“Keep your voice down that’s not ladylike”, “don’t yell that’s not ladylike”, “get ahold of yourself, that’s not ladylike”. LadyLike. What does that mean? According to the internet the term ladylike refers to a woman or a girl that behaves in a polite, dignified, and graceful way. Bull.Shit. Ask someone in America, and they will likely say that term is outdated and that a woman should be able to express herself and carry herself however she wants as well as express any kind of emotion. In many places in Colombia, people will still say that a woman must carry herself in a graceful manner and be careful as to not cause a scene. That’s something I heard a lot from my Colombian, Catholic grandmother but luckily I was raised here, in America, under no Catholic influence. I decided to interview 9 of my family members that were raised in Colombia including my mother, her siblings, and her cousins. Five of these were women and four of them were men. It was very interesting to hear that all the women I interviewed had a lot of repressed anger. I learned that growing up, any kind of emotion they had, especially anger, had to be repressed because it wasn’t ladylike. Any time one of them was upset about literally anything, they had to keep it to themselves, this meant no yelling, no raising your voice, no attitude. Not only was this the case at home but this was also the case at school. Going to Catholic school in South America meant conformity. I saw that this led to a really scary and dangerous cycle. When one of them had a problem, they were immediately shut down meaning they had to repress that feeling. As time went on and they continued to repress, sooner or later this resulted in a breakdown or some kind of emotional explosion which of course was considered very unladylike and resulted in punishment. This cycle continued into their adult lives and while none of these women are still forced to repress their emotions, they told me that they still struggle with expressing them, especially anger. In contrast, none of my male relatives had this problem. Not to say that they weren’t affected by Catholicism (they weren’t allowed to show other emotions like sadness) but they never had that problem with rage. My question is why.. Why is it so taboo for women to express anger? Why is it considered unladylike for us to yell and to express unhappiness? I believe that as a society we already have enough controversy surrounding mental health and the expression of emotions so I think that adding this extra pressure on women is even more harmful.
In The Case For Rage, Cherry says the following about anger, in relation to racism which I thought was very interesting and closely related to the sexist view on anger in Catholicism. “She notes that our fear (or at least our high level of fear) is misdirected. She believes that people have more reason to be afraid of the cause of the anger (racism) than the anger itself.”(Cherry, 168). While I’m not talking about racism in this blog, I am talking about systemic sexism in South America. I think what Cherry is saying equally applies to both. Catholicism wants women to repress their anger and act ladylike because by allowing them to express their anger, they are accepting the flaws in Catholicism and the internal sexism that they are supporting. Cherry also says the following on page 169; “Here is a recap of the role of anger in the anti-racist struggle: it communicates the value of lives, particularly the racially marginalized and oppressed, it alarms us to racism and injustice in it’s explicit and subtle forms, it advertises racial justice’s worth, it makes us believe we can change things, it makes us believe that we can create a less racist and more just world possible…” Again, Cherry talks about anger in terms of racism, but I think that this is just as applicable to sexism. The injustices my mom and her female relatives faced not only in school but in their own households were silenced by saying that any expression of anger was considered unladylike.
I’m grateful that they are now able to express their anger and express the ways that Catholicism fucked them over while helping their male relatives and am happy that we now live in a society where we are slowly gravitating towards not only accepting anger but embracing it.
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