5 Reasons that a Woman Seems“Aggressive”
Don’t tell her to calm down.
An acquaintance of mine, let’s call him Aaron, has always refused to spar with me, saying he would “destroy me”. Yet as soon as another guy who does kickboxing came into town, he was super keen to try sparing. I called him out on it at a dinner with friends, and Aaron denied this was a sexist thing, saying he didn’t think I knew how to throw a proper punch. This is something he would never have doubted if I had been a guy who practiced Muay Thai. When I got frustrated with him, he told me I was being aggressive.
Women’s anger is still so unaccepted that we have to disguise it and wrap it up in feminine softness. When we talk about oppression, we are still expected to make our experiences palatable to men, so they don’t get upset or offended. If we fail to do so we are told we are being hysterical; we are told that we are not serving our cause, that we are turning people against feminism.
I thought it would be a good opportunity to write about why women might come across as aggressive, and why that shouldn’t change.
1) She isn’t being aggressive
Many fascinating linguistic studies show that if a man and a woman say exactly the same thing, it will not be perceived the same way by the person they are speaking…
