse of women.
As men displace their shame onto women, they feel better, while women feel worse. Messages from our culture that implicate women in their own victimization serve to reinforce this sense of reverse responsibility: You are the one at fault. You caused your own abuse. You caused your own assault. You were not hyper-vigilant enough.
I suspect that just as men cannot heal the shame of women, women cannot heal the shame of men. And women are definitely not responsible for the underlying misogyny of men's anger.
Another important point: Submission to this type of anger is a bad idea. For so long I bought into a conception of Christian reconciliation that entailed submitting passively to unhealthy and abusive anger. I thought that by demonstrating humility I could heal the relationship and reestablish equilibrium. I even apologized to my very first abuser for treating him poorly (not listening to him, not respecting him). Not even joking.
For one, it doesn't work. It can even intensify the abuse. For another, there is nothing Christian or holy about submitting to dehumanizing behavior. Any theology, church, person who tells you otherwise is selling you an abusive crock of ****.
*I owe this idea to a discussion of Roy Baumeister's writing about abuse at WenatcheeTheHatchet. While I don't agree with Wenatchee's interpretation, I did find Baumeister's ideas about men's rationalizations for domestic violence helpful.
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