do you trust women (from dr. bitch)

there's this post over at bitch ph.d., which starts out being specifically about why saying there should be laws or limitations on abortion means you do not trust women, period (she also has a post on abortion which is the best treatment that i've seen anywhere), then goes into the difference between (political) anger and personal attack, and the fact that in instances when they are vehement (read passionate, angry...) on a topic, women tend to be denied the right to a legitimate form of the former and instead get accused of the latter:

And it's not like I didn't know--and this is more important--that there are people out there who don't hate women, but who do feel acutely uncomfortable around "bitchy" women. That is, women who don't ask for permission before speaking; women who don't just state their opinion and then back off to let you decide if you want to hear it or not, but who insist on having their arguments acknowledged; women who feel entitled to be angry; women who want to be heard more than they want to be liked. ...

In some ways, this Dworkin/anger/bitch thing is, like abortion, a bottom-line issue. How do you react to women's political anger? Is it okay for a woman to have strong opinions as long as she doesn't make anyone uncomfortable? If she sounds angry, does that automatically invalidate what she's saying? Do you think that feminists would be more effective if they were nicer? If there's a disagreement between a woman and a man, do you instinctively see "his side"? Do you mistake strong convinctions for personal attacks? Do you value civility over fairness? Because if so, then that, too, is a kind of distrust, hubris, a reluctance to cede control.

I am not advocating a free-for-all; and I think that considering the rhetorical effect of one's words matters; and I value good manners as much as anyone. There is an important difference between private anger and public anger, and it is the latter I am talking about. It is important to recognize that the ability to remain "civil" about injustice is a demonstration of power, and, arguably, is itself a kind of violence--more subtle than yelling, and for that reason, far more damaging. Because it is easy to isolate the angry woman, to shun her because of her anger. Many people will not see past the anger, and therefore many people will find it justified; she is, after all, being "unreasonable." After all, just as with abortion, women are not supposed to make people "uncomfortable." But when that happens, that amounts to denying women the right to public speech: the angry woman's anger is taken personally, as an indictment of her character, rather than as a legitimate political expression. (And then, of course, men say things like "women don't feel comfortable arguing.")

If you're pro-choice, you have to give up the right to have a "say" in someone else's choice. If you're pro-feminist, you have to give up the right to expect your personal feelings to be more important than women's public rights--including the right to be unpleasant, if, in her judgement, unpleasantness is called for.

- and i'm totally feeling every single point she makes there. in fact, it's because of struggling with this stuff that a while back i wrote this post with some thoughts on how communication is influenced by issues of (gendered) power dynamics, what kinds of factors control people's ability to have a voice that's acknowledged in a particular exchange, the positions that people are speaking from, and the screwed up anger/passion/personal attack - rationality dichotomy.