Emma's got a great post up contrasting Amy Winehouse and Anders Breivik:
One person couldn't cope with fame. The other couldn't cope with ignominy. One person's life was out of control. The other was extremely disciplined. One was full of self-doubt. The other was certain he was right. One revealed her problems to the world ("I told you I was trouble!"). The other kept it all inside. One took it out on herself. The other took it out on everyone else.
Is it too far to suggest that these two (obviously extreme cases) represent the apogee of female and male anger?
And if not, what kind of pathologies develop when an angry man (i.e. a man) marries an angry woman (i.e. a woman)?
So basically your saying female anger consists of feeling out of control, self doubting, open about their problems (to an extent) and taking it out on themselves, while male anger consists of discipline, convinced they are right, closed and taking it out on everyone else.
I think generally that's true (although there's an exception to every rule). Does that mean that one form of anger is ultimately worse than the other (taking it out on yourself vs taking it out on anyone).
If you hold it in and take it out on yourself for long enough you'll either snap and take it out on those around you or do something so drastic to yourself that yu pass the point of no return.
Anger is the same regardless of gender though. It is all-consuming, life destroying and when too much of it has built up there's no safe way to let it out.
Hi Sarah, yes there's exceptions to this everywhere and there's huge overlap and also dynamics at play when internal feeds into external and vice versa.
Certainly the external stuff hurts more people than internal, but I think it's still worth identifying *both* as anger and, as you say, realizing how life-destroying it is.
Society always view external as horrifying and appauling, wheras the internal is seen as a loss and sad. I think both get misunderstood and under-rated. There's a lack of understanding about the effects - hurt someone else and your an animal, hurt yourself and its sad and a waste.
Anger gets mis-termed as many things so that it does not get properly acknowledged and addressed.