Anger

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  It happens when Dani is not around, but someone assumes that I am a dyke anyway because of the way that I dress, speak, or carry myself. After my transition, I began to write not only about being transgendered, but about my experiences living in the world as a woman and a dyke after years of being perceived as a straight man. Not surprisingly, most of what I wrote had a definite feminist bent. It seemed impossible for me, as a trans woman, to discuss my journey from male to female without placing it in the context of the differing values our society places on maleness and femaleness, on masculinity and femininity. Unfortunately, many people tend to artificially separate feminism from transgender activism, as if they are distinct issues that are in no way related. However, I have found that much of the anti-trans discrimination that trans women come across is clearly rooted in traditional sexism. This can be seen in how the media Powers That Be systematically sensationalize, sexualize, and ridicule trans women while allowing trans men to remain largely invisible. It’s why the tranny sex and porn industries catering to straight-identified men do not fetishize folks on the FTM spectrum for their XX chromosomes or their socialization as girls. No, they objectify trans women, because our bodies and our persons are female. I have found that many female-assigned genderqueers and FTM spectrum trans people go on and on about the gender binary system, as if trans people are only ever discriminated against for breaking gender norms. That might be how it seems when the gender transgression in question is an expression of masculinity. But as someone on the MTF spectrum, I am not dismissed for merely failing to live up to binary gender norms, but for expressing my own femaleness and femininity. And personally, I don’t feel like I’m the victim of “transphobia” as much as I am the victim of trans-misogyny. This idea—that much of what is commonly called transphobia is merely traditional sexism in disguise—moved to the forefront of my mind as I began to be invited to do spoken word performances at various queer women’s events around the San Francisco Bay Area. While I was welcomed very warmly by most of the women who attended these events, I would sometimes come across certain women who would act dismissively toward me, who seemed bothered by me being there, who acted as if they were granting me a special favor by tolerating my presence, who would make offhand and inappropriate comments about my trans status as if to remind me that I was not a real woman like they were. This sense of ownership and entitlement about being a woman or being lesbian seemed hypocritical to me.

• From A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (BDB) (1907)

  vb. burn, be kindled, of anger‏ הרהז Pa. cause fire to burn (rare); Zinj.‏ חרי (Aram.‏ anger, (NG 7, vam. = burning‏ הרא sensation, in throat, etc., fr. rage and pain) —‏ Qal Pf. ’n Gn 4°4 20t.; Impf. Th) Ex 32" +‏ ates an. Gn 18° + 7 t.5 an) Gn 45+ 46t.; Inf.‏ p 124°;—‏ 24% ₪ 2 חרות abs. TN 1S 207; estr.‏ (one’s) anger was kin-‏ חרה אף of man: a.‏ .1 dled, burned Gn 39° Nu 227 (J), Ex 32°”‏ (JE), Ju 9” 14% 18 11° Jb 32°"; c. 2 agaist‏ Gn 307 (E), 44% (J), 1S 17% 20% 28 12° 2Ch‏ an ap124° Jb 327°; 6. BN Nu 24° (EK). ₪.‏ it was kindled for‏ חרה . ; omitted‏ אף impers.,‏ (him) he burned with anger Gn 31°°(E), 4°°‏ Nu 16%(J), 1S 15" (rd. perh. 14, Weir‏ 347 in Dr), 18° 2077 2S 3° 6-1 Ch 13”, 2813”‏ ”2811 ויחר לדוד Ne3* 415° Jon4'*°*; ins.‏ 19% G We Dr; ‘2920 Gn 31 45° (E). 2. of‏ Ex 225 Nu 22”(E), Nu 11%”‏ ח' אף God: a.‏ Ex 432” Nu re? Dhigi" (3);‏ 2 .6 (3) 32 65 74 "דד‎ 20% Jos 23%(D), Ju6® ,2 ₪ 6 = | Ch ra") Ho 8° 2 K 237 2 0" ‘Jbi42%;‏ ךצ בישראל ;106% (J), Is 5% y‏ *זז גוא nya Ex32"‏ 2K 13°;‏ )2824 ’10 3° %*21 גו 328(JE);‏ 255 גאד omitted, Hb 35;‏ אף ,בנהרים Jos 71(R);‏ בבני ישראל Gn 18°2(J) 2 ₪ 22*=‏ חרה . .0 6 על 6 nor‏ ; (קצף 186 not in H P(who‏ חרה 18°.—Note:‏ in Je Ez Is? Pr or poetry of Jb. Niph. Pf.‏ “M2 sq. 2 Ct 1° (acc. to Bo" De Ko"™") be‏ that are incensed‏ 77 ביל 0039 angrywith; Pt.’‏ against (thee) Is 41", so 45%. Hiph. Pf.‏ Ne3” burned with zeal (4) in re-‏ הֶתָרָה Pin‏ prob. dittogr.; Zmpf.‏ ; החרה pairing, but G om.‏ ia ‘Sy ANN Tb19” and kindled his anger‏ 3 אל against me. Hithp. Impf..00n‏ Pr 24! heat oneself in vewation—The foll.‏ forms are somewhat dub.: Jmpf. 2ms. JS‏ ANNA Je 12° how canst thou hotly‏ אֶתההפוּסים contend (in a race) with the horses? Pt. °3‏ TNT AYN TAX Je 22” because thow strivest‏ eagerly (to excel) in cedar; expl.as Tzphiél by‏ yy eat 27‏ וב Thes Ges?! Brw =" (Ole‏ al., and regarded by most’as a rare causative‏ stem; but ag. existence of 1727/07 v. Ba 95 53:‏ ZG 18,20. Ba regards the form as denom. (fr. a‏ noun formed by n preform., cf. Aram. Weal”‏ contention); SS would point as Hithp. [ ef. Syr.‏ einh? contend with, cer contention], although‏ meaning of Hithp. is diff., v. supr.‏ 354 חרט Wan n.m. (burning of) anger (cf. Lag™* |

• From Blue Nights (2011)

  So go W. H. Auden’s “Funeral Blues,” sixteen lines that, during the days and weeks immediately after John died, spoke directly to the anger—the unreasoning fury, the blind rage—that I found myself feeling. I later showed “Funeral Blues” to Quintana. I told her that I was thinking of reading it at the memorial service she and I were then planning for John. She implored me not to do so. She said she liked nothing about the poem. She said it was “wrong.” She was vehement on this point. At the time I thought she was upset by the tone of the poem, its raw rhythms, the harshness with which it rejects the world, the sense it gives off of a speaker about to explode. I now think of her vehemence differently. I now think she saw “Funeral Blues” as dwelling on it. On the afternoon she herself died, August 26, 2005, her husband and I left the ICU overlooking the river at New York Cornell and walked through Central Park. The leaves on the trees were already losing their intensity, still weeks from dropping but ready to drop, not exactly faded but fading. At the time she entered the hospital, late in May or early in June, the blue nights had been just making their appearance. I had first noticed them not long after she was admitted to the ICU, which happened to be in the Greenberg Pavilion. In the lobby of the Greenberg Pavilion there hung portraits of its major benefactors, the most prominent of whom had played founding roles in the insurance conglomerate AIG and so had figured in news stories about the AIG bailout. During the first weeks I had reason to visit the ICU in the Greenberg Pavilion I was startled by the familiarity of these faces in the portraits, and, in the early evening, when I came downstairs from the ICU, would pause to study them. Then I would walk out into the increasingly intense blue of that time of day in that early summer season. This routine seemed for a while to bring luck. It was a period when the doctors in the ICU did not seem uniformly discouraging. It was a period when improvement seemed possible. There was even mention of a step-down unit, although the step-down unit never exactly materialized. Then one night, leaving the ICU and pausing as usual by the AIG portraits, I realized: there would be no step-down unit. The light outside had already changed. The light outside was no longer blue. She had so far since entering this ICU undergone five surgical interventions. She had remained ventilated and sedated throughout. The original surgical incision had never been closed. I had asked her surgeon how long he could continue doing this. He had mentioned a surgeon at Cornell who had done eighteen such interventions on a single patient. “And that patient lived,” the surgeon had said. In what condition, I had asked.

• From Why Is Sex Fun? The Evolution of Human Sexuality (1997)

  My hostess nevertheless enjoys much better domestic conditions than do many other wives. When I first began to work in the New Guinea highlands, I often felt enraged at the sight of gross abuse of women. Married couples whom I encountered along jungle trails typically consisted of a woman bent under an enormous load of firewood, vegetables, and an infant, while her husband sauntered along upright, bearing nothing more than his bow and arrow. Men’s hunting trips seemed to yield little more than male bonding opportunities, plus some prey animals immediately consumed in the jungle by the men. Wives were bought, sold, and discarded without their consent. Later, though, when I had children of my own and sensed my feelings as I shepherded my family on walks, I thought that I could better understand the New Guinea men striding beside their families. I found myself striding next to my own children, devoting all my attention to making sure that they did not get run over, fall, wander off, or suffer some other mishap. Traditional New Guinea men had to be even more attentive because of the greater risks facing their children and wives. Those seemingly carefree men strolling along beside a heavily burdened wife were actually functioning as lookouts and protectors, keeping their hands free so that they could quickly deploy their bow and arrow in the event of ambush by men of another tribe. But the men’s hunting trips, and the sale of women as wives, continue to trouble me. To ask what men are good for may sound like a flip one-liner. In fact, the question touches a raw nerve in our society. Women are becoming intolerant of men’s self-ascribed status and are criticizing those men who provide better for themselves than for their wives and children. The question also poses a big theoretical problem for anthropologists. By the criterion of services offered to mates and children, males of most mammal species are good for nothing except injecting sperm. They part from the female after copulation, leaving her to bear the entire burden of feeding, protecting, and training the offspring. But human males differ by (usually or often) remaining with their mate and offspring after copulation. Anthropologists widely assume that men’s resulting added roles contributed crucially to the evolution of our species’ most distinctive features. The reasoning goes as follows.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  “The first showdown in our marriage came because Sara was so close to her family. Early in our marriage she had a bad fall on a ski run and got a compound fracture in her right leg. That’s extremely painful and she had to be on drugs, in a cast, and on crutches. Anyway, during the first week of her injury her mom came and took her home to take care of her. I got home and Sara wasn’t there. Instead I found a note from her mom saying that Sara would stay with her folks until she got better and that they hoped to see me often. I was so mad I could have torn the place apart. I called Sara and said, ‘What the hell is going on?’ She said her mom had insisted and she had agreed. I said to hell with that, I was her husband and she was married to me and this was her home. I called my dad to help me run the store for a few weeks so I could run back and forth and take Sara her lunch and check out how she was feeling. Let me tell you, I got Sara back so fast she didn’t know what hit her. She was very quiet when I brought her home. A few days later we had a long and very useful talk in which I made it clear that she is first a wife and only second a daughter. She belongs with me just like I belong with her. Whatever care was needed we would provide for each other. She was subdued but didn’t raise a single objection. Actually I think she was pleased that I fought for her. I think she knew that a separation from her family was overdue. Anyway, I won that battle hands down.” I think it would be fair to say that Gary’s battle established the marriage as the top priority for himself and Sara. He understood the importance of what he had done when we discussed the episode. “I was fighting for my marriage,” he said. “These are exactly the values I got from my folks. They taught me that marriage comes first. I realized that if I didn’t do something drastic, our home would end up as a satellite to her parents’ home.” It is, of course, impossible to compare particular incidents in one marriage with what occurs in other marriages. But in looking through the stories of children of divorce, I noted with dismay how passively these young men and women addressed their marital difficulties. During crises in their relationships, the men typically waited on the sidelines for the woman to make a decision. They’d accept her behavior as a given, essentially unmodifiable by anything they said or did. It was as if the trouble they dreaded had come to be and there was nothing they could do to change things.

• From Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions (1939)

  Similarly it is easy to understand the fit of anger that seizes me when I can think of nothing more to reply to a mocker. Here anger does not play quite the same part as in the example given by Dembo. My need is to switch the discussion on to another plane. I have not been witty enough, so I become formidable and intimidating. I want to arouse fear. At the same time I make use of inferior alternatives (ersatze) to vanquish my adversary — insults, threats which have to 'do instead of' the shaft of wit I failed to think of; for the abrupt change of attitude that I impose upon myself makes me less exacting about the choice of means. And yet, at the point we have come to, we still feel unsatisfied. The emotional behaviour theory is perfect, but in its purity and perfection we can see its insufficiency. In all the examples we have quoted, the functional part played by emotion is indubitable. But as it stands, it is also incomprehensible. I mean that, for Dembo and the Gestalt psychologists, the passage from the state of seeking to the state of anger is explained as the break-up of one form and the reconstitution of another. And I can understand, if need be, the breakup of the form 'problem without solution'; but how can I admit the appearance of the other form? We must suppose that it presents itself clearly as the substitute for the previous form. It exists only in relation to this. We have, then, a single process — a transformation of form. But I cannot comprehend this transformation without first positing consciousness. Consciousness alone, by its synthetic activity, can break up and reconstitute forms without ceasing. It alone can account for the finality of emotion. Moreover, we have seen that the whole of the description of anger given by Guillaume according to Dembo shows that its aim is to transform the aspect of the world. It serves to 'weaken the barriers between the real and the unreal', to 'destroy the differentiated structure that the problem has imposed upon the world'. Admirable! but as soon as it is a question of positing a relation of the world to the self, we can no longer content ourselves with a psychology of form. It is quite clear that we must have recourse to the consciousness. And besides, is it not to consciousness, after all, that Guillaume is referring when he says that the angry subject 'weakens the barriers that separate the deeper from the more superficial levels of the self? Thus the physiological theory of James has led us, by its own insufficiency, to Janet's theory of behaviour, the latter to the theory of functional emotion in form-psychology, and this refers us at last to the consciousness. That is where we ought to have begun, and it is now high time for us to formulate the real problem.

• From The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006)

  I'd never seen so many white people assembled in one room in my life. It looked like a rally for George Wallace or David Duke. Hundreds and hundreds of smug, self-satisfied white people in tuxedos and evening wear, waiting around to congratulate each other before hitting the buffet. And I felt sickened by the experience. Here we all were at an event celebrating cooking—and presumably the people who do the job of cooking—and barely a Latino in sight. This when as much as 65 percent of the workforce in our industry is, in fact, Mexican, Ecuadoran, and otherwise of Spanish-speaking origin. Where the hell were they? How come they weren't here? Who honors them? While we were all swanning around patting ourselves on the back, the people who keep us in business were still hiding out from the Immigration and Naturalization Service, paying dodgy lawyers for services barely, if ever, actually rendered, and sending money home to families they rarely saw. The awfulness of that moment made me very angry, and as unattractive as it might be to admit, I can tell you that when it was finally revealed how little money raised by the Beard House was actually going to "scholarships"—and when the foundation's president found himself facing jail time and its board of schnorrers, grifters, and marginal dipshits had to step down, I was overjoyed. After the scandal broke, a journalist asked me what I thought should be done with the Beard House, the author's former West Village home, restored and maintained as a shrine to a man who, by many accounts, was a complete (if talented and important) bastard. I suggested they convert the property into something useful, like a methadone clinic. I wasn't entirely kidding. COUNTER CULTURE I remember reading a food critic's complaint about all the fancy meals he'd had to "endure" over the years, his sense of burn out—and felt no sympathy whatsoever at the time. How could anyone be expected to feel sorry for a person who was regularly fed the finest wines, the best ingredients, in the most expensive places? This is a fairly recent piece, illustrating, I think, my own growing sense of "fine dining fatigue." On book tours and on trips to promote the shows, and back in New York, again and again, I'd found myself eating much better—and fancier—than I would have liked. Though I usually craved nothing more extravagant than a simple bowl of noodles, or a meatloaf sandwich, my proud and generous hosts of the moment would insist on bringing me to the "best restaurant in town." And whether this was Chicago, Reykjavik, Frankfurt, or Stockholm, there was a growing sameness to the offerings. Quality was up everywhere as the ambitions and abilities of chefs rose, but so was the sense of seriousness and self-importance.

• From Between Us

  Rather than trying to explain why individuals in many other cultures talk about feelings more sparsely, I will turn the question around and ask why individuals in contemporary Western cultures put so much emphasis on the feeling aspect of emotions. The short answer is: We have learned to do so. Starting in early childhood, children in Western contexts are taught to focus attention inwardly. Psychologist Qi Wang describes an exchange between a three-year-old boy, whom I will name George, and his mom. Mother and son discussed how George got mad on a shopping trip for Christmas presents. “Did you want to be there?” George’s mom prompts him. “No,” George remembers. “And what did you start to do?” his mom leads him along. “Hit,” he answers. Prompted for more, he adds “scratch.” Upon which George’s mom brings the conversation to the source of his feelings: “Do you remember why you were so mad?” It does not come easy to George. He keeps adding behaviors: “Yell,” he tries, and then “cry.” George’s mom brings the conversation back to his mental state: “Why were you so mad?” she asks again. George gets it now: “Because I just want to do whatever I want to do,” he says. That answer seems to satisfy his mom: “You want to do whatever you want to do. I see.” George’s mom encourages him to focus on his feelings, and then helps him understand and relate to those feelings. This is the pattern that Wang finds time and again for U.S. American mothers that she studies: These mothers help their children figure out how their emotions relate to what they want or think. They help them to focus on, and articulate, their insides. Not so for Chinese mothers in Qi Wang’s studies: rather than helping their children understand the reason they feel in a certain way, these mothers focus on the social consequences of their behavior much more so than the American mothers. Take little Jiang’s mom, who reminds her child of a time he got mad also. It was the night before, when Jiang started crying because his mom and grandma had not let him watch TV. Rather than dwelling on his feelings, Jiang’s mom asks: “Do you know why we didn’t let you watch TV?” Jiang promptly gives her the reason: “You are worried that my eyes would get hurt. I wanted to watch ‘Chao-Tian-Men.’ I was mad. I insisted on watching it.” Jiang’s mom responds not by relating to Jiang’s feelings or preferences, but by reminding him of the social consequence of his protest: “So you got spanked, right?” she asks. Jiang nods in acknowledgment.

• From Escape (2007)

  “I really don’t care if Barbara’s upset with me,” I said to Tammy. “If she wants privacy when her babies are born, she can allow me the same.” Little did I know I’d launched a war. Tammy went to see Barbara at the clinic the next morning. She told her I didn’t want any of my sister wives coming to the birth of my babies and that I felt none of them had the right to invade my privacy. Exactly. Barbara was furious. She said the only reason she had private births was that Merril felt it was required in her situation but not for any of his other wives. What right did I have to say who could be present when my babies were born? Tammy came back intending to continue the argument from the night before. She said Barbara felt I was in outright rebellion and needed to be disciplined. Barbara said that if I was uncomfortable with just a few people in the delivery room, then she would ensure that many people were there as punishment. Once Merril sanctioned this, she said I’d have no right to object. A month later I heard Tammy paging me on the intercom. She said Cathleen, who was due to give birth any day, had gone to the clinic in Hildale. Merril wanted all the wives to come and visit her, but Tammy said she wasn’t going to give birth until the next day. When I got to the clinic I was surprised not to find anyone in the waiting room. One of the women who worked there approached me. “Oh, there you are. Everyone was wondering when you’d get here.” I didn’t understand what she meant at first. “They are back there in the delivery room.” Then it hit me. I’d been tricked. She led me back to a small room in the clinic. It was crammed with people staring at Cathleen, who was in anguished labor. Merril smiled when he saw the shock on my face. He offered me his chair, which was right next to Cathleen. I sat down because my head was spinning. I’d never witnessed another woman give birth and didn’t want to. I was eight months pregnant and terrified by what I was seeing. Cathleen was writhing in pain and grunting and groaning with each intense contraction. People looked at her with disdain. The small room was crammed with Merril and his six wives, plus five or six of his unmarried daughters. It was difficult for Aunt Lydia to move around because the room was so packed.

• From Escape (2007)

  I hated seeing Cathleen humiliated. This felt like a total freak show. We were part of a tradition that insisted on covering women’s bodies from head to toe when they were in public. But now the most intimate and vulnerable moment of a woman’s life was stripped of its dignity and privacy. Cathleen was wearing a nightgown with white leggings and her legs were spread apart in the stirrups. More than a dozen people were not only staring at her, but judging her. She was sweating profusely and seemed emotionally and physically exhausted. Merril was there but seemed nonchalant about the drama that was unfolding around him. Cathleen’s baby finally pushed his way into the world, wet, slimy and screaming. Aunt Lydia cut his umbilical cord and handed him to Cathleen, who immediately handed him to Merril. Merril didn’t want him and handed him to me. Everyone wanted to see this child born, but no one wanted to hold him! Johnson was a beautiful baby. I was so anxious and upset I was afraid I might drop him. I took some big breaths and tried to calm down by staring at this sweet and innocent child. After a few moments, Aunt Lydia came and said he needed to be put in the incubator before he got too cold. I got out of there as fast as I could. I was still too upset at home to concentrate on any of the things I needed to do. I decided to find and confront Merril. I intended to make sure he knew that what had been done to Cathleen would never be done to me. I found him working in one of his alfalfa fields. Raising alfalfa was one of his hobbies. “Hello, Carolee, what can I do for you?” He knew by looking at my face that I was upset. “I want an explanation about what happened today.” Merril pretended he didn’t know what I was talking about. “What do you want your loving husband to explain?” “I thought what happened to Cathleen today was inexcusable. You need to understand that I will not be treated that way. You will show me respect when I have this baby.” “Cathleen and I were in perfect harmony about the birth today.” My silence demanded more and he knew it. “But of course I will show you respect. You will want the people at the delivery who I decide should be there.” “Merril, wake up. You’re dreaming if you think I’m going to make a freak show out of the birth of my baby. I won’t let you deny me my dignity.” Merril laughed the way he did when he wanted to sound superior. “What are you going to do to prevent it? Have your baby in a closet? If you have the baby in a facility that is in harmony with the prophet, then the family members I decide on will be there for the birth.”

• From Escape (2007)

  Barbara still felt that I was the only one of Merril’s wives who had never completely submitted to her, which was true. Faunita, defeated and broken, stayed in her room watching movies. Tammy spent her time flattering Barbara and Merril. Cathleen had given up and did what she was told without complaint. When Ruth was not in the throes of madness and watering the shoes in her closet, she obsessed about being in perfect harmony with Merril and following Barbara’s orders. My strategy was to ignore Barbara and live around her. But by late 1993 she and Merril had decided to try to make me surrender to her one-woman rule. Money was the weapon they decided to use against me. Merril cut off every account in town and then informed us that if we needed something we had to come to him directly and ask for it. I was still teaching and turning over my entire salary to him, which, after taxes, was about $500 every two weeks. I had no money of my own, but in the past this had not been a problem because we had charge accounts everywhere in town. Merril seemed to think that if he denied me the basic necessities for me and my children I’d submit to Barbara’s rule. Merril told me he was having financial problems again. I believed him initially and tried not to ask him for money. But then I discovered everyone else in the family was still spending at the same levels. When they went to Merril, he instantly gave them the money they needed. The first time I went to his office I told him I needed a few items. He ignored me and didn’t even speak. I left, suspicious. The next week I went into Merril’s office to turn over my salary check. When I did, I asked Merril for five dollars to buy Arthur a pair of shoes. He ignored me again, refusing to respond. I sat down in his office. I wanted an answer. Barbara came in and asked Merril for money to pick up pictures in town. He wrote her a check that was almost equivalent to the paycheck I’d just handed him. When Barbara left I said, “It looks like you have plenty of money if you can spend nearly as much as I make in two weeks on pictures. Surely there must be money for shoes for your son.” Merril’s face turned crimson. “There is money for those who do the things I want.” I knew that was the opening for an argument. But I also knew he held all the cards. If I challenged him, he’d berate and humiliate me. I walked out of his office determined to never again ask him for a dime.

• From Escape (2007)

  It was around this time when Warren banned the color red. He announced that it was inappropriate to wear the color red or have red items in our home because it was reserved for our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. He preached that when Jesus Christ returns he’ll do so in a red robe, and that wearing that color prior to the second coming is unholy. He made the pronouncement one Sunday in church, and those wearing red went home immediately and changed clothes. Other families got rid of every red item they owned. This was a hardship for families without much money. Children lost a lot of clothes, coats, and boots. Women with red in their dresses had to get rid of them; for some this meant throwing out a sizable percentage of their wardrobes. Some families adapted to this with a more moderate approach: when the red clothes, toys, or household items wore out, they would abandon them. The more extreme families discarded all red items immediately. One teacher told her students red wasn’t a bad color, it was beautiful. The students reported her rebellion to their parents. The parents complained, asked that the teacher, who was not a member of the FLDS, respect their beliefs, and demanded that red be removed from her classroom. Merril had always liked red. In our family we went through the closets and eliminated most of our red clothes. That evening I watched the sunset—a blaze of orange and red. If God wanted red preserved for Jesus Christ alone, why did he spread it across the sky in such abundance? When some of us gathered for coffee later that week at Linda’s, the topic of having a burning in our chests as a proof of righteousness came up again. Jayne, my high-spirited cousin with whom I’d played apocalypse as a child, kicked off the discussion. “Ladies, I have one question. What the hell is this burning in your chest all about anyway? I always thought that burning is mastitis.” (Mastitis is an infection common to nursing mothers.) Everyone laughed. Someone asked Jayne how she dared question the requirements about being lifted up. “Well,” she said, “if I have to have a breast infection to be lifted up, then no thank you! I would rather die with the wicked!” The discussion then became more serious, about what felt like a new extremism taking root in the community that felt more radical than anything that we’d known in the past. One of the women recounted a harrowing story about one of the police officers in the FLDS. (All of the police officers in our community were FLDS members, which complicated matters if a woman tried to escape, because she’d get no help or protection from police. It also made reporting domestic violence almost meaningless because the police would always side with the husband.)

• From Escape (2007)

  I had rarely heard a story as disturbing as I did that morning. The FLDS police officer wanted to take his wife up to the Steeds ranch to teach her a lesson in obedience. He put her in a pen with a bull and then tied a rope to the neck of the bull. He told his wife, who was pregnant, that she had to control the bull with the rope on orders of her priesthood head. She tried to hang on to the bull, but he ran off and she ended up being dragged until she let go of the rope. Her husband got into the pen and handed her the rope again and told her she had to hold on. But the bull pulled away from her and her husband became enraged. This time he took the end of the rope and tied it around the neck of the bull and told her she better hang on this time. But it was impossible. The third time he tied the rope to her so she could not let go. She was dragged around the ring again and so badly injured she lost the baby—which then became her fault because she was so disobedient. When I heard it I told the group I had a burning sensation in my chest—I wanted to kill the guy. The others agreed, and we talked about what we’d do if he ever pulled us over. The story was well circulated in the community because the man’s stepmother became aware of what he’d done to his wife and was so incensed that she started talking about it. No one went to the authorities because we knew the woman would deny the whole thing. We all knew we were powerless when it came to protecting ourselves. I feared that it was an example of hysteria that was manifesting itself in extreme ways. This police officer had carried the notion of “perfect obedience” to a criminal level. The obedience Warren preached was a woman’s complete submission to her husband. He said women should not work outside the home and should not even leave home unless allowed to do so by their husband. We’d always kept our coffee meetings quiet, but now we knew we had to be even more careful. We began to be much more circumspect about what we were doing as changes swept over our community. As women were required to leave the workforce because of Jeffs’ new doctrines, it became harder for some families to make ends meet.

• From Why We Believe: Finding Meaning in Uncertain Times

  Shermer’s point is given added weight by atheist violence against religion. Some New Atheist writers insist that there is no evidence that atheism systematically influences people to do bad things.35 Others might beg to differ, noting that neither the Bolsheviks nor New Atheists consider atheism to be the mere absence of belief in God, but make a normative judgement that religious faith is evil. Following the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917, the forcible elimination of religious belief came to be an increasingly important element of their revolutionary programme. Religion was believed to be evil and counter-revolutionary, and hence had to be neutralised. In their efforts to enforce this atheist ideology, the Soviet authorities systematically destroyed and eliminated large numbers of churches and priests during the period 1918–41. As Bertrand Russell noted in his remarkably perceptive 1920 account of the Soviet Union, Bolshevism ‘is to be reckoned as a religion, not as an ordinary political movement.’36 Why? Because it transcendentalised its ideals, leading to the Soviet state and its institutions being seen as God-surrogates. Recognising the need for a religious revival within Russia after the catastrophe of the First World War, Bolshevism presented itself as a new religion – a ‘combination of the characteristics of the French Revolution with those of the rise of Islam.’ What matters here is that worldviews and their associated institutions are demonstrably prone to intolerance, violence and dogmatism. It is pointless to argue for the elimination of individual beliefs or extended belief systems, which are part of the human condition. It is, however, entirely right to ask what can be done about mitigating the risks of beliefs leading to violence. Some might suggest that the obvious way ahead is to criminalise what are seen as dangerous beliefs, given that these cannot be proved to be true and can be the cause of social tension and personal distress. Belief in God is often singled out as an especially appropriate target for suppression. Yet when a society rejects the idea of God, it tends to transcendentalise secular alternatives and allow them to function as alternative gods. Emilio Gentile’s studies on fascism and totalitarianism show how worldviews emerge which, though secular in their outlooks and foundations, nevertheless take the form of ‘a more or less developed system of beliefs, myths, rituals, and symbols that create an aura of sacredness around an entity belonging to this world and turn it into a cult and an object of worship and devotion.’37

• From Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions (1939)

  Here, then, at the end of this long quotation, we arrive at a functional conception of anger. Clearly anger is not an instinct nor a habit, nor is it a calculated action; it is an abrupt solution of conflict, a way of cutting the gordian knot. And we are back again at Janet's distinction between the superior kind of behaviour and the inferior or derived. But here that distinction assumes its full meaning: it is we who put ourselves into a state of total inferiority, because at that very low level our demands are smaller; we satisfy ourselves at less cost. Being unable, in a state of high tension, to find the delicate and precise answer to a problem, we act upon ourselves, we abase and transform ourselves into a being for whom the grossest and least adapted solutions are good enough (for example, tearing up the paper on which a problem is stated). Thus anger now appears as an escape; the angry subject is like a man who is unable to untie the knots of the cords that bind him, and who writhes about in his bonds. And the 'angry' conduct, though less well adapted to the problem than the superior — and impossible — behaviour that would solve it, is still precisely and perfectly adapted to his need to break the tension, to shake the leaden weight off his shoulders. We shall be better able to understand the examples we were citing above: the psychasthenic who comes to see Janet wants to make her confession to him. But the task is too difficult. Here she is, in a confined, threatening world which is waiting for her to perform a definite action and at the same time repelling her. Janet himself signifies by his attitude that he is listening and is attentive; but at the same time his prestige, his personality, etc. repulse that confession. Escape she must from the unbearable tension! And the patient can do so only by exaggerating her weakness and her disarray, by distracting his attention from the task in hand and turning it upon herself (how unhappy I am!). Her own demeanour will transform Janet from her judge into her comforter by exteriorising and 'playing up' the very impossibility she finds in speaking, by commuting the precise need to give such and such information into a heavy, undifferentiated pressure of the whole world upon her. It is then that the sobbing and the nervous crisis ensue.

• From White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America (2016)

  harsh working conditions they had to endure, one critic compared their lot to “Egyptian bondage.” 19 Discharged soldiers, also of the lower classes, were shipped off to the colonies. For a variety of reasons, single men and women, and families of the lower gentry, and those of artisan or yeoman classes joined the mass migratory swarm. Some left their homes to evade debts that might well have landed them in prison; others (a fair number coming from Germany and France) viewed the colonies as an asylum from persecution for their religious faith; just as often, resettlement was their escape from economic restrictions imposed upon their trades. Still others ventured to America to leave tarnished reputations and economic failures behind. As all students of history know, slaves eventually became one of the largest groups of unfree laborers, transported from Africa and the Caribbean, and from there to the mainland British American colonies. Their numbers grew to over six hundred thousand by the end of the eighteenth century. Africans were found in every colony, especially after the British government gave full encouragement to the slave trade when it granted an African monopoly to the Company of Royal Adventurers in 1663. The slave trade grew even faster after the monopoly ended, as the American colonists bargained for lower prices and purchased slaves directly from foreign vendors. 20 To put class back into the story where it belongs, we have to imagine a very different kind of landscape. Not a land of equal opportunity, but a much less appealing terrain where death and harsh labor conditions awaited most migrants. A firmly entrenched British ideology justified rigid class stations with no promise of social mobility. Certainly, Puritan religious faith did not displace class hierarchy either; the early generations of New Englanders did nothing to diminish, let alone condemn, the routine reliance on servants or slaves. Land was the principal source of wealth, and those without any had little chance to escape servitude. It was the stigma of landlessness that would leave its mark on white trash from this day forward. So, welcome to America as it was. The year 1776 is a false starting point for any consideration of American conditions. Independence did not magically erase the British class system, nor did it root out long-entrenched beliefs about poverty and the willful exploitation of human labor. An unfavored population, widely thought of as waste or “rubbish,” remained disposable indeed well into modern times. Part I TO BEGIN THE WORLD ANEW CHAPTER ONE Taking Out the Trash

• From Between Us

  I also shed these emotions because no one else around me focused on self-expression the way I did, and because self-expression of this kind did not get positive responses. With help of subtle and not-so-subtle feedback, I came to see my Dutch way of self-expression as too forceful and unnecessarily impolite. There was the clearly written feedback on my teaching evaluations: “She is blunt at times” or “Professor Mesquita tried to impose her beliefs.” But there must have been more subtle signs as well—from colleagues, friends, my children’s schoolteachers—that I came to interpret as disapproval. A journalist from my university’s monthly magazine nodded politely when, during an interview, I volunteered my criticism on the university’s research policy. He seemed in a hurry to leave the topic behind us. My experience of sticking out like a sore thumb served as a cue to suppress my indignation or weaken it. At first, I tried to not express what I felt, or not as bluntly. But after a while, I lost my sense that it was natural to feel this way, and I traveled some distance towards learning emotional ways that were more effective and better understood in my new cultural environment. When I did show indignation or anger on occasion, as with the journalist from my university’s magazine, I immediately realized that this was a relic from my time in the Netherlands. It did not feel “right” anymore, not in that context. My emotions came to serve respect and politeness rather than intellectual autonomy. The learning was not merely cosmetic; I felt less anger and indignation. I never became fully North Carolinian, but I do think my waltz became smoother over the years. Less stepping on other people’s toes. In the same way my emotions had once allowed me to be part of a Dutch relationships, they now allowed me to grow more in sync with my North Carolinian environment. My colleagues Heejung Kim, Jozefien De Leersnyder, Alba Jasini, and I have come to see similar changes in immigrant populations that we study. These changes are what we call in psychology jargon emotional acculturation: learning to do emotions in the new culture’s ways. In much of our research, we studied emotional acculturation by comparing the emotions of immigrant minorities with those of the average majority respondent for a particular type of situation.

• From Escape (2007)

  I didn’t think of him as my husband, a gift from God. I thought of him as “that man,” an egocentric bully whom I had been forced to marry, someone who had control over my life and my body. I hated depending on him financially. I still believed in my religion, but I knew Merril wasn’t following it the way he should. I knew the way he treated me and his other five wives was wrong, and yet he was a powerful man in the FLDS. I felt frustrated and confused. The breaking point came after a few months of running on empty. We had been out of things such as shampoo, toothpaste, and soap for weeks. Once winter came and the garden froze, the only food we had left in the house was cracked wheat, which we ate for breakfast, and the makings of tomato sandwiches, which we had for lunch and dinner. We’d picked the green tomatoes just before the frost and let them ripen in buckets. Every day we’d sort through them looking for some that were ripe enough to eat. I thought that once Merril realized we couldn’t feed ourselves from the garden now that it had frozen he’d be more attentive to the family. I was wrong. Merril and Barbara were still living large in Page. Whatever money Merril did make fueled their lifestyles and appetite for dining out and drinking wine. Barbara never had to scrimp or save. Barbara was so selfish, I thought she probably enjoyed eating in fancy restaurants while we were struggling at home. I was nursing Betty but very worried about Arthur. He was losing weight from lack of food. I also feared that if I didn’t get enough to eat I’d be unable to produce enough breast milk for Betty. I knew there was absolutely no money for formula. When Merril came home that November we had been in a deteriorating crisis for two months and our food supply was dwindling. Merril called all six wives into his office for a meeting. He decreed that only Barbara could implement changes in family policies or assign jobs. Merril was enthusiastic in explaining that now Barbara would preside over every detail of family life. “I have one question,” I said when Merril finished. “How can every one of us check in with Barbara before we tie our shoes if she’s rarely at home? I need to understand how this is going to work at a practical level.” Merril’s neck reddened and his face hardened. He was angry and started scolding me for questioning his decision. Merril hated to be challenged. None of the other wives spoke. But I knew they were as fed up with the abuse and degradation as I was.

• From Escape (2007)

  When Merril finished his tirade against me I looked at him and said, “Well, maybe since all there is to eat in this house are tomato sandwiches I will call Barbara while she’s eating a steak dinner with you and ask her for permission to make tomato sandwiches for dinner. That way everything can be done just the way she wants it.” If Merril had a gun he would have aimed it at me. I was scared of him, but I’d been pushed to the point where I didn’t care. Merril was seething. “Don’t you accuse me! You act like a tomato sandwich isn’t something that is good to eat!” I’d touched the untouchable and spoken the unspeakable. They were feasting while we were nearly starving. Everyone else in the room was so quiet I thought they were holding their breath. I was undeterred. I rarely stood up to Merril or Barbara, but when I was pushed too far, I had no fear of confronting them. I was fed up with their cruelty and constant put-downs. Merril’s other wives would complain once in a while, but he always belittled them and made it so painful they were disinclined to do it again. I think what was starting to crack open in me was my authentic self. I had been in survival mode. In a cult, you have two identities: your cult identity and your authentic self. Most of the time I operated from my cult identity, which was pliant, submissive, and obedient. But when I was pushed to the point where it felt like my survival was at stake, my authentic self came to the fore. The worse life became in Merril’s family, the more confidence I found in my authentic self. In a steady and sure voice I said to Merril, “If tomato sandwiches are so wonderful, then why aren’t you and Barbara eating them for lunch and dinner like the rest of us?” That was the shout that brought down the avalanche. The other women piled on in what became known as “the famous tomato sandwich fight.” My courage enabled the other women to find their own. They told Merril how unfair it felt to them to turn over whatever income they had and not receive anything in return. Their children were hungry, and they were, too. How could we be asked to sacrifice while Barbara and Merril lived like royalty? Barbara looked appalled and disgusted by what we were saying but let Merril do the talking.

• From Escape (2007)

  Several wives complained that most of the young children in the home were Barbara’s and that she needed to be more engaged in raising them. In short, she needed to start acting like their mother. Cathleen said she was finished combing out the long, tangled hair of Barbara’s daughters before school each morning. Tammy demanded to know why Barbara only gave orders and never did anything to help around the house. We made it clear that she was not a good example for the rest of the wives. Barbara started crying when she came under attack from the rest of us, and got up and left. Merril was incensed and scolded us for humiliating her. He berated us for quite a while until we all just stopped talking. Finally he demanded to know what we thought the answers were if we weren’t going to do what he wanted us to. We said we had to have money to feed the kids and we couldn’t go on indefinitely without being able to buy personal items. Merril finally agreed to give us more money for groceries, but he made it clear that we’d be paying a price down the road for what we had done. His threat was meaningless, however. Merril knew he had pushed us too far; he also knew we needed money to live. Our morale improved when we were able to buy food again. Sometimes we’d get money for personal items, but often not. It became a running joke among us. I knew Merril was terribly angry at me for sparking the insurrection. I also knew that he held grudges and when the right moment came he’d lash out at me. I wasn’t proud of what I’d done. We had been reduced to fighting for food. I thought it was completely hypocritical that Merril would let a large family like ours go hungry while he and Barbara were indulging themselves in Page. I had been substitute-teaching for four months when a permanent job opened up teaching sixth grade. The following year I was transferred to the second grade. There were other, more qualified teachers on the list for openings, but I got it because of Merril’s high standing with the prophet, which was derived from his father’s prominence. His father, who was known as Uncle Rich, was the apostle who was next in line to the prophet. I loved finally having my own classroom. It was the one and only place in my life where I was in control of my environment on a daily basis. But I hated leaving my children at home in mediocre care. Merril’s teenage daughters were watching Arthur and Betty, but I knew their hearts weren’t in it. Worse still, Merril’s daughters treated my children as second-class citizens, and that upset me. The girls were often belligerent when I asked them something about Betty and Arthur, which increased the anxiety I felt about the overall situation.