Not what you think? Feminism and the politics of affect

“I used to insist I didn’t get angry.  Not anymore, by Leslie Jamison, New York Times Magazine, January 17, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/17/magazine/i-used-to-insist-i-didnt-get-angry-not-anymore.html?comments

I wonder what general Politics of Affect we might need. I propose instead a politics of thinking. Feelings mediate between persons and the thinking that matters. Anger is the emotion that corresponds to the thought that one, or someone one identifies with, is victim of injustice, and in a way that should not be tolerated. It is a basis of the political.

Our behavioral expectations that still can differ between the genders can be unfair, even if prejudices are as always confirmed by examples. Women are still all too often and much expected to be nurturant and "nice," and since men are expected to be courageous and strong, it is often easier for a man to get angry. Though the prevalent social codes do allot to women opportunities for anger, often involving putting some badly behaving man in his place, and this is often done poorly or with horrible excess. 

A person of either gender should be able to get angry when the injustice they lay claim to seems true of the persons they accuse or reproach. I have long known (even) as a man how much getting angry can cause me to be punished for doing so. 

But let's get beyond the simplistic ways so common now in our liberal culture of attaching particular personal attributes, including notions about emotional states and the propriety of their being felt or expressed, experienced or observed, to particular types or groups of persons. This can quickly become quite fascist. 

Don't feel the thought, think the feeling.