VOGUE VOICE

Lindy West is the American activist, feminist, writer and comedian behind the hit TV show Shrill. Here and in her latest book, West explores what women can collectively achieve when they ditch the desire to be likeable and openly express their anger inste

myself a feminist until I was 20 years old. Feminism was deliberately and aggressively stigmatised as angry and shrill and unattractive, and when you’re an insecure teenager you don’t want to be perceived as alienating and unattractive, even if it’s for the sake of demanding equality. There were people who were fiercely identifying as feminists in the 90s, but I didn’t have that kind of confidence.

In my freshman year of college, I took a class about politics and social justice and the professor asked the class: “Raise your hand if you’re a feminist” and I remember only one woman raised her hand. Then, he went around the room and asked all the other women in the class whether or not we thought we deserved equal rights and everyone said yes. Then he said: “Okay, well then you’re a feminist, because that’s what that means.”

I realised, wait, why have I been afraid of this? Why have I allowed myself to be confined by the reframing of this really important term by people who have an anti-feminist agenda? Why have I allowed myself to be a part of that, to be duped by that? It became really satisfying to reject that rebranding and say, yeah, of course I’m a feminist! Why on Earth would I not be?

With anger, it’s the same stigma, that there’s something ugly and unappealing about a marginalised group of people standing up and objecting to the way that they’re being mistreated by the systems they live in. It’s absolutely justified for women to be angry about how we’re treated and about the opportunities and the basic respect and dignity that are withheld from us by society. Race and class and ability and sexuality and all of these intersecting factors change women’s experiences, but certainly all of us, as women, are oppressed. It would be totally irrational and alien to not be angry. And yet, when you express anger publicly as a marginalised person, the response is very, very negative.

The response is often that you get scolded for undermining your own message. If you were just nicer, you could get what you want. If you just presented it in a more gentle way, you would be on the path to equality more quickly (which, of course, we know is not true). There’s no major shift in social justice that has come from people politely saying: “May we please have some of your stuff?”, which is really what we’re talking about. It is a redistribution of wealth and opportunity and influence. People don’t want to give that stuff up. You need anger and you need confrontation and you need action, and it’s not a coincidence that those things are stigmatised in certain populations.

In 2018 we all watched Christine Blasey Ford testify against US Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh in those hearings and she was absolutely poised. She was quiet and gentle. She was apologetic. She was so, so, so careful. You could just feel the care in every word that she said. And it didn’t matter. He was still appointed and confirmed to the Supreme Court. And it was breathtaking to watch the way that she held herself with so much dignity and so much poise, but I think it’s an example that shows us pretty clearly that there’s no level of calmness and sweetness that’s going to win us the progress that we need, because we lost. We lost that hearing.

There’s constant debate over whether or not female political candidates are likeable, which is not something we ever ask about male candidates. It’s this trap where we’re told that we have to chase this idea of likeability which is based on outdated gender roles that undermine our ability to accrue power – the woman who is nice and who bakes you cookies and who nurses you and takes care of you and doesn’t take up too much space and doesn’t ask for too much power. The thing about likeability is that men and, by extension, society in general, don’t like women who are loud and bossy and powerful and who tell the truth and who challenge male power. When you set up likeability as a prerequisite for women’s power, you are undercutting it from the beginning. I do think that the more women express our anger publicly, when it’s safe for us to do so, the more people get used to hearing female anger and maybe start to take us seriously. It’s a long, slow shift. It’s not a quick fix, but I personally resent being trapped by stigma like that. And that makes me want to be louder and more angry.

We can, if we want to, change the systems that define our lives, because we built them in the first place. The idea that we can’t demand more is fiction. It’s a convenient fiction for people who are benefiting from the system as it is right now. Why build a better world if you’re telling people the world is perfect as it is? It’s going to take a lot of comfortable people taking risks and putting their comfort on the line to make some of these big structural changes we need to make.

It’s not as though change never happens. We know it does. There have been major social justice victories, thanks to the work of organisers. If you take the time to seek out these resources and these places in your community, it’s absolutely energising and therapeutic, and it’s a medicine for despair, for sure. And at least if we’re angry about it, then people have to witness our anger and our ferocity in its full power, and cumulatively that has an impact. And it’s also cathartic. Find things that make you feel alive and like there’s something worth fighting for. Otherwise, what are we fighting for? The Witches Are Coming

When you set up likeability as a prerequisite for women’s power, you are undercutting it from the start