Content warning: The following contains descriptions of torture, abuse, and sexual assault. Please proceed with caution and care. If you require support, there are resources available.
According to the Cambridge dictionary, anger is defined as, “a strong feeling that makes you want to hurt someone or be unpleasant because of something unfair or unkind that has happened.”
I would add that anger can be a fundamental impetus to create positive change that improves lives by expanding access to basic human rights and social justice.
Historically, women and girls were told that anger was a negative emotion that was best repressed rather than expressed. Their anger was often dismissed, disregarded, discouraged and sometimes punished. They were taught to channel their angry energy into more productive [feminine] tasks.
Today, I’m in conversation with Jeanne Sarson and Linda MacDonald about the role anger plays in the lives of women and girls.
Often, the anger of women and girls is pathologized – considered psychologically unhealthy and abnormal. Instead, women and girls should be encouraged to accept their anger and find the root cause which generally can be traced back to some kind of violation.
And, those violations can largely be traced back to patriarchy – an ideology that excludes women by refusing to recognize women as human beings.
Gender-based inequalities are blatantly obvious within patriarchically designed workplaces, health care, education and the legal system.
In fact, the Canadian government is a patriarchal democracy that does not always acknowledge the human rights of women and girls. The federal government has had several opportunities to include non-State torture (NST) in the criminal code. Instead, it makes the conscious decision to defer to the United Nations definition of torture designed for men in battle who are tortured by state actors like police, security personnel and members of the army.
That definition excludes women and girls and fails to acknowledge that non-State actors like doctors, lawyers, off-duty police officers and other respected members of the community can torture outside the confines of war.
Feeling angry yet?
Here's background information for readers unfamiliar with Sarson and MacDonald’s NST work.
Over 30 years ago, the former public health nurses from Truro, Nova Scotia, met Sara* who disclosed her experiences of being tortured and trafficked by family, family friends and strangers. The abuse began as a toddler and continued in adulthood.
Since then, women from around the world have shared accounts of emotional, mental, sexualized and physical torture that's occurred in private, public and domestic spaces. The torture was committed by non-State actors including parents, spouses, blood relations, guardians, neighbours, trusted adults, strangers, human traffickers, johns, pimps, and pornographers.
Their groundbreaking work includes coining the term NST as well as the language needed to describe and prosecute it.
In February 2016, Liberal MP Peter Fragiskatos (London, Ontario) introduced a private members bill that recognized NST. Working with MacDonald and Sarson, Fragiskatos hoped Bill C-242 would offer legal recourse for survivors by acknowledging torture occurs in the private domain and within the realm of pornography and prostitution.
Bill C-242 passed second reading and progressed to the Standing Committee on Human Rights but died on the floor on November 29, 2016 because the NST law was considered redundant.
Canada's refusal to acknowledge NST in the Criminal Code of Canada means survivors have to seek justice through the criminal court system charging their torturers with sexual assault, or aggravated assault, for every individual act. That is no small feat to accomplish when most of these women have been tortured hundreds, if not thousands, of times over decades and by numerous torturers.
Without a NST law there’s no data collection and that means there’s no way to create and implement comprehensive victimization-traumatization-informed care as well as prevention and treatment services.
Reception at the patriarchal United Nations has been equally angering.
So, to advance their goal, Sarson and MacDonald are working with Every Woman, a coalition of over 3,000 women’s rights activists from 147 countries. Together they are advancing a global treaty in the form of a new Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) that codifies ending violence against women and girls into binding law. Every Woman Treaty would give women and girls legal recourse when patriarchal governments fail them.
Sarson and MacDonald have also created an informative website, Persons Against Non-State Torture, and authored the book Women Unsilenced: Our Refusal to Let Torturer-Traffickers Win
During our conversation Sarson and MacDonald suggested the resources listed below for women, and men, to better understand that anger is not a negative emotion, but rather a very valid emotion.
4-minute video of Jeanne Sarson explaining the importance of having a relationship with yourself and coming to a place of healing.
Anger: The Road to You is a 56-minute podcast interview with Harriet Lerner, PhD, clinical psychologist and author of The Dance of Anger: A Woman's Guide to Changing the Patterns of Intimate Relationships.
*Sara is a pseudonym.
Music: Real Estate by UNIVERSFIELD is licensed under a Attribution 4.0 International License. freemusicarchive.org.
*Be sure to download the Substack app to get the most from your podcast experience.
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