Women's Anger and Sexuality
A recurrent theme in our research interviews, work and discussions with women has been the ways in which anger and sexuality are inter-related. Women have shared with us that anger can affect how comfortable they feel in expressing their sexuality, and how sexuality can impact their decisions about staying silent or speaking up when anger arises.
The way this plays out for women is colored by media images of sex and aggression. The presence of sexualized violence and violent sexuality is pervasive in our culture, as demonstrated in music videos, prime time tv shows, movies, popular novels, video games, and of course, straight out porn.
The power dynamics that exist in male-female relationships today figure into the connection between anger and sexuality as well. Our curiosity about how these factors affect a woman's experience motivated our current research project.
During 2001 and 2002 we used original instruments to explore women's feelings about the relationship between anger and sexuality. We gathered data through online surveys and through pencil and paper questionnaires administered in group sessions.
Women's Anger and Sexuality: Part I: Paper-and-Pencil Data
Sally Stabb, PhD
This research emerged from noting parallels in the separate literatures on women's anger and women's sexuality. There are dominant cultural taboos on both sex and anger, and women's gender role socialization tends to focus on suppressing these aspects of self in favor of traditional teachings that women should be passive, receptive, and prioritize attending to others.
Synthesizing prior research indicates that there may be a number of links between women's sexuality and anger, which run in two potential (but not mutually exclusive) directions. Women may express anger about sex and sexually-related issues, or, women may use their sexuality to express anger. However, few prior studies have directly examined the relationship between anger and sexuality.
Participants in this study were 208 women sampled from the general community. Sixty-five percent of the sample was Caucasian, 19% African-American, 4% Latina, 9% Asian, and 3% of mixed ethnicity. The sexual orientation of participants was 66% heterosexual, 30% lesbian, and 4% bisexual. Ages ranged from 18 to 73 years, with a mean of 36.65. Incomes ranged from zero (homeless) to $500,000/year with a mean of $57,000. 39% of participants were single, 23% living with a partner, 26% married, 8% divorced/separated, and 1% widowed.
The results of the study found that women who repressed their anger had negative views of their own bodies and experienced more negative physical symptoms related to sexual activity (for example, pain during sex). Significant positive correlations were obtained between both indices of sexual abuse and sexual symptoms and scores on overall anger (Anger Index), State anger, and Trait anger. A significant negative relationship was found between overall anger and sexual satisfaction. Anger Control In was significantly and positively related to FSQ Satisfaction, Physical Responsiveness, and Beliefs. Heterosexual women had more overall anger than lesbian or bisexual women, as well as less overall positive views of their sexuality than lesbian or bisexual women. Caucasian women had less overall anger than any of the non-white women. Regarding overall view of their sexuality, there were no differences between Latina, Caucasian, and Mixed ethnicity women, however both African American and Asian American women reported less positive views of their sexuality than the other three groups.
This study highlights the complexity of women's sexuality and anger. The fact that repressing anger, State Anger, Trait Anger, and overall anger were related to a greater history of sexual abuse and to more sexual symptoms would be supported by the literature on sexual trauma. However, the fact that Anger In only significantly correlated with one of the FSQ subscales (Body Image) was puzzling. This indicates that women who repress anger feel worse about the sexual attractiveness of their bodies.
Exploratory analyses show that women who try to internally control their experience of anger have more positive scores on a number of FSQ subscales. Perhaps this is a reflection of a strategy in which anger is acknowledged, but regulated in a way that allows for healthier sexuality than repression. The fact that neither State nor Trait anger were related to any of the FSQ scores was unexpected. Previous research supports elevated levels of anger (often justified) in some minority populations; the author knows of no other data on sexual orientation and anger.
Women's Anger and Sexuality: Part II: Internet Survey Data
Sally Stabb, PhD and Karin Bruckner, MA, LPC
In this study, 265 respondents aged 14-63 answered three on-line surveys. Although targeted to women, 5% of the people who responded were male. Three surveys were designed; one to get general demographic information, one that tapped items directly related to the overlap between anger and sexuality, and one about anger beliefs.
Respondents were mainly White (82%), with the remaining 18% about equally distributed between African-American, Hispanic, and Mixed ethnicity women. Small numbers of Asian, Middle-Eastern, and Native American women participated. About 25% of the sample had a high school education, 54% some college, and the remainder college degrees. 58% of the sample had incomes under $45,000 a year, and the primary occupations listed were social services, enterprising (business), student, and homemaker. 35% of the individuals were single; 38% were living with their partners in a committed relationship or marriage; the remainder were separated/divorced, widowed, or remarried. 89% of the sample was heterosexual; 11% were lesbian or bisexual. 54% of the sample had some history of sexual abuse.
On the Anger Beliefs Quiz, women with the highest education levels had the lowest level of dysfunctional anger beliefs. Women with some college and high school education tended to endorse more myths about anger. Gender, abuse history, sexual orientation, and ethnicity groupings did not reflect any differences in anger beliefs. Age was also unrelated to anger beliefs in this sample.
The Anger & Sexuality questionnaire was factor-analyzed to determine how consistent the questions were and to examine possible subscales. Five factors or subscales were extracted:
GCO: Gender and Cultural Oppression
High scores reflect anger about stereotypical sex roles in which women's sexuality is seen in a more negative light than men's; where men's sexuality is privileged over that of women.
AAA: Anger and Arousal
High scores on this scale indicate that arousal is reduced when anger is present
GAC: Cross-Gender Arousal Cues
High scores on this scale indicate anger due to misunderstood attitudes or behaviors by the other sex.
IAM: Infidelity and Manipulation
High scores on this scale indicate acting out anger through infidelility, flirting, or believing that such behaviors on the part of one's partner are your own fault.
SIA: Silent Anger
High scores indicate a preference for not speaking one's anger about sexual issues.
Results show trends for women with abuse histories to experience higher AAA and SIA scores, as well as a trend for AAA to increase with age. SIA was significantly and positively related to endorsement of dysfunctional anger myths from the Anger Beliefs Quiz, while GAC showed a significant inverse relationship with scores on the Anger Beliefs Quiz. In other words, women who endorse anger myths also tend not to speak their anger about sexual issues out loud. Interestingly, women who endorsed a lot of the GAC items, such as "women are turned on by a man's anger" tend not to endorse other anger myths. This unexpected results may be due to the fact that the Anger Beliefs quiz is much more general, and does not tap into deeply held feelings and attitudes that may surround sexuality.
Even though there was a very small proportion of men in this sample, we conducted some exploratory analyses on gender differences. There were very strong and highly significant differences between men and women on both GCO and AAA. Men were much less likely than women to have anger about their higher sexual status and privilege; men also had much lower scores than women on AAA, indicating that anger did not decrease their sexual arousal in the same way as it does for many women.
There were also significant differences between white and non-white participants on AAA, with white women having higher scores on AAA than non-white women. This indicates that white women have a stronger link between their anger and sexual arousal than did the non-white women in this sample. Differences in sexual orientation were not significant for any of the Anger & Sexuality factors.
