She’s a Bitch
Pathologizing and denying normative female emotions
Written by Sydney Collins, Contributing Writer
A note from the writer: I would like to start this article by highlighting that much of the research and existing conversations surrounding gender identity-based phenomena center and prioritize the voices and experiences of cisgender, heteronormative individuals. However, as highlighted by numerous scholars, gender is a social construct and is not binary. Those who don’t conform nor identify with societal notions of gender face an amplified, unique set of inequities cisgender women do not face. Further, much of the literature centers on heteronormative relationships and ideas.
Perceptions of women being overly emotional have emerged since the beginning of history in many cultures and contexts. Adam and Eve, the creation story of the Abrahamic religions, highlights Eve’s feminine weakness (Hysteria: Pathologizing the Female Experience, 2021). Stories like these lay the cultural foundations for women’s emotional perception. As time moved on, women continued to receive scrutiny for their behavior and emotions, eventually seeping into the realm of health.
As early as ancient Egypt and ancient Greece, women’s health was depicted as unstable and troublesome (Bella, 2021). The 18th and 19th centuries further perpetuated and amplified this ideology. During the 18th century, “hysteria,” an alleged mental health condition, became a catch-all phrase for many symptoms and was a diagnosis commonly given to women (Cohut, 2021).
During the 19th century, the standardization of medicine into biomedicine, a field in which only men could practice, further drove the hysteria epidemic. The transition to biomedicine led to health judgments based on comparisons to the ‘ideal normal body.’ This so-called normal body was based entirely on men’s bodies, primarily white men’s bodies. Women’s experiences and bodies were compared to the norms of men, so naturally, many female experiences were considered abnormal and pathologized as a medical condition (Hysteria: Pathologizing the Female Experience, 2021). Pathologization occurs when a ‘normal’ behavior is labeled as problematic and requiring intervention or treatment (Bainbridge, 2022). Nearly any behavior a woman exhibited could be classified as hysteria. Hysteria became the medical explanation for “everything men found mysterious or unmanageable in women,” according to scholars (McVean, 2019).
Medical literature from the 19th century drew connections between female sexuality and hysteria, further reinforcing stereotypes of women’s excessive emotionality. These stereotypes include the idea that women are more emotional than men, and are bitchy and bossy, among other adjectives. Hysteria lost traction in the 20th century and the DSM, which is widely considered to be the gold standard for diagnosing mental disorders, dropped the condition in 1980 (Cohut, 2020). While the medical field has since progressed to depathologize women’s experiences, gender still shapes expectations about experiences and emotions (Hysteria: Pathologizing the Female Experience, 2021). Investigations still find data that women are often underrepresented in medical studies (Cohut, 2020).
To date, the public does not treat the experiences and emotions of women the same as those exhibited by men. Anger is a prime example of this notion, and we are often taught that femininity and anger are mutually exclusive. When white men get angry, they are seen as assertive leaders who are standing up for themselves. However, women are seen as unreasonable, emotional, attention-seeking, hysterical, crazy or even a bitch (S.M., 2022). They are seen as overly emotional, explained by their existence as women.
Anger is a biological response to handling crucial life tasks (Gu et al., 2019). Anger is something that everyone experiences. However, culture and societal expectations mediate its expression (Chemaly, 2019). Soraya Chemaly, an award-winning activist and author of the novel Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Emotions, states that “relationships, culture, social status, exposure to discrimination, poverty and access to power all factor into how we think about, experience and utilize anger” (Chemaly, 2019).
Race is a large factor in the perception of anger. The angry Black woman trope negatively stereotypes Black women as more hostile, overbearing, aggressive and bitter than their white female counterparts (Motro et al., 2022). This trope is rooted in a deep history of chattel slavery, colonialism and racism in the United States.
Similar to the way denying women’s anger operates, the angry Black women trope persists to undermine Black women, treating them as interchangeable and denying their valid emotions. Studies also show that mainstream American society, alongside medical practitioners, falsely believe Black women are naturally strong, self-sacrificing and don’t experience pain the same as their white counterparts (Nolan, 2021).
The pathologizing and denying of women’s normative emotions, such as anger and pain, has persisted across time and space. Classifying women as overly emotional has roots that stem far back in time and are interwoven with numerous other points at issue. With a phenomenon so pervasive, how do we, as women, push for change?
In the words of Soraya Chemaly, “Anger is an assertion of human rights and worth […] anger is the expression of hope” (Chemaly, 2019). For the women reading, get angry, upset and emotional if you want to. Not all identities have the privilege of being angry and expressing emotion, namely those at the intersections of marginalization and oppression. There are real-world costs for expressing anger that we must take into consideration. However, those who identify as women or non-binary or gender-nonconforming and feel it is safe to do so, get mad. Reclaim what society has taken from you across history and space.
After all, a society that does not respect women’s anger does not respect women.
Sources:
Bainbridge, C. (2020, September 17). Pathologizing Normal Gifted Behavior. Verywell Family.
Bella. (2021, July 9). The History of Hysteria and How it Impacts You. Planned Parenthood of South, East and North Florida.
Chemaly, S. (2019, August 28). Why Women Don't Get to be Angry. Medium.
Chemaly, S. L. (2019). Rage becomes her: The Power of Women's Anger. Atria Paperback, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Cohut, M. (2020, October 13). Female hysteria: The history of a controversial ‘condition.’ Medical News Today.
Dartmouth Course Exhibits. (2021). Hysteria: Pathologizing the Female Experience . Anthropology 7 (Winter 2021): The Values of Medicine.
Gu, S., Wang, F., Patel, N. P., Bourgeois, J. A., & Huang, J. H. (2019). A model for basic emotions using observations of behavior in drosophila. Frontiers in Psychology, 10.
McVean, A. (2019, July 31). The History of Hysteria. Office for Science and Society: Separating Sense from Nonsense.
Motro, D., Evans, J. B., Ellis, A. P. J., & Benson, L. (2022, January 31). The "Angry Black Woman" Stereotype at Work. Harvard Business Review.
Nolan, S. (2021, November 9). What Society Gets Wrong About the 'Angry Black Woman' Stereotype.
S.M., M. (2022, January 5). The stigma around female rage. Assembly: A Malala Fund publication.