Rebecca Traister Is Happy to Be Mad
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The New Yorker
4.3 • 3.9K Ratings
🗓️ 8 October 2018
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
After the election of Donald Trump, the feminist journalist Rebecca Traister began channeling her anger into a book. The result, “Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger” combines an analysis of how women’s anger is discouraged and deflected in patriarchal society, with a historical look at times when that anger has had political impact. Landing a year into the #MeToo movement, it could not be more timely; an unprecedented number of women have spoken bluntly about their experiences with sexual harassment and abuse and demanded consequences. Yet Traister told David Remnick that she sympathizes with men “caught in the middle” of #MeToo, “who entered the world with one set of expectations . . . and are being told halfway through that [their behavior is] no longer acceptable.” But, Traister says, “There’s no other way to do it. We don’t get to just start fresh with a generation starting now.”
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| 0:50.1 | I'm Dorothy Wickendon. |
| 0:51.8 | On today's Politics and More podcast, David Remnick talks to Rebecca |
| 0:55.8 | Traster, the author of the new book, Good and Mad, The Revolutionary Power of Women's |
| 1:01.6 | Anger. Traster sees the Me Too movement as part of a long history of social and political |
| 1:06.8 | movements, powered by the fury of women. If you watch the video of two protesters with Senator Jeff Flake in an elevator during |
| 1:14.6 | the Kavanaugh hearings, if you saw them confront him with so much anger at the way women |
| 1:19.6 | have been treated for so long, the way they said to a U.S. Senator, don't look away from me, |
| 1:24.6 | look at me and tell me it doesn't matter. If you look at the way Flake |
| 1:28.9 | changed his position afterwards, it's all becoming clear that something absolutely remarkable is |
| 1:35.0 | taking place in America right now. This is very much the subject of Rebecca Traster's new book, |
| 1:41.8 | Good and Mad, the Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger. |
| 1:46.0 | The book combines a kind of history of women's uprisings with an analysis of the Me Too movement. |
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