Jo: You don’t
know, you can’t guess how bad it is! It seems as if I could do anything when
I’m in a passion. I get so savage, I could hurt anyone and enjoy it. I’m afraid
I shall do something dreadful some day, and spoil my life, and make everybody
hate me. Oh, Mother, help me, do help me!
Mrs. March: […
starts with something soothing …] You think your temper is the worst in the
world, but mine used to be just like it.
Jo: Yours,
Mother? Why, you are never angry!
Mrs. March: I’ve
been trying to cure it for forty years, and have only succeeded in controlling
it. I am angry nearly every day of my life, Jo, but I have learned not to show
it, and I still hope to learn not to feel it, though it may take me another
forty years to do so.
Little Women,
Louisa May Alcott
In the first Avengers film, we meet Bruce
Banner in a state where he seems to have figured out how to keep himself calm
and not turn into Hulk. Tony Stark annoyingly keeps asking him what his secret
is, but Bruce avoids the answer till the final battle scene, where this dialog
takes place.
Captain America:
Dr. Banner, now might be a good time for you to get angry.
Bruce Banner
(right before he turns into Hulk): That is my secret captain, I am always
angry.
In my pre-teens,
I once kicked the door of the small bathroom in our house. After the kick, I froze,
staring at the hole my foot created on the door. I was shocked at my anger, the
reasons for it I can’t even remember, but my bigger shock was the realization
of how shitty the bathroom door was. [1]
“I can’t image
you angry.” is a statement I have heard many times, from different people, at
different stages in my life. In contrast to these people’s impression of me,
when I think of my anger, the hole I created on our restroom door and the
quotes listed above come to my mind.
I have had anger
bursts like the door-kick all my life even though they happen less and less these
days. Except for a very few occasions, they do not happen in front of people,
and while there is an incident that triggers them, they are rarely due to one
reason.
Here are some
occasions that made me want to turn into Hulk.
At EPFL, I
usually had lunch with Twin Sister. During one of our lunches, we sat
next to a couple of male EPFL students. One asked the other, in English, if he
had sex with so and so, and after hearing the positive answer, he said “So, she
was easy.” I turned to them, as they continued their dialogue, with the desire
to break my lunch plate on the head of the guy who made the statement. [2] Then,
I heard Twin Sister say in Turkish “Calm down. We can vent on this
later.” I don’t know what she saw on my face to make her react that way, but
when I turned back to her, I could see her anger on her face.
When I was
interviewing for jobs toward the end of my PhD, during one of my one-on-ones, I
was asked if I would be comfortable taking the whole parental leave if I had a
baby. There were a lot of “if”s there, none of which should have been relevant
to my interview. The bigger irony was this was at a place where the maternity
leaves were (and still are) unreasonably short. I was angry but tried my best
to reply calmly “I am not considering having a child anytime soon, but if I
did, I would use the whole maternity leave as it is my legal right.”
The year I
joined ITU, I once sent an announcement about a postdoc position in Germany
targeting female applicants to the mailing list of all faculty members. Shortly
after, I received the following reply from a male colleague.
“Hi Pinar
You might not be
aware but Denmark has a law against discriminatory hiring practices. You can
read more about it here (in Danish sorry)
https://www.danskerhverv.dk/radgivning/ansattelse-rekruttering/rekruttering/det-ma-du-ikke-skrive-i-en-jobannonce/
Best regards
XXX”
While I swore at
him in Turkish in my head, I decided not to reply to this email.
Then, here are
some re-occurring triggers fueling my anger.
Whenever a white
straight European man with a traditional family life mansplains to me and
others “DEI is not just about gender.” after a mention of a DEI event that
targets women in Computer Science.
Whenever someone
says “this would hurt the chances of Turkey becoming a member of EU” after
something anti-democratic happens in Turkey.
Whenever a
corrupt politician’s career ends or takes a hit due to an affair instead of
their actual corruption.
Whenever I read
/ see the news.
Finally, I have
also moments where I simply have anger that is turned inward as a combination
of both internal and external frustrations that are often a result of
unresolved or under-processed anger.
There has been
an increased awareness about accepting our emotions, even the ones that have
negative connotations such as anger, rather than suppressing them, as they are
a guide. This does not mean you must act on every single emotion but try to
understand the underlying cause and see how we can address the cause.
“Anger is
meant to be respected. Why? Because anger is a map. Anger shows us what our
boundaries are. Anger shows us where we want to go. … Anger is meant to be
acted upon. It is not meant to be acted out.”
The
Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron
When my cousin
was rejected a Schengen visa for his trip to Copenhagen to come visit me back
in Spring 2023, I was furious at the Schengen countries in general due to the
spiking number of visa rejections toward Turkish people from all over Europe in
those days. But I was even more furious at myself for not being able to give up
my personal comforts and spending my best years serving a land, who will never
accept me truly. With that initial fury, I remember wanting to write on our
department Teams channel about this situation. I wrote and rewrote and rewrote
some text but then deleted it completely and wrote a text message to Illegitimate
Daughter instead. Chatting with her calmed me down. Eventually, I put my
frustration into a series of blog posts [1,
2,
3,
4]
about my passport’s relation to the Western world, which was probably way more
constructive than writing something on work Teams.
Similarly, I am
active in DEI activities both at my work and research community, as much as I
can, rather than only venting frustrations with other frustrated parties.
In Season 2 of Sex Education, our teens
discover a junkyard, where they can smash things to release their anger. I
sometimes wish such a junkyard was available to me. In other words, I wish we
allowed more room for venting frustrations without belittling them or even
acting anger out through non-harmful ways, like my door-kick or the Sex
Education junkyard, rather than labeling such actions uncivilized. A
healthy dose of venting or acting out anger can help one to move onto the more
constructive acting upon stage more easily, decide what the acting
upon action should be, and minimize the anger/rage that eventually ends up
being turned inward.
Tori Amos’ album
Boys for Pele
is a great example of art created by a person with silent (female) anger, and is
my #1 go-to album when I need to calm down. On the album’s cover, Tori sits down
holding a rifle. I am not an expert on rifles, but the rifle lock is not in a
position that will allow you to fire. There are several interviews where Tori talks
about her own interpretation of this album cover, and you are welcome to have
your own. To me, it says, “I am not here to shoot you, but I am not putting the
gun down either for your or anyone else’s comfort as it is part of me.”
Happy belated
International Women’s Day to all my (angry) sisters!
[1] This small
second toilet-only bathroom was a luxury considering that we lived in a
two-bedroom rental. Later my parents bought their own place, which was bigger
but came with only one bathroom, making this small bathroom, and the hole my
anger created on its door, to be among the things that we reminisced the most
from our previous home.
[2] No matter
what I may dream in my head due to my anger, I want to make it clear that I
have neither hurt nor wanted to hurt anyone physically in real life, at least
not intentionally; once the frisbee I threw hit someone, and I was very sorry
for it.
