Reclaiming Women’s Anger with Gemma Hartley

Giovanna Rossi: I'm speaking with Gemma Hartley, welcome to the show!

Gemma Hartley (she/her): Thank you so much for having me back.

Giovanna Rossi: Oh, it's good to have you back. And as we heard in the introduction, it's been a while, but I love it when a guest, and I don't have returning guests very often, but when someone I really like and connected with has some new project or new book in your case. And I love that you reached out and that we could have this chat, so welcome.

Giovanna Rossi: And Gemma, as I usually do, I want to start with asking you, who are you in the world today?

Gemma Hartley (she/her): Today, I mean, today, today, or just in general?

Giovanna Rossi: Yeah.

Gemma Hartley (she/her): Because today, I feel like I have worn many different hats. You know, I am obviously doing a lot of work around my new book, No One Loves an Angry Woman, so I'm very much in author mode and writing mode, working on projects in the background, because I can't stop the momentum of creativity, even when it's like, is this really the time for it? No, but I'm going to do it anyway. And then, you know, also now a mother to two middle schoolers and one high schooler who has just gotten a driver's permit this week, so in a whole new phase of life now. And, I work as a writing coach, and so I've been seeing clients today and helping other people get their stories out into the world. It's a full life right now.

Giovanna Rossi: Oh, wow. Okay. I love that. Yeah, I can totally relate to the high school driving situation, because my son is a senior, he's been driving a couple years, but my daughter's about to start driver's ed, and I'm like, trying not to be terrified, but I'm terrified.

Gemma Hartley (she/her): Yeah.

Giovanna Rossi: But anyway, Gemma, it's just a pleasure to have you on the show, wearing all of your hats, and I particularly want to just kind of really dive into, when we talked last time, we were talking about your very well-known now book called Fed Up. And I'm just curious, sort of, what was the journey from that to this new book, which is so different, and yet very, it just makes a whole lot of sense that you would write this now, or next in your life. And also, just to pause and say thank you for your labor of actually writing that story down, and all of what you did with the book. And so, just, yeah, kind of take us through how this came about right now.

Gemma Hartley (she/her): Yeah, so it's definitely been a long time coming. And I say that remembering, you know, sitting down with my agent around the time that I published and him kind of pointing to this section within the book about like evangelical culture that I was raised in and saying, I think this is the next book. And I was like, no, no, no, it's not the next book.

Gemma Hartley (she/her): And here we are, many years later. It was ultimately what the next project was going to be for me, was kind of connecting the way that my specific upbringing allowed me to see really clearly, the cultural scripts we’re given. Because we say the quiet part out loud in evangelicalism; what we expect from women, the roles that we expect them to be in, how we want them to stay small and silent and submissive.

Gemma Hartley (she/her): And I think as a feminist writer, it's given me a lot of insight into, like, kind of brushing past the usual excuses that we use to justify why things are the way they are.

Gemma Hartley (she/her): And so, I feel like there's this very, very clear through line from that up, where we're talking about emotional labor and the mental load and why we expect women to do that work into all of these other expectations that kind of prime us to become you know, like a human giver rather than a human being. Someone who is there to exist for the comfort of other people to produce spaces for them that work well.

Gemma Hartley (she/her): And that is, you know, how I see that journey coming together. But it's also been a very long time. It's been, I think, almost 8 years since Fed Up came out, and I think I wrote the first title essay for No One Loves an Angry Woman back in 2019, shortly after, but didn't show it to my agent, because I was like, but this isn't the next book, we're not gonna do this.

Giovanna Rossi: Oh, yeah.

Gemma Hartley (she/her): But it definitely, like, it took some time and grappling with that story to feel comfortable enough to have it out in the world.

Giovanna Rossi: Hmm. And so, let's just talk about that for a minute, because you mentioned that early on in your answer just now, and then you mentioned it again. Which is that, it wasn't gonna be the story, it wasn't gonna be the next book. And I think a lot of women sense that, like, there's something important, and needing to be said, but it's like, oh, no, no, I can't write that.

Gemma Hartley (she/her): Yeah.

Giovanna Rossi: So, tell listeners a little bit about how you handled that and then ended up writing about it.

Gemma Hartley (she/her): Yeah, so I ended up writing the title essay, No One Loves an Angry Woman, and it immediately felt very dangerous when I wrote it, because it was the first time I really allowed anger to be present on the page in ways that we don't normally see women write about anger. I write about, like, violent fantasies of revenge. I write about, like, really dark internal thoughts, and so the anger in there felt almost repulsive in the way that I was raised to be repelled by women who are angry and forthright.

Gemma Hartley (she/her): And so, I just kind of let that simmer. I showed a couple people, you know, over the years, and every time I showed it to someone, they were like, this is what you should be writing. Why aren't you writing this? And I was like, oh, you know, well, my family, what would they say? And how, you know, what would it be like to actually have this story in the world?

Gemma Hartley (she/her): And, there was something in me that kept kind of like letting it out a little bit more, kind of testing the waters to see like, will people still love me? Will they still want to have me in their life when they know that this is what I'm really like inside?

Gemma Hartley (she/her): And everyone that I brought it to was like, no, I have this inside of me too, you're putting words to something. And so, at that point, I started to accept that this was probably a thing that needed to be in the world, that I needed to be able to say these things out loud. So that other people would be able to acknowledge and honor and move through their anchor as well.

Giovanna Rossi: Yeah, but it's so scary, isn't it, to take steps.

Gemma Hartley (she/her): Terrifying.

Giovanna Rossi: Take something like that, because, I mean you know, you're a feminist writer, you have an important responsibility to articulate things for other people to understand, and at the same time, you've got this very personal experience that you're also sharing, and I think for a lot of people, it's hard to bring in that personal. People want to stay real high-level, like, theoretical, right? And so, what would you say to women listening who are like, I kind of have something like that, like, when do I know, you know, if it's something that needs more attention, or writing it out, and yeah.

Gemma Hartley (she/her): I would say, if you know there's something there right now, like, if something is whispering to you, eventually it's going to start yelling. And so, you get to decide where along the road you're going to listen, but it's going to keep coming for you. Like, knowing that initial whisper is when you know there's something that’s going to happen.

Giovanna Rossi: Yeah, and I'm sure that's what you coach people on, right? With your writing, coaching?

Gemma Hartley (she/her): Yeah, I'm a really big proponent of, like, usually, I use this trick with myself, and I will tell you right now that I also make other writers do it, is just put it on the page. You don't have to publish it. No one needs to see it. You don't even need to show it to me.

Gemma Hartley (she/her): But write the thing that feels dangerous, and see if the story can stand without it. And the answer is usually no. It's usually the thing that we don't want to write is the thing that is going to really, like, become the crux of the story that you need to tell.

Giovanna Rossi: Hmm.

Gemma Hartley (she/her): And I found that true over and over again. The thing that I didn't want to say was actually really, really crucial. And the story kind of falls apart or feels really weak without it.

Giovanna Rossi: Hmm.

Giovanna Rossi: It's a certain type of bravery, though, isn't it?

Gemma Hartley (she/her): Yeah, and you know, I don't know that I would call it bravery. I think of it as vulnerability. I think of bravery as this like almost putting up this strong front. And I think you actually have to take that down in order to say the scary thing. I think you need to let yourself be seen to really show yourself.

Giovanna Rossi: Yeah. And I would just say, I think it's brave to be vulnerable.

Gemma Hartley (she/her): Yeah.

Giovanna Rossi: I think that’s how they coexist.

Gemma Hartley (she/her): Yeah, yeah. And it feels very scary.

Giovanna Rossi: Yeah. So, Gemma, let's talk about anger. So, the title of the book, and I have it here, for listeners. No One Loves an Angry Woman: An Exvangelical Coming-of-rage Story. So, just kind of to tell listeners a little bit about how you deal with the topic of anger, the emotion of anger, and like when you notice early on in your life, I guess, like, where this anger was coming from. And the reason I also really like your book is because it's relatable for people who may not have had your specific religious upbringing, or personal circumstances or things that happen to you. But they can relate to that anger.

Gemma Hartley (she/her): Yeah, so I think my anger definitely comes from being socialized as a woman in the world, rather than from religion. And you know, from a very young age as well, being told to tamp down that anger. I remember even as a child, like, you know, being told no one will want to play with you if you act like that. You know, really, that social conditioning starts so young. Like, if you show anger, anger is ugly. That's a really ugly face you're making. All of these messages that come together to tell us, like, no one is going to love an angry woman.

Gemma Hartley (she/her): And when I started writing this book, I kind of locked onto this moment with my mother where I was in a fight with her and I was really visibly angry. And she's like, just wait until your boyfriend sees this side of you. You think he's going to want to be with you when he realizes that you're angry.

Gemma Hartley (she/her): Was the implication, like, when he sees what you're really like. And that you know, really made me tamp down my anger in many ways, so that it wouldn't be seen. And I think, you know, a lot of the through line from my first book to the second is the emotional labor that we do is performance.

Gemma Hartley (she/her): It's hiding the things that people don't want to see, so that everyone remains comfortable. And no one is comfortable with angry women. They are disruptive, they are clear on what they want. I find anger to be a real source of, like clarity, and it seeks justice, usually, in my experience. Like, anger is showing you something is wrong, and something needs to change.

Gemma Hartley (she/her): And if we like the systems that we're in, if they're making other people comfortable, we don't want anger because it's going to disrupt everything. It's going to start to make you need to create change in your life and so I think, you know, so many of us have the experience, I would almost say all of us have had the experience at one point or another of having to stuff down our anger rather than honor it, rather than listen to it, rather than have it change something in our lives.

Gemma Hartley (she/her): And it feels very dangerous when you allow anger for the first time. Because generally it's like taking the cap off. And there's a lot of anger underneath that needs to get aired out from all of the times that you did not honor it before.

Gemma Hartley (she/her): And so much of that happened during the writing of this book, where it was like, I wrote that first essay, and I was like, this is the thing that I'm angry about. And it's like, actually, you're angry about a lot of things. Let's start to dig into that. Where are all the things that have left you angry, and with nowhere to express that anger. And can we do it now? Can we do it on the page?

Gemma Hartley (she/her): A big part of writing this book was the process of healing my relationship with anger by allowing it to breathe and be seen. And be honored in a way that I am now allowing that anger to point me towards the life that I want to live, towards the changes that need to be made.

Giovanna Rossi: And is that an ongoing practice for you, or is it like, oh, I dealt with that, and now I have the life I want?

Gemma Hartley (she/her): I think it's always ongoing. And I think the difference now is that when anger emerges, I am going to honor it immediately.

Giovanna Rossi: Okay, and what does that mean, Gemma? What does it mean to honor it? Does it mean literally naming it, or does it mean writing it down, or does it mean yelling and screaming? Like, what does it what does that mean for you?

Gemma Hartley (she/her): Yeah. For me, it means feeling my anger, which I'm really uncomfortable with. I'm much more comfortable writing about it, intellectualizing it. That's great for me. But I know that I need to feel anger in my body, which is very uncomfortable. And, you know, it feels hot. I get like this feeling of almost fire within me when I am angry. And I need to

Gemma Hartley (she/her): So, part of the honoring is not moving directly into action for me. So allowing the period of feeling the anger all the way through to the end. Allowing, like, the physical reaction of it, the emotional reaction of it. Sometimes I have to cry because I'm so angry, and the world is giving me plenty of opportunities to move through anger recently, and if I give it the time and space, which is kind of how I think of as honoring the emotion, rather than being like, okay, let's rush through this so we can get to the action, so we can make something productive out of anger.

Gemma Hartley (she/her): Anger is worthy in its own right. And then, I think if you give it that space and honor it, that it will lead you towards action, it will lead you towards change and more alignment. And so that's kind of where I see honoring anger in its own regard as a catalyst for change.

Giovanna Rossi: Yeah, and when you are expressing anger, how… because that can be scary for other people, too, I imagine? Depending on how it's expressed.

Giovanna Rossi: How do you maintain relationships while honoring your anger?

Gemma Hartley (she/her): So, I have an interesting way of relating to anger, where I actually think that anger coming out sideways in ways that we normally think of anger, we think of male anger and violence and outbursts as, like, the physical manifestation of anger.

Gemma Hartley (she/her): I don't think that necessarily needs to be true. I think that is because you are tamping down something else.

Giovanna Rossi: Yes.

Gemma Hartley (she/her): And so, I see those outbursts as not anger themselves, but anger suppressed or other emotions suppressed in order to create this, you know, really big and scary for others reaction. I think that, you know, if I am allowing myself to feel my anger, that doesn't necessarily mean that I'm gonna blow up and yell at my kids. Actually, I think it makes me much less likely to inflict the reaction of anger onto others.

Gemma Hartley (she/her): And so I don't find myself angry in an outburst sort of way anymore. It was hard at first when I was first allowing anger, it felt like that happened much more frequently. But not as frequently as it did before I would acknowledge it. If I wouldn't acknowledge my anger, I was much more likely to have outbursts, I was much more likely to yell, I was much more likely to be unpleasant to be around.

Gemma Hartley (she/her): Because I was suppressing so much and I think, you know, there's no way to suppress anger without suppressing other emotions if you don't let yourself feel the full range of your humanity, everything's dampened and suppressed in other ways, too. It's not like you get to get rid of anger, and then you get to feel everything else. You don't get to feel the heights of joy while you're suppressing another side of yourself. You don't need to, you know, you don't get to feel, like, the depths of grief if you're not going to, you know, feel the highs of love.

Gemma Hartley (she/her): I think everything needs to be allowed, or you know, reactions will come out in these ways that hurt others.

Giovanna Rossi: Yeah. And so it could be that expressing anger becomes another emotional labor assignment for women if we are expected to find the perfect words and tone so that everyone else can tolerate what we're saying. Do you address any of that in your book, or how would you think about that.

Gemma Hartley (she/her): Yeah, no, I do. Not in this book, perhaps, but in a lot of my writing that I've done since Fed Up, I talk about how I don't think there is actually, like, a perfect way. Like, if you are self-censoring during this, you're not going, like, this idea that there is a perfect way of approaching another person to say, this isn't working for me.

Gemma Hartley (she/her): I think the honesty that anger offers needs to be accepted as, like, clear and straightforward. So, when I think of, like the first book and talking about emotional labor of like tamping down my reactions, I think anger coming out, you know, in these expressive outburst ways are understandable. And if that is how anger shows up in a conversation about the mental load, we should be able to honor that, and not let the message of it get lost, but I also think that when we aren't in a place of suppressing anger, it's far less likely that you're going to have that outburst reaction. I'm not sure if this is making perfect sense.

Giovanna Rossi: Yeah, no, it totally does. I mean, I'm curious too about, so I work with a lot of women in leadership, and a lot of us are navigating systems and cultures that, well, I guess all of us are navigating systems and cultures that weren't built by or for us. And so, what would you say about using our anger, and our expression of our emotion when it might carry real consequences for our work and livelihood. I mean, I guess, yeah, if you can just talk a bit about that.

Gemma Hartley (she/her): Yeah, and I think that's very valid because when we think about women's anger, even if it's not coming in an outburst, it's gonna come out as clarity and it's going to come out as, you know, this very forward, sometimes a little bit curt message.

Gemma Hartley (she/her): And we don't react well to women who know what they want, who say what they want. And anger kind of leaves you in this place where it's like, well, I have to do something with this. I have to say the thing that I want out loud now.

Gemma Hartley (she/her): And I think that we do still have this kind of double bind of, we can get to this point of clarity and authenticity within ourselves, and then we're going to come up against a system that says, we don't like it when you do that.

Gemma Hartley (she/her): Can you ask another way? Can you make yourself a little smaller again? You need to ask without the anger. You need to ask without the demand. And I am really at this point in my life where I'm like, no, I want to push back against that.

Gemma Hartley (she/her): I want to push it to the point where it does make other people uncomfortable. And, you know, there are situations where I know that that's not necessarily tolerable, and that you can't necessarily, like, always bring your anger in its most pure form into, you know, certain professional settings, systems that are not built around women's intuition, knowledge, anger.

Gemma Hartley (she/her): But I want us to start pushing back against it because I don't think anything changes if we continue to make ourselves smaller.

Giovanna Rossi: Yeah. Absolutely. And I think there's a real responsibility for women who have the security, maybe the security in their job or their career or in their lives. Maybe they're a little older to create some of those spaces for people who maybe are less likely to push the boundaries or challenge the status quo in that way.

Gemma Hartley (she/her): Yeah, and I also would say it's a muscle. You have to practice using it, and I would say use it in more low-stake places. You know, you're not going to take your anger straight to the C-suite. You're going to practice pushing back against expectations of yourself in society in very small ways.

Gemma Hartley (she/her): You know, it can be, I'm not going to move out of the way as a man is walking, you know, and expecting me to move on the sidewalk. Or I'm going to not laugh at a joke that I don't think is funny. Which is, you know, that took me a long time. Like, now I'm so used to it. It doesn't faze me at all when I don't laugh at a man's joke that I don't find funny.

Gemma Hartley (she/her): But I noticed that is such a, you know, knee-jerk reaction for us. Well, make them comfortable. They put themselves out there, and yeah, what they said wasn't okay, but, you know, just be polite, just laugh politely, and you don't have to encourage it, but, like, we have so many inner settings where we can start to shift them in smaller ways before we do the bigger, riskier feeling kind of, expression of that anger.

Giovanna Rossi: Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so Gemma, can you talk about the difference between men and women's expression of anger, or how they're, reacted to differently, perhaps. Did you do an analysis? I'm sure you probably did. Can you talk about the difference there?

Gemma Hartley (she/her): Yeah, well, I think, you know, the expression of men's anger is, I think, what gives anger a bad rap. We think of anger as a very, like, primarily masculine emotion, because it's the one that we allow men to show. And the way that men show it is not productive anger for the most part. It is destructive, it is chaotic, it is dangerous for women in very real ways and, you know, I often talk about, like, anger can be, like, the voice of desire and the voice of justice, and I think that that is almost true in a really warped way for men, because we have, you know, allow men to grow in the system that tells them that they are entitled to these things that they are not necessarily going to get in their life. And so, their anger comes from this sense of injustice, of the way that the world is not giving them what they were promised.

Gemma Hartley (she/her): And I think it's a very similar anger with women of like the world is not, you know, like I am fulfilling all the roles I was supposed to. I'm doing all the things that I was supposed to. And it's not keeping me safe and it's not making me fulfilled. And that, you know, often midlife coming of rage that happens is due to like waking up to how little the system is working for us, but because we haven't been conditioned to express anger in any way, we kind of do a lot of work to figure out how to make anger work for us. Whereas men have been allowed to have their outbursts as long as they want.

Gemma Hartley (she/her): And again, I do think it's this product of being allowed anger and not being allowed other emotions that are encouraging, kind of, these violent outbursts, the expression of anger that we associate with men. I think if men were to turn their anger towards the actual injustices that they are facing, we would all be on the same team for the most part, and we would be using our anger to change the systems that don't serve men or women. They might put men in certain positions of power, but it's not giving them freedom, it's not giving them liberation.

Giovanna Rossi: Yeah, and I think until men are having these conversations, we're not going to get very far in that area. But it's certainly important for women to be having these conversations, that's for sure.

Giovanna Rossi: But Gemma, I want to ask you about something that we talk a lot about on this show, which is creating ease and joy and impact in our lives. And I think some people look, you know, even the title of my show, The Well Woman Show, oh my gosh, well, I'm not a well woman, I can't be a part of that, or I don't know, you know, I'm not completely, like, at ease all the time. And like, wellness, it's like, no, that's not really what we're talking about. We're talking about, you know, the systems that keep us unwell, and a lot more than that.

Giovanna Rossi: But anyway, just to say, we do talk about creating ease and joy in our lives and creating an impact and changing the systems. And I think, as you kind of alluded to earlier, but if you could talk a bit more about it, how we can't necessarily just be in this state of, like, ease and joy if we don't also acknowledge and name and process the other emotions like anger.

Gemma Hartley (she/her): Yeah, and I think there is actually, like, a very deep sense of wellness that comes with being able to be your authentic self. And your authentic self includes anger. It includes all of the different emotions, and you can't pick and choose. So, you don't get to be love and light and, you know, ease all the time.

Gemma Hartley (she/her): But that gets to be a more prominent part of your life if you're allowing anger, if you're, you know, breaking free of these societal molds that say women need to be smaller, you need to perform, you need to do all of these things to create ease for others. When you are more concerned with creating ease for yourself, you're not going to mind your anger. You're not going to mind having these different emotions.

Gemma Hartley (she/her): Because you're not trying to conform yourself into this box that we want to put women in, you know, in society. We want women to be smaller. We want women to kind of fulfill this role that is other-centered at all times. And really what this book is about isn't just anger, but what it looks like to reject the idea that you must always be giving to others, and you get to create ease for yourself by processing your anger, by processing your stories. There is really deep peace, I think, towards the end of this book that comes from healing the anger enough to sit with it. And appreciate it just as much as I appreciate the feelings of joy and love and contentment.

Giovanna Rossi: Gemma, we're almost at the end of our time, but I want to ask you, what do you hope to achieve through this book, both personally and for women, in general?

Gemma Hartley (she/her): Yeah, I think personally, this book has given me everything that I needed it to. It has been the journey of writing it has been healing in ways that I don't think I anticipated when I started. And this is a book I would have written regardless of whether or not I ever put it out in the world, and it would have been just as valuable to me.

Gemma Hartley (she/her): But now that it is in the world, what I really hope is that it holds up a mirror to women who feel like their anger is ugly and untenable, and that they can't express it, or they will lose their sense of belonging in the world. And what I have found by putting this out in the world is that so many women are angry and afraid of that anger. I hope that this makes women less afraid to feel that really righteous rage against the systems that are holding them back.

Giovanna Rossi: Love that. Gemma Hartley, it's such a pleasure to have you on the show today.

Gemma Hartley (she/her): Yeah, thank you so much for having me.