On the one hand, I felt that my anger was valid, and that it was my right, perhaps even my duty, to express it. Nothing says oppression like being forced to stay silent. Moreover, I would be doing nothing to enact change if I stayed silent; and I would be doing less, delivering a weaker blow to oppression, if I didn't unleash the full force of my anger upon it.
On other hand, not only do I profess and personally believe in writing and enacting change from a position of benevolence and compassion, I know that to do otherwise is actually counterproductive. Angry discourse only polarizes people more. It makes people hurt and angry, making them into enemies and not supporters. It's simply not an effective way to go about winning people to your side for a cause.
And yet. I was angry. And I had to express myself, or else explode. At least I got it out in writing, and not in physical violence, right? Was there anything so very wrong with that?
Feeling anger is quite natural, and expressing it or working through it are not only natural, but necessary. But pouring out anger in a violent outburst - even one made only on the internet, directed more at a society as a whole than at one particular person - can inflict the sort of damage anger is meant to prevent.
Anger is a protective mechanism, a surge of energy spurring you to defend yourself against a threat. But unless you need that adrenaline rush to physically fight off an attacker (or even then - we can get into whether violence is justified in self defense another time..) expressing anger, explosively, virulently, without moderation, is likely to do more harm than good. To your opponent, yes, but also to your cause, and yourself.
That's because anger makes the other side into the enemy, and makes us want to crush that enemy in order to assuage the churning of anger inside us. Actually, where anger comes from is hurt, and makes us want to hurt the person (or persons, or thing, or whatever) that hurt us, in turn. My anger stemmed from my discomfort at how the media was portraying trans men, and the threat to my self image from cis people saying trans* people should fit certain images of masculinity or femininity in order to be acknowledged. Those were thorns under my skin, and I lashed out to assuage that pain.
It's important to note that my discomfort and pain at the sexist and cissexist world were not invalid, and were worthy both of being addressed and of calling for work for a solution. But there are less destructive/ more constructive ways to deal with pain than lashing out in anger. Breathing exercises. Walking meditation. And, you know, talking it out with the person concerned, if the conflict was with a specific person - which I did do later, although I don't know how effectively, since I'm pretty terrible at in-person interaction.
The thing is, pouring out my anger through the keyboard may have spent that outburst - but it likely did nothing to address the underlying pain and the underlying problem with society.
The only way to let go of my own pain is through practice. Suffering comes from attachment - and that can be over-attachment to an idea, at the expense of what is really good for me and the people around me. Identity is not something that can be affixed with a permanent label, so how much does it really matter what people call me, or how "masculinity" or "femininity" are defined? It does matter, of course. It matters when words and images are used as weapons to hurt, as fences to confine and oppress. But they only work if I let them. I can flow like water past your weapons and under your fences, and then calmly take them apart with compassionate hands. ...At least, if I practiced more, I could.
And the only way to solve the problem with society is to recognize that oppression causes ALL people to suffer, and while the suffering of the oppressed may be the most obvious, the suffering of the oppressors is the underlying cause of the whole thing. Dr. John Makransky, professor of Buddhism at Boston College and lama in the lineage of Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche, spoke about this in an interview about how anger relates to social justice:
When people undergo great suffering under oppressive social systems, we may feel strongly connected to those suffering most intensely—for example, those who lack access to resources in countries where a tiny percentage of people control virtually everything. For most people, it seems normal to hate those in charge of such a system. But as we’ve been saying, we must acknowledge that those who maintain such systems do so from their own inner patterns of fear, from their own attempts to establish safe ground for themselves.What else is transphobia but fear of transgenderism - fear of people who are different, fear at the possibility that you yourself may be different. And we know what Yoda says about fear. The only way to solve the problems with how society treats trans* people is to treat their fear. Anger will not do that; it will only entrench people deeper in their fear, and drive them to anger, hate, and violence out of feeling threatened.
Rather than acting out anger, we can use our concern about social issues or our own suffering to engage in what Dr. Makransky calls "confrontational compassion":
Authentic compassion may forcefully challenge the system. Sometimes such compassion can take a powerful confrontational form, as occurred with Gandhi, Martin Luther King, the Dalai Lama, and Aung San Suu Kyi. But this differs from anger, because instead of aiming to protect oneself or one’s own position against others, it aims to protect all others, by challenging all in different ways. It can challenge those who cling to a bad system to give others greater freedom. It can challenge those who have been abused to rediscover their great worth and power for good. Unlike self-righteous anger, which hates the “bad ones” on behalf of the “good ones,” confrontational compassion protects all by challenging all differently—those suffering injustices and those inflicting them. It upholds all in their fuller humanity and potential for greater freedom from fear, hatred, and suffering.So what of my angry post then? Well, I actually feel like I ended on a note of confrontational compassion, as I challenged cis people to recognize the suffering of trans* people and to extend them the small kindness of affirming their identities. It took me a while to get there, though. It took some strong words about my own suffering and some pretty venomous sarcasm about how people who don't fit gender norms are treated. I can't quite find it in myself to take back what I said, although I know it only adds to the suffering of the world - it hardens my own heart, and antagonizes the people I most need to reach.
And a part of me still thinks, if I don't express myself, explicitly and vociferously, then how will cis people ever know how I feel? How will they be able to have compassion for trans* people if they don't know how we suffer? And if I have to hold back my anger, doesn't that make me complicit in my own oppression? With the sort of things that happen to trans* people, don't I have a right to be angry? Shouldn't everyone be angry, when confronted with the alarming numbers of attacks and murders and suicides that happen to the trans* population?
But everyone being angry would still solve nothing. So I guess more practice is just what the doctor ordered, for all of us.
There are lots of resources out there on dealing with anger, but here are what some of my favorite Buddhist teachers have to say on it:
Thich Nhat Hanh on Loosening the Knots of Anger
Thubten Chodron - How Can We Deal With Anger?
Also, I found a cool site devoted to World Empathy.
And in case you don't know, what Yoda said is, "Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to sufffferringgg." :)
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