Anger as a Response to Patriarchal Violence

The Uses of Anger-Audre Lorde.pdf

In “The Uses of Anger,” Audre Lorde refuses to hide her anger towards exclusionary and racist white feminists. Because “we have been raised to view any difference other than sex as a reason for destruction,” racist attitudes within feminist circles went largely tolerated due to the fear of both expressing and receiving anger. But, as Lorde argues, racist attitudes should be met with anger just as differences should not be ignored for the sake of homogeneous harmony.  When anger is expressed in order to champion the liberation of all oppressed people (not just white cisgender women), “we identify who are our allies with whom we have grave differences, and who are our genuine enemies.” 

Lorde encourages women to embrace anger as a clarifying source of information and change,“to stand still, to listen to its rhythms, to learn within it, to move beyond the manner of presentation to the substance, to tap that anger as an important source of empowerment.” Instead of refusing to acknowledge it, women can instead access their anger, locate its source in oppressive and violent systems, and then transform it into action. 

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In the tape, Women + Crime, criminologist Dr. Freda Adler explores the rise in female criminality as a consequence—and in some cases, a direct response—to patriarchal violence. As women moved out of traditional domestic roles and into public life, Adler argues, the forms of their deviance shifted alongside their expanding opportunities. Crimes once considered “masculine” such as armed robbery, assault, and even attempted assassination, became more accessible to women no longer confined to the private sphere. Drawing on examples like Sara Jane Moore and referencing Phyllis Chesler’s Women and Madness, Adler and interviewer Viv Sutherland trace how women’s anger, long suppressed or medicalized under patriarchy, increasingly turned outward in acts of rebellion and violence. They also critique a legal and correctional system slow to adapt—one that either punishes women more harshly under the guise of rehabilitation or treats them with misplaced leniency rooted in paternalism. At its core, the conversation reframes female aggression not as moral failure, but as a mirror of social constraint: a volatile, often misunderstood reaction to the psychological and structural violences of a society still grappling with what it means for women to be fully human.

TAPE MISSING! Anger can also be a survival tactic! The tape SPW1908 (Side A) Women Political Prisoners features writings from mainly Black and brown incarcerated women in the US such as Dessie Woods, Assata Shakur, Joan Little, Carol Crooks, and Lolita Lebrón. The majority of the women were criminalized after fighting back and killing their abusers and rapists. Facing a political order structured upon their dehumanization and a justice system that does not ensure the safety of women (especially women of color and/or and gender non-conforming lesbians), these women took matters into their own hands. 

Antoinette Ford doc #412541

Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women, St. Gabriel, Louisiana

Sentence: 5 years 4 months, Work: incarcerated

Deborah Luster’s One Big Self collection includes portraits of inmates within the Louisiana prison system. Many of the photographs are of women, imprisoned for violent crimes. Through her work she is able to humanize these women while documenting their existence. We continue to explore violence as a form of reclamation of voice and self-preservation for women existing in a patriarchal world.