by Mollie Somerfield, Falmouth University MA Student
Catharsis is an Ancient Greek idea all to do with purging and cleansing. It’s the idea that the huge and powerful emotions we feel need to be processed and released, and if there’s one emotion that women are having to learn to process and release right now it is anger: enter Jennifer Cox. She found her start in life as a psychotherapist working with violent men in prisons, often supporting them as they worked through intense anger they felt about the world around them. However, it was when she started working in private therapeutic practices with women – normal women who had come to her wanting answers to their mental and physical health related questions, so often dismissed as nothing to worry about by their own doctors – that she realised quite the level of rage women are suppressing. The result of her findings is a new book, Women are Angry.
The host of the conversation, a local writer and life coach Gail Muller, identified immediately what I’d noticed when I first sat down – that you could count on one hand the number of men who’d come to listen to what Jennifer had to say. As Jennifer said herself, women “claimed the space” and spent the hour that followed sitting with our emotions, an action that is radical in itself in our society. She bemoaned the split between mind and body that has become so normalised in the 21st Century, which facilitated some brilliant reflections on how the different ways we push down our anger, frustration, upset, manifests physically as everything from migraines to chronic health conditions. And it is women who are disproportionately affected by autoimmune diseases, making up 80% of the autoimmune population according to research carried out by the National Institute of Health.
Questions from the audience opened up discussions about everything from the role of men in creating a world that is more equitable – because “patriarchy isn’t just men, it’s the whole endemic system we’re in” – and what Jennifer called the “Industry of therapy.” We didn’t find all the answers and we revelled in the not knowing, because as a community of (mostly) women that transcended race, age, and experience we got the chance to feel seen and recognised. It was the closest I have felt to pure and true catharsis in a long time.
If you care about creating a society built on equity, then Jennifer Cox’s Women Are Angry should absolutely be at the top of your list.
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