Men Should Be Angrier
On Minimization, Power, and the Illusion of Immunity
Last week I blustered to my husband, “I don’t known how men aren’t angrier. Don’t they realize everything that’s happening is putting their daughters and wives and sisters at risk? Don’t they know they should be doing more?”
My husband glanced up and said, “Like what?
No reader, I did not strangle him. I didn’t even tackle him despite this man claiming to be a feminist and, I should add, being married to ME—someone who quite literally wrote a book about what people can do to fight inequality.
One could argue—as my husband later did— that this was out of the blue. We hadn’t just been talking about Renee Nicole Good’s execution. We weren’t in the middle of a conversation about ICE’s racism, misogyny, or lack of training. We hadn’t just discussed the gutting of women’s bodily autonomy, the steady erosion of voting access that disproportionately affects women, or the rollback of protections against gender-based violence. I hadn’t mentioned the weakening of workplace protections or bans on curricula that address sexism, gender inequality, or women’s history.
But all of those things (and more) are the air I breathe; the air women breathe.
As women, we don’t have the luxury of tuning out and trusting it will all be fine. We know better. And that’s also how we know immigrants—the people most immediately targeted right now—won’t “just be okay” either.
I’m not saying men don’t care. Some don’t. Many do. But caring is not the same as carrying. And many men don’t carry this in their bodies the way women do. When men—especially white men, or others cushioned by enough privilege (for now) to look away—fail to acknowledge the cruelty and chaos unfolding in the news or even their own communities, it can feel like minimization. Like a subtle suggestion that we’re overreacting. Like gaslighting.
In my clinical work, I see how much this costs women. Many of the women I treat are hurting. They are watching a familiar cycle unfold in which those with the least power are made out to be the problem or blamed for the harm done to them. Even if they can’t articulate it politically, they know it somatically—they feel it in their bones. They know what it’s like to be scapegoated, demeaned, harmed while those doing the harm are protected—and lie with impunity to preserve the appearance of innocence. When men can’t see what they see plainly, or worse tell them not to get their knickers in a bunch, it’s infuriating and lonely.
People shouldn’t “get their knickers in a bunch” is exactly what Scott Jennings said on CNN about the failure to release the Epstein files. I absolutely love the clip below of Leigh McGowan reacting to this egregious minimization of child rape. Every woman recognizes the smug arrogance of a man who has just said something indefensible and then looks at you like you’re unhinged for being upset. But McGowan’s anger doesn’t derail her—it fuels her. His faux confusion doesn’t fluster her. She delivers a devastating verbal smackdown anyway.
Even when men sympathize—hug their partners, validate their feelings—they often don’t share the fear or grief stirred by increasingly degrading policies, rhetoric and actions. Instead, they encourage women to stop paying attention. Sure, scrolling less and taking a breather or a bath might be necessary, but disengagement doesn’t take away the very real danger. It simply shifts the burden of vigilance elsewhere.
This is where the harm is done. That blasé posture erodes a woman’s felt sense of being known—and her trust that her partner truly understands the world she is navigating.
We know men rely on and idealize female nurturing. But when that nurturing turns into vigilance—into anger, fear, or urgency—it becomes inconvenient. So she’s asked to stop caring. In reality, many men can afford not to track the danger because the women in their lives are already doing it for them: staying alert, sounding alarms, calling representatives, writing postcards, standing in long lines to return salt at Target, marching, stocking Plan B for their daughters just in case. And NO—women do not have more time and fewer responsibilities. This is just another form of emotional labor.
Perhaps I’m not being fair asking men to care about what I care about. Would I feel this viscerally if the government slashed funding for PSA screenings and prostate cancer treatment? I’d certainly recognize it was appalling. But would I be consumed by it? Would I take to the streets? Unlikely.
But let’s make it align more closely with what happens when, say, funding for reproductive health, maternal care, contraception, and abortion access is cut or restricted for women. What if prostate cancer care were defunded AND states and insurers allowed to opt out of coverage, the disease reframed as the result of men’s “lifestyle choices,” and treatment delayed until it was advanced or life-threatening—all while insisting this wasn’t an attack on men’s health or men’s rights? I think that might get me marching. Or writing. Or at the very least, feeling a cold fear—empathy not just sympathy—for my husband’s and son’s futures. Because women and minorities understand something others often don’t: power taken from one group is never content to stop there.
"Never forget" is what people have said since the Holocaust—so we remember what happens when we abandon democratic values and lose moral clarity. Never forget that dehumanizing people, normalizing their mistreatment, and turning citizens into enemies leads to catastrophe.
And yet we do forget—especially when we believe we’re immune.
I’ve been reading The Goddess of Warsaw by Lisa Barr, historical fiction about a Hollywood starlet originally from a wealthy Polish Jewish family destroyed by the Nazis. The protagonist reflects:
Somehow, we believed we were immune. How blissfully naïve we were. I now know that the lines in the sand had been drawn all along, festering like cracks beneath our rare Calacatta gold marble surfaces. We fooled ourselves into thinking we were above the common Jews of Warsaw and their "lowly" Yiddish, with our clipped Polish annunciations, stylish clothes, salons, live in staff, influential status. And then later…after the invasion, all the payoffs and bribes my father and uncle doled out to keep us protected. It bought us nine months, before we were taken and thrown into the ghetto with everyone else.
Men should be angrier not just because women are asking them to feel what we feel, but because inequality is morally wrong. Because people they love are being demeaned and harmed in small and big ways every single day. Because history shows, again and again, that believing you’re exempt is how you end up targeted.
Men should be angrier because this is not just women’s fight.
And because when you wait until it’s your turn, it’s already too late.
Related Work
Beyond Abortion: When Even Progressive Men Don’t Understand the Stakes
Many men don’t understand why women are so “worked up” or “emotional” about this. We women just get our panties in a bunch and worry our pretty little heads about nothing, it seems.
Renee Good Was A Fucking Bitch
Renee Nicole Good was a fucking bitch according to her killer. Unless we understand what makes so many women fucking bitches in the minds of the men who kill them, we will never really understand what happened to Good — or why violence against women is so often excused, minimized, or explained away.
