Rebecca Traister - Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger

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ALSO BY REBECCA TRAISTER

All the Single Ladies:

Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation

Big Girls Dont Cry:

The Election That Changed Everything for American Women

Simon & Schuster

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Copyright 2018 by Rebecca Traister

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First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition October 2018

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Interior design by Ruth Lee-Mui

Jacket design By Bonnie Siegler

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Traister, Rebecca, author.

Title: Good and mad : the revolutionary power of womens anger / Rebecca Traister.

Description: New York : Simon & Schuster, 2018.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018035975| ISBN 9781501181795 (hardback) | ISBN 9781501181818 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781501181801 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: FeminismUnited StatesHistory21st century. | WomenUnited StatesPolitical activityHistory21st century. | AngerSocial aspects. | BISAC: HISTORY / United States / 21st Century. | HISTORY / Social History. | SOCIAL SCIENCE / Womens Studies.

Classification: LCC HQ1421 .T73 2018 | DDC 305.420973/0905dc23

LC record available at https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__lccn.loc.gov_2018035975&d=DwIFAg&c=jGUuvAdBXp_VqQ6t0yah2g&r=BLtwNjxI6xU1TowZZXPw62rxL1h5Yh02Ol72-V1YNSunoH38hlyco6RBfK8BXD8O&m=1-8SAAVvrYO8O4-9Tmy6PNfPkpxpFrLQsX5Rwr9hOco&s=6XpyD8_k5d6Qx1HbP7lppOO_vBz4qSPeoTSo_v3ugIg&e=

ISBN 978-1-5011-8179-5

ISBN 978-1-5011-8180-1 (ebook)

For Bella and Rosie

Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.

ABIGAIL ADAMS

The Feminine

Is not Dead

Nor is she

Sleeping

Angry, yes,

Seething, yes.

Biding her time;

Yes.

Yes.

ALICE WALKER

When I was hosting my CNBC show, it was ten years ago [2008] during the crisis. I was counseling people daily whod lost every penny. It was heartbreaking and intense. I had on the head of the SEC at the time and asked him some pointed questions about his departments lack of oversight. I got pulled into the executive producers office after we wrappedwas forced to sit and watch the segment, then lectured about how I looked angry. All I did was not smile. My jaw was tight. My eyes, maybe burning a bit. My response: I was and am angry. Soon after, another host has a meltdown on the floor of the stock exchange, screaming in anger, male , and hes lauded as starting the Tea Party. I mean... Fuck it!

Carmen Rita Wong

Get your fucking hands off me, goddamn it! bellowed Florynce Kennedy, enormous peace sign earrings flying, her head wrapped in a red turban. Dont touch me, you motherfucker!

It was an electrifying interaction in the midst of the 1972 Democratic National Convention in Miami. Kennedy, the black feminist and lawyer, was aiming all her ire at a bunch of white network news guys, including CBSs Mike Wallace and Dan Rather, who were taking a break on the mostly empty convention floor; for the most part, the men were showing little interest in Kennedys fury. But one was trying to calm her and persuade her to back away by putting his hands on her. The next son of a bitch that touches a woman is gonna get kicked in the balls, she vowed.

In 1972, Shirley Chisholmthe first black woman ever elected to Congresshad run for the presidency and made it all the way to the convention. The partys national gathering had been a wild one, thanks in no small part to the participation of the National Womens Political Caucus, which had been founded the previous year by Chisholm, Kennedy, and other feminists and civil rights leaders including Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, and Dorothy Height. And as it was all unfolding, theyd gotten almost no television coverage.

This was what had led Kennedy and a group of other women that included Sandra Hochmana white feminist poet, who had been given $15,000 by independent film producers to make a documentary about feminists at the conventionto storm the TV crews and reporters gathered on the conventions floor during a down moment.

The powerful newsmen had sat, silent and amused, some not looking up from their newspapers, as the scrum of women had berated them. The womens fury had only built in response to the mens inattention to it, bubbling over at the couple of guys whod tried to hush them.

Hochmans camera crew had recorded it all for her documentary, which would be called Year of the Woman . The film captured so much of the gendered derision and dismissal that was provoking those women to scream their heads off: footage of the news crews who wouldnt cover Chisholm, instead falling all over Liz Renay, a beautiful stripper and actress; a Democratic power broker telling Hochman that there were women working on George McGoverns campaign, so far mostly in the childcare centers and things like that; McGoverns dashing young campaign manager, Gary Hart, then two years away from his own bid for the Senate, telling Hochman that his boss wouldnt pick a female vice presidential candidate because there was no satisfactory woman candidate... qualified to be president of the United States. (Chisholm, then in her second congressional term, had already worked to expand the food stamp program as well as the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children; she had pushed a $10 billion subsidized childcare bill, a version of which would be introduced by Walter Mondale and passed by Congress before Richard Nixon vetoed it. For his running mate, McGovern would wind up selecting Thomas Eagleton, a senator from Missouri who had not disclosed his previous history of depression treatments and had to resign from the ticket eighteen days after having been chosen.)