Mood: Angry

It's always interesting (to me, natch) to figure out what makes me really angry in that personal and trivial way. I'm not talking about the righteous anger which burns beautifully on the permanent altar inside me, because that anger is just another form of good energy (and lots cheaper than heating oil, these days).

I'm talking about the red-hot kind of anger which makes me want to stick knitting needles in my eyes so that they get some rest from reading teh stupid. I should probably want to stick them in someone else's eyes, and perhaps restraining from saying so is the real reason why the anger sometimes flares up. You know, all that stuff about trying to be polite and calm and nice to everyone so that we get a good conversation going on all the issues. Sort of like trying to be Eliza, that computer therapist.

Anyway. Today's reason for that red-hot anger is a frequently repeating one, the one about how everybody can be an instant expert on feminism by, say, reading an article or two and then jawing it over with the guys at bar one Saturday night. Next step is to write a thoughtful piece on what is wrong with feminism. Because surely thinking and reading on these issues for, say, two decades, leaves lots of gaps which can be filled by an astute thinker over a beer or two. Yup.

A similar thing happens to me all the time on economics. Someone comes along and tells me that women earn less because they aren't out there working but at home taking care of their babies. Duh. If I only had thought about that simple explanation I wouldn't have had to write a three-part series on the reasons for the gender gap in wages at all.

More generally, my anger has something to do with the difficulty of being heard when one is polite. It's like whispering into rush-hour traffic. Pretty pointless, but the work is still the same. From now on I'm going to start writing extreme pieces with lots of fuck-yous.

Of course the real reason for my anger is that I'm still not the Empress of the Universe.