Dr. Helen notes a study on anger:
Do you think it’s mainly men who are the supposed angrier sex so the insults must be coming from them? Think again. Research from a British study of 22000 people over 50 years shows that women are the angrier sex. Heather Joshi, the study co-author, states, “Our study show that women report being angry far more often than men do.”
I rather like Dr. Helen, in part because she’s able to consider something like this from a dispassionate point of view instead of immediately going off on an illogical and ironic rant about how women aren’t angry, it’s men who are angry and if women are angry it’s only because men pissed them off by being such oppressive, patriarchal jerks.
There’s nothing actually newsworthy about this study, except for the fact that it violates the Unicornitopia view that women are sugar, spice and everything nice and angry white males are the cause of all evil. The truth is that most women are walking around half-cocked at all times, always a single comment away from erupting in anger.
Why? I don’t know. I don’t pretend to know. But I do know that it is a major handicap in attempting to achieve anything or work with anyone. I also know that men who live in fear of setting off the permanently half-cocked tend to cripple themselves both emotionally and intellectually.
Anger isn’t often righteous, it’s usually stupid, petty and irrational. If one feels angry all the time, or bordering on being angry all the time, then one is teetering on the edge of constant irrationality. If that’s not enough to give you pause about giving into anger at every opportunity or even glorying in it, well, there’s not much point in attempting to speak reason to you, is there, since you’re nothing but an irrational creature capable of nothing but being emotionally manipulated.
And living in fear of such a one is rather like being a well-trained dog. Face the fear, let the anger come and then note how little effect it has on you once the shouting is done. And once the angry realize how little effect their anger has on you, they’ll either cut it out or their passive hatred for you will go active. Either way, you’ll be much better off.