Are The Feminists Right About Feminine Rage?

This summer, superstar Taylor Swift joked that her latest album, The Tortured Poets Department, is “like Female Rage: The Musical” – a phrase which Swift then went on to copyright. Swifties like me know exactly what Taylor’s referring to – it’s the “feminine rage” that litters our social media feed these days. On the left, we have profanity-ridden posts from feminists about Harrison Butker’s commencement speech, and on the right, we have virtue-signaling rants about modesty and #SundressGate. Everywhere I turn now, some woman is violently up in arms about something.

The simple solution is, of course, for everyone to just calm down. But then we have to ask the question: Is all “feminine rage” really a bad thing? When a woman is treated unjustly or is harmed by someone – say, when a website helps her spouse cheat on her – there’s a kind of rage that is, at the very least, natural. You don’t have to be a feminist to think women should stand up for what is right in their lives and communities, even if they get a bit heated in the process.

So where do we strike the balance? And how can we make a space for women to experience strong emotions without encouraging them to exist in an echo chamber of self-destructive rage?

Breaking News: Sometimes Women Get Mad, and It’s Okay To Show It

If you search “feminine rage” on social media, you’ll quickly find a clip of A-list star Anya Taylor-Joy smiling sweetly at the camera and saying, “I’ve got a thing about feminine rage.” The clip has become its own meme, and is often shared as a three second clip with a comment reading “YAS GIRL.”

The clip comes from an interview Taylor-Joy gave during press for her 2022 film The Menu. In The Menu, Taylor-Joy plays a call girl who has been brought to an island by a wealthy young man, even though he selfishly knows she will not leave it alive. In the interview, Taylor-Joy explains the decision for her character to physically attack the man in one scene of the film. In many scripts she has read, Taylor-Joy explains, when a male character does something terrible to a woman (as in The Menu), the woman’s response is silence “whilst one tear slowly falls.” For The Menu, Taylor-Joy explained to her director, “I’m sorry, but the only way to play this truthfully is for me to, like, attack him.”

That’s always the problem with sound bites – they miss some pretty necessary context. Taylor-Joy’s main criticism seems to be with poor screenwriting that stereotypes the way female characters express emotion in stories. She’s not asserting the objective benefit of expressing rage or a societal repression of female emotion; she’s simply arguing for the need to be emotionally honest as an actress. Successful acting tells emotional truth in an imaginary circumstance, and if that imaginary circumstance depicts a woman so angry she’s been brought to her death that she starts hitting the man who brought her there, then maybe a little rage is merited.

Stereotyping emotions isn’t a new issue for actresses. In 2007, actress Jessica Alba allegedly had such a terrible experience filming an emotional scene in Rise of Silver Surfer that she nearly quit acting. According to reports, director Tim Story allegedly told Alba her crying looked “too real,” and he told her, “It looks too painful. Can you be prettier when you cry? Cry pretty, Jessica,” offering to CGI in tears after filming was complete. The scene in question? One in which Alba’s character, Sue Storm, dies.

Reality check here. Isn’t a death scene supposed to look painful? The notion that an actress should try to die “prettier” may not be meant to be insulting, but at the very least, it’s artistically immature. The truth about being human beings is that, sometimes, we experience unpleasant emotions and that, often, those unpleasant emotions aren’t going to be pretty. That’s true for men and women alike, and it’s important for storytellers to be honest about the reality of those emotions. 

Sometimes women get angry, and sometimes they have a good reason to be. “I dug my key into the side / Of his pretty little souped up four wheel drive,” Carrie Underwood sang about the man who cheated, and let’s be honest, ladies, many of us have gotten that angry too. It’s a reality of human life, and for an actress to acknowledge this in her work doesn’t necessarily make her a feminist, it just makes her honest.

Mainstream Feminism Doesn’t Just Allow Rage, It Glorifies It

Yes, women feel rage too. It’s a part of real life. But a natural feminine rage isn’t the same thing as the feminist rage expressed so frequently and violently online. Just take a look at the subject of this summer’s feminist rage fest: Harrison Butker.

This summer, in a commencement speech at Benedictine College, Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker directly called out woke ideology and then exhorted the young women of the graduating class not to buy into the “diabolical lies” they have been fed about becoming mothers. Butker had a lot of critics – woke leftists who claimed he wanted “women back in the kitchen,” as well as those on the traditional right who questioned the appropriateness of the comments to girls who had just finished the hard work of earning their college degrees. Maybe Butker spoke the truth, or maybe his words lacked wisdom (most honestly, probably a bit of both). But the problem with the online response is that it didn’t just allow women to feel strongly, it actively encouraged women to feel rage.

There may be a fine line between feeling rage at something unjust and simply courting trouble for the sake of feeling angry, but there’s a line there nonetheless. Allowing women to feel anger is one thing, but this kind of “feminist rage” encourages women to find injustice, whether it exists or not. Women caught in the cycle of experiencing rage at the tip of a hat are easy prey for the narrative that all men oppress women, a narrative feminism desperately wants them to believe.

Why is encouraging rage in women a problem? It’s a lesson as old as Homer’s Iliad, but human beings can’t seem to remember it: At the end of the day, rage is self-destructive. Even tortured poet Taylor Swift acknowledges that while feminine rage may be real, and sometimes even necessary for emotional maturation, in excess, it will consume you. “I would have died for your sins / Instead I just died inside,” Swift sings to The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived, and she really means it – that kind of obsession eats you away from the inside.  

The irony of internet “feminist rage” is that it isn’t really about making a space for women to feel genuine emotions. “Feminist rage” as expressed online is more often about validating ideological narratives at the expense of very real women. Telling a woman to cry ugly in rage isn’t all that different from telling an actress to cry pretty at her death scene. They’re both about fitting women into a controllable narrative, not about encouraging women to authentically enter into reality.

A Metaphor for Feminine Rage That Actually Works

So, what about the women prone to those really strong emotions – those of us who are a little more susceptible to road rage and keying our ex's car? Is there any kind of metaphor for female rage that recognizes the harmful effects of rage on a woman’s heart without making it sound like women should be seen and not heard?

A good place to start is Disney’s Moana, which has one of the most nuanced metaphors about female rage you’ll find anywhere in the movies. In the film, young adventurer Moana has sailed across the ocean to save her decaying island home by returning the small green heart of the nurturing goddess Te Fiti. Striving to get to Te Fiti in time, Moana and her companion, the demigod Maui, fight against the volcanic rage monster Te Ka.

But then Moana notices the heart’s design and realizes the film’s secret: Rage monster Te Ka is the nurturing goddess Te Fiti, raging to find the heart that was stolen from her. It’s a pretty straightforward metaphor for the reality of feminine rage: Often, a woman will rage because her heart has somehow been unjustly wounded. Even though there’s a good reason for the rage, it’s become self-destructive nonetheless.

Approaching the monster, Moana sings to Te Ka: “They have stolen the heart from inside you, / But this does not define you. / This is not who you are / You know who you are.” Moana, who herself has gone on a journey of self-discovery, reminds the rage monster of who she truly is, and she returns the monster’s heart, restoring Te Fiti and undoing the decay on her island.

Sure, it’s a Disney happy ending, but ultimately, isn’t that the kind of ending we want for any woman who is angry and has a good reason to be so? It’s dishonest to pretend women don’t feel anger, but that anger is a sign something has gone wrong and needs to be addressed. Instead of buying into the internet culture of “feminist rage,” which ties a woman’s identity and strength to the rage she feels, maybe we’d be better put to do what Moana does and help a raging woman reclaim her heart.

Closing Thoughts

It’s just a fact – sometimes women do get angry. Actresses like Anya Taylor-Joy are right to advocate for being emotionally honest as storytellers and artists. But the online culture of “feminist rage” doesn’t just allow women to work through their messier emotions – it encourages them to live in a cycle of one rage to another. This kind of rage is ultimately self-destructive, and we would be better off helping women reclaim their true hearts and identities than encouraging a constant state of anger.

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