Transforming Rage to Power
How to use your anger to motivate action and align your values with your work
Written & researched in collaboration with Gabi Skoff.
A funny thing happened to me early on in my current relationship. My partner pointed out that whenever the topic of sexism came up in conversation, my entire energy would change. My body would have an actual physiological response, as emotions clouded my brain. After some reflection, I realized my response was triggered by resentment from an entire life dealing with sexism, gender biases, and societal constructs.
Women — no matter how far up the ladder, they may climb — face constant pressure from these same taxing constraints every day, as evidenced by the Vice Presidental Debate and the commentary surrounding it.
I realized something important. During conversations around sexism, the emotional flooding I experienced prevented me from even having a productive discussion on the topic. And the more I learned about the injustices resulting from systemic sexism (the wealth gap, the pay gap, and just released today, VC funding for female founders is at a three year low), the worse it became. For every single chauvinistic interaction or sexist comment, I forcefully buried away each flash of anger, however subtle, so I would not appear professionally disagreeable and harm my career in a field dominated by men.
When it comes to conflict, I am what some psychologists refer to as an “approacher”, a personality type derived from Jeffrey Allan Gray’s 1970 biopsychological theory of personality. Approachers are notorious for confronting problems head-on. So for me, being unable to react naturally when I experience gender bias and sexism creates a lot of negative energy.
While I might not be a physicist, I do know that energy cannot be destroyed. It can, however, be transformed. And anger, after all, is energy.
My last post, No One Likes a Mad Woman, discusses how rage can drive progress. Channeling rage productively requires us to transmute anger into constructive, strategic action rather than allow it to fester until it explodes as a violent function of resentment, judgment, or hate, or simply prevents us from having productive conversations around emotionally-charged topics. The beauty of making a conscious effort to transform our anger is that it provides an opportunity to gain clarity about the world we want to see and push our energy toward building it.
The transformational power of female anger
Over the past several years, several new books (whose messages are explored in this thought-provoking article for the New Yorker) have contributed to popularizing what some refer to as the “revolutionary power” of female anger. The books are one indication of a changing tide for women in America. From the 2017 Women’s March to the #MeToo movement, the drastic increase of female representation in Congress to the role Black women have played in leading and organizing the Black Lives Matter movement, everywhere we look, we see evidence of focused female anger serving progress and motivating change.
As I mentioned in my last post, it can be tricky to define the boundary between productive and counterproductive anger, justified and unjustified rage, especially in a political sense. Against the backdrop of today’s tumultuous political climate, I find myself making an effort to create this distinction. I keep coming back to a refrain I read by Rutgers University professor and author, Brittney Cooper. In her recent memoir, “Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower”, Cooper writes:
“What you build is infinitely more important than what you tear down.”
I couldn’t agree more. Cooper’s words resonate with my own instinct as an entrepreneur turned investor: Sustained, constructive efforts — not reactive responses — can pave a path forward.
The true value of today’s progressive movements shaping the future of our world is in their ability to cauterize the wounds of anger with organized action in service of a greater cause.
In recognition of this, I want to introduce three tools I use to transform my own anger into productive energy. I use these tools to motivate action and align my values with my work as a female investor. I hope these words of advice can help you to “metamorphosize” your anger into strategically powerful energy too.
Transforming anger to constructive action
1. Find an authentic way to fight back that is safe for you and your career.
It is unfortunate that we have to discuss how we can express ourselves safely in the context of our gender, race, or sexual identity. However, as I highlighted in my last post, the data clearly demonstrates that it can actually be dangerous for our careers and our reputations to express ourselves fully.
My fight began by taking the proverbial pen to paper to launch this Medium page. As a result, I have been able to ignite conversation on this topic in an informed, data-driven, historically contextualized way that hopefully adds value and nuance.
To borrow Cooper’s words, I feel that I am building and not tearing down. The product of my own anger, as such, has become solution-oriented rather than simply bemoaning. I now feel connected to something much greater than my own personal frustration while still allowing myself to experience it and explore its causes.
2. Don’t propagate harmful stereotypes.
Curtailing our expression of anger can dampen our authenticity and breed unhealthy habits that can take the insidious and harmful form of reinforcing gender stereotypes. Emotional suppression is bad for your health and it’s bad for your professional and personal relationships. In the venture world, which is heavily relationship-driven, bottling up emotions can be a serious detriment to success.
Repressed anger, competitiveness or assertiveness can take the misdirected form of subversive and toxic expressions. When displayed by females who have succeeded in shattering the glass ceiling, these behaviors (at best) do nothing to make other women who enter the space feel welcome and (at worst) deters them from even trying.
3. Find the power in your rage.
With the tools of introspection, empathy, and precision we can harness our anger as a catalyst for progress.
Channel your rage to fight for yourself and to fight for others. Channel it when you push for a promotion or raise, so we can finally close that wage gap. Use it to push for diverse hiring practices or for those female CEOs only getting ~2% of venture funding. Use it to encourage a friend to take that risk with her startup. And use it to get more money into the hands of women so we can positively tilt the balance of power.
Finally, in this vital year for practicing our democratic right in America, we have the opportunity to channel that energy toward the ballot. We have the incredible privilege to impact change in our country by just participating in the political process, and I encourage everyone to do so.
