Yes, I want to write about women's rage

Rage is your primal energy. Turn it outward and change the thing that infuriates you

- Swarna Rajagopalan

Would you like to write about women's rage?" My first thought is an embarrassed, "Has she really noticed how angry I get?" Embarrassed for the very reason this article is being commissioned-good girls don't get angry.

"Behave yourself!" hissed through a parent's gritted teeth. "Don't be vehement." "Don't lose your temper." And when all that good behaviour causes an explosion, "Don't slam doors." I have been angry all my life and extraordinarily well-behaved about it-mostly, as visible to strangers' eyes.

So yes, thank you, I would like to write about women's rage.

Like foot-binding, once practised on little Chinese girls, emotion-binding is practised on little girls everywhere. As we grow up, everything we hear about anger makes it sound like the symptom of something broken or diseased. We start to menstruate and our anger is described as moodiness-a hormonal disorder rather than a natural response to an unfair world or even, our physical discomfort. If we express ourselves loudly or sharply, or even just clearly, we are hysterical-a word associated with our anatomy. As we grow up, we are advised not to indulge our anger because we must learn to "adjust" to what lies ahead in our lives as girls and women. Obediently (and we obey for various reasons), we tidy up our messy feelings and tuck away our rage.

Some angry women are heroes and others are not. Reading Silappatikaram, we adore Kannagi's anger because it avenged her husband. True to our ideals of femininity, she let go of the resentment and betrayal she must have surely felt when he went to live with another woman. Finally, she emerged a passionate, powerful and yes, angry, advocate when her husband was wrongly accused and killed. We celebrate the anger that brought him justice even though it destroyed a city (of course, sparing women, children, the elderly and sick, because it was righteous).