Not All Anger is Created Equal, Says Feminist Author Rebecca Traister
*By Conor White*
Women on both sides of the aisle may be enraged, but that anger is still sharply divided. Women are running for office in record numbers this year ー yet the outcome hasn't been the same for Republicans and Democrats, said author and political columnist Rebecca Traister.
"Numbers of women running for Republican seats also went up ー\[but\] they didn't win their primaries at the rate that women and people of color on the Democratic side did," Traister said Tuesday in an interview on Cheddar.
"Anger is very combustible force, it can kick political and social movements off the ground, but it can also blow up between allies," she said.
Party aside, the numbers are still striking.
476 women ran in Democratic and Republican primaries for Congress, and there are still 323 races in which at least one woman is running.
To Traister, the numbers are "unprecedented," but women's impulse to change their government has a historical basis.
"Women are activated as door knockers, registering voters, volunteers with campaigns, and again as candidates in ways that are pretty unprecedented in recent decades," Traister said.
But, she added, social movements "often started with women who were angry about injustice at the beginning and wanted to change something."
Traister has called women's anger both "catalytic and "problematic," but she said it's "mostly potent from a political perspective" as the midterms loom.
In the last month, women on the right have raised the decibel on their political voices, especially during Brett Kavanaugh's divisive Supreme Court confirmation hearings.
Even in the face of Christine Blasey Ford's dramatic testimony, many Republican women believed the sexual assault allegations against the now-Justice were part of a political hit job ー and many among them expressed concerned that their husband or son could fall prey to similar and potentially unfounded claims.
"That was an instance of white conservative women's anger being used by the right to send a particular message to the electorate," Traister said of the conservative response to the hearings.
Traister, a National Magazine Award-winner, is the author of the new book "Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger," which examines progressive movements throughout history, from the abolition of slavery to women's suffrage, that started with women getting mad.
The upcoming elections, at whatever level of government, are no different.
"Many of those candidacies started in the anger of post-Trump," Traister said.
"Women were so angry at Trump's presidential win that they were like, 'I'm going to go run for office,'" she said.
"Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger" is on sale now.
For full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/the-power-of-womens-anger).
The school shooting in Texas that left 19 children and 2 teachers dead has reignited the debate over gun control.
The tragedy in Uvalde is the deadliest school shooting in nearly a decade and marks the latest in a string of mass shootings in the country. Jared Moskowitz, Broward County Commissioner and candidate for Congress in FL-23, joined Cheddar's Opening Bell to discuss why gun control measures are stalled in the Senate, and where legislation can move forward from here.
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Texas authorities say the gunman who massacred 21 people at an elementary school was in the building for over an hour before he was killed by law enforcement officers.
Join Cheddar News as we break down the top headlines for Thursday, May 26 including updates on the Texas school shooting, President Joe Biden's executive order on police reform, and a recount in the Pennsylvania GOP Senate primary.
Representative Morgan Griffith of Virginia rebuked words from the FDA commissioner that could have been construed as blaming parents for stockpiling baby formula exacerbating the shortage.
Cheddar News reporter Megan Pratz brings the latest from the scene of yesterday's horrific school shooting at a Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Now the second-deadliest school shooting in U.S. history with 19 children and two adults killed, Pratz goes into comments by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, details about the deceased shooter, and reactions from members of the community.
The Robb Elementary School mass shooting killing 19 children and two adults in Uvalde, Texas pm Tuesday was the deadliest school shooting since the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, and came just 10 days after the grocery store shooting in Buffalo, New York. Nelson Vergara, the founder and CEO of 360 Protective Solutions, joined Cheddar’s Opening Bell to discuss. "Right now what law enforcement is concentrating on is trying to trace his steps as to what motivated the gunman to act the way he did. What it boils down to just trying to figure out what led to his motivation to do such a horrific act.”
An recently conducted AP-NORC poll found that majorities of the Black and Hispanic populations in the U.S. still find themselves either somewhat worried or extremely worried over the pandemic, while more than half of white Americans responded with either being not too worried or not worried at all. Dr. Chris Pernell, the chief strategic integration and health equity officer at University Hospital, joined Cheddar News to talk about how perceptions of COVID-19 differ between groups of Americans. "We’re still seeing people get infected, and because of the toll of the disproportionate impact, we have concerns among the Black and brown community about whether or not they have an increased risk of exposure because of where they work, because of the use of public transportation, because they live in homes that they may not be able to safely quarantine and or isolate in, and because they have at baseline chronic health conditions that may make coronavirus more severe in those persons," she said.
Judith Enck, a former regional administrator for the EPA and the president of Beyond Plastics, joined Cheddar News to talk about the role of plastics in the climate crisis and California's investigation of ExxonMobil and other oil companies for misleading the public on the ability to recycle plastics. "The reason why petrochemical companies like Exxon have gotten away with selling more and more plastic is that they've lied to the public and told us don't worry about all those negative upstream impacts and downstream impacts of plastics. Just be sure to recycle it. Well, guess what? Plastics largely are not recycled," Enck said.
