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It was Friday, June 24, 2022, and as the news of the Dobbs decision spread, women nationwide took to the streets and social media, and they were pissed. While our anger swelled outside of the Supreme Court over the following days, Florida Representative Matt Gaetz went on a chauvinist tirade on Twitter, calling women protestors “over-educated, under-loved millennials who sadly return from protests to a lonely microwave dinner with their cats, and no Bumble matches.”

I just had to laugh at this because I’ll take my cat and Trader Joe’s pad thai over a man like Matt Gaetz any day. And ironically, I had a date planned on June 24 that I rescheduled so that I could hang out with my “over-educated”, cat-loving girlfriends whom I love very much.

In our society, too many straight, white men are absolutely terrified of angry women. So instead of listening to them, they’ll do anything they can to shut them up and keep their white, heteronormative paradise undisturbed. But here’s the truth: female rage is not ugly, and we must reject the narrative that it is inherently destructive. Women’s anger is beautiful, powerful, transformative – and we need to start talking about it that way.

But first, a little background:

The demonization of women’s anger isn’t a novel phenomenon. Remember when Rep. Ted Yoho called Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez a “f****** bitch” outside of the Capitol? And I’m sure you remember that one president who campaigned on misogyny and called any woman who challenged him “crazy”, “neurotic”, or “nasty.”

If you’re a woman reading this, I’m sure you’ve been insulted at least once in your life for being angry. The scorn and degradation expressed in these comments seeps into every corner of women’s lives. Women are devalued at every turn – when it comes to equal pay and recognition for our work, our scholarship and creativity, our health, and the ability to be safe in public and private spaces.

Black women and other women of color are forced to navigate the intersections of systemic racism and sexism. Male aggression always hits them the hardest. I’ve felt the sting of condescension for expressing my anger, but as a white woman, my experience is different from the painful, distinct backlash and disdain women of color encounter when expressing theirs.

Right-wing pundits have frequently called Congressional Black Caucus member Rep. Maxine Waters a woman with a “history of encouraging confrontations.” Comments like these latch on to the “angry Black woman” stereotype and add an extra layer of difficulty when Black women navigate intentionally expressing anger. Outspoken Latinas are frequently stereotyped as feisty and hotheaded, eroticized to invalidate their rage and reduce them to one-dimensional sex objects. In a post-2016 election reflection by Irina Gonzelez, Gonzalez remarks that the same men who urged her to calm down and “tried to warn [her] against being characterized as an ‘angry feminist’ were those who called [her] a ‘spicy Latina.’”

Other groups, such as Asian women, Indigenous women, and women with disabilities all face stereotypes associated with anger as well. Despite these challenges, including those intensified by intersecting identities and compounded discrimination, we are redefining what an angry woman looks like every day.

After losing her son to gun violence, Rep. Lucy McBath was so angry she decided to run for Congress in 2018. Dubbed one of the biggest Georgia upsets of the 2018 midterms, McBath went from a grieving mother and grassroots organizer to a member of Congress. Black women saw the biggest gains in public office ever in 2018, and TIME called female rage “the most powerful engine” of the year.

In the months following the overturning of Roe, abortion funds nationwide were flooded with “rage giving” (this has since tapered off, so here’s your reminder to donate to your local abortion fund!). Last year, women on both sides of the aisle raged at the polls and defeated ballot initiatives introduced by abortion opponents in Kansas, Kentucky, Montana, Michigan, and Ohio. And this year, 28 year-old Allie Phillips is running for Congress in Tennessee, motivated to challenge the state’s abortion laws after being denied an abortion herself.

It was this same fury that drove me to host fundraising parties in my backyard and start selling my homemade hot sauce, aptly called Female Rage, to raise money for abortion funds. As I’ve embraced my passion, I’ve learned to feel pride in my anger, and decided that I’m no longer tying it up in a pretty bow just to make it palatable for other people. Since May 2022, I’ve raised over $6,000 for abortion funds across the country, and the fire in my belly – literally and metaphorically – isn’t going away anytime soon.

Women in this country are seething with raw and resolute rage, but they’re using it as fuel to get s*** done. They’re running for office at record numbers, unabashedly speaking out, challenging the institutions that marginalize them, and driving economic growth. Female rage is worthy of celebration and praise — without it women’s history would be radically different from what it is today.

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