November 20, 2022

"‘Scream groups’ are forming across the world, where women gather in parks and public places to release their frustrations."

So says Samantha Lock (in The Guardian). 

“Women want to scream,” [a 54-year old female Australian said]. “There are plenty of spaces for men to yell [but] we don’t often get to raise our voices [and] when we do we’re met with disapproval.”...

One of the first groups to attract attention was in the US, in Boston... “It felt good to be able to be out of control,” one participant said of the event. Another said: “It’s the closest I have come to finding a coven.”

In Asia, kindred rebellions are taking place. Deepika, 27 [said]... “There is a theme in India of keeping women silent.... This is my small way of saying ‘no, we are here, we have something to say and you’re going to hear it’... We have things to be angry about but if we express it we’re seen as crazy or hysterical or out of control...."...

... Scottish-born Julie Scott runs Screech on the Beach from the Hague. It’s a morning ritual that starts in darkness and ends with a moment of meditation on the sand... For Scott, “there is no judgment, there is no shame” in screaming into the sea...

62 comments:

tim maguire said...

Where are men allowed to yell but women aren’t? I can’t think of one. (Not that I have a problem with scream groups, if that’s what they want to do. I just don’t like the way it’s pushed as some breakthrough for women’s empowerment.)

Dave Begley said...

No need for this in America.

Eleanor said...

And here I thought women had reached peak stupid already.

Tina Trent said...

I can smell the stale Patchouli.

rhhardin said...

Maybe if you can do stuff yourself you don't need to be listened to.

donald said...

Bless their hearts.

mezzrow said...

Arthur Janov nods. Everything old is new again.

Wilbur said...

I noticed years ago that women yell differently from men when excited. Women just go Wooooooo!

If you don't believe me, just watch the first minute of The Today Show. It's a Wooooooo!-fest.

tim in vermont said...

Let's put women in charge of the nuclear weapons.

Breezy said...

Hope no one calls 911 when they hear the screams.

wendybar said...

PROGRESSIVES not getting their way again??

Leland said...

I sense fresh memes in the making.

tim in vermont said...

Inchoate rage sounds like an affliction visited on people who don't have the cognitive facilities to process and understand their situation, and so take steps to improve it. Just saying.

I don't think that this "scream" session thing proves that women are stupid, some women are, just like some men, it just shows that some people have found a way to exploit stupid women for political purposes.

exhelodrvr1 said...

Inchoate Rage is the name of my cover band.

clint said...

Is there a sudden shortage of boy bands?

Jamie said...

What's the Redford movie - All Is Lost? He's silent throughout (maybe there's one word spoken), as one small mishap leads to another and larger one aboard his sailboat. I don't want to spoil it, do suffice it to say that the sense of increasing frustration and impending doom is palpable and entirely delivered in silence, though he's all alone out at sea.

Yes, I know it's a climate change metaphor movie. But it's well done.

Andrew said...

“There are plenty of spaces for men to yell [but] we don’t often get to raise our voices [and] when we do we’re met with disapproval."

Are these women single? Because the space to yell for a woman is usually called a marriage. And "disapproval" is usually, "Honey, it's okay. It's really not that big a deal. I don't understand why you're so upset."

Jim said...

Is this a return to something like the "primal scream" therapy of the 1970s? I hadn't heard about that for years

Jim said...

Is this a return to something like the "primal scream" therapy of the 1970s? I hadn't heard about that for years

Karen of Texas said...

Cannot wait for the transgender women to wade into this Fest.

Too insensitive?

~ Gordon Pasha said...

If women really want to scream then kendo is a natural outlet for them. Ki-ken-tai ichi is a thing with that sport.

https://youtu.be/0UOM6T_5eds

Mr Wibble said...

If you're looking for a General Theory of How The Hell We Got To This Point In Our Politics, you could do a lot worse than, "Affluence broke western women, and they dragged the rest of us into their madness."

Kate said...

My mother, who was a jazz alto, would put on music and go around the house singing (beautifully) at full volume. Choral singing, especially, is robust, engaging the diaphragm. Proper technique makes for a loud voice. An Outdoor Voice.

I pity these women. We have beautiful ways to express strong feelings and shake the sound barrier. Screaming harms the throat. And it's so limited in what it can express.

Mark said...

The perpetual victimhood of women really gets tedious after a while, doesn't it?

typingtalker said...

Like preaching to the converted.

Sebastian said...

“Women want to scream,” [a 54-year old female Australian said]. “There are plenty of spaces for men to yell [but] we don’t often get to raise our voices [and] when we do we’re met with disapproval.”

60 years of feminism, and still women whine that they need to prove their agency by screaming?

Bob Boyd said...

When screaming into the sea, hold your head under the water.

Bob Boyd said...

When I see men yelling it's most often so they can be heard over the sound of power tools and heavy equipment while we're building something to try to make some rich guy's wife happy. Sometimes it works...for a while.

cubanbob said...

Everytime I think we hit peak stupid we soon hit another peak of stupid. The world needs less noise, silence is golden.

Larry J said...

Women seem to have strange and misinformed ideas about men. We’re taught from childhood to suck it up and hold things in, which may be one of the reasons why we tend to die at earlier ages. No one other than an old beer commercial from the 1980s ever told men the we could “have it all.” I don’t know where women ever got that idea.

tommyesq said...

Compare this to the brave women in Iran.

tommyesq said...

Wait til they find out primal scream therapy was invented by a man...

Meade said...

Colicky virtue signaling.

robother said...

After, do they all go out for a frozen treat?

HoodlumDoodlum said...

Let it all out

Milo Minderbinder said...

Yeah, I can experience this locally without traveling or watching the video.

Naturally, men piss this reaction off. But I wonder whether women would want to scream if men would embrace more responsibility. Roe and Casey enabled men to defer responsibility for their bodies and actions, e.g., defer maturity. So, you go, girl, your bodies, your choices, see you next weekend, maybe, hah, hah, hah.... Maybe the screaming would die down if men simply said, "you know, it's my body and I have choices, too, and perhaps the consequences of sex ought to be borne equally." Men have a moral and emotional obligation to women and society for the consequences of their actions (or inactions). Perhaps men should begin post-Hobbs discussions by growing up faster and accepting responsibility. That might lessen the screaming....

Big Mike said...

Compare this to the brave women in Iran.

American feminists are posturers and poseurs. In Iran the women risk violence and execution by horrific means for the most basic human rights. When they scream it’s because they are being beaten to death with heavy rocks.

Not much comparison.

Butkus51 said...

This is why God invented a di.......

sorry

Butkus51 said...

This is why God invented a di.......

sorry

West TX Intermediate Crude said...

What will these women do when they come to the realization that whatever they do, it is because men allow them to do it?

Temujin said...

You posted awhile back about 'primal scream'. I remember commenting that in the 70s in college, I had a housemate, a woman, who would occasionally just open the door to her room and start primal screaming. I was new in the house and my bedroom was upstairs, hers was downstairs at the foot of the steps, so her screams permeated up and throughout the walls of the house.

The first time I thought someone was being killed. But I was assured, by the other women in the house, that she was just practicing things she was learning in her psyche classes. I didn't buy it. She had the 'crazy eyes'. I stayed in that house for a short while, then moved on.

Let's just say that screaming is not an appealing recreation.

Milo- this was well before the Dobbs case. Crazy has been around for a long time and it doesn't need a movement to encourage more of it.

Lurker21 said...

Wasn't there much screaming in public when Trump was elected? I seem to recall "scream-ins" then, and a protestor did scream as Trump was being inaugurated. "Protestor Screaming At The Sky" is a popular meme. Up there with The Simpsons' "Old Man Yells At Cloud."

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

How weird. All the public places I go to yell, concerts and sporting events, my wife is right there with me. What’s up with these segregated scream spots overseas?

Charlie said...

Obviously these people have never been to my house.

Amexpat said...

Here in Oslo, Marina Abramović made an art installation where the public is invited to scream in the vicinity of where Edvard Munch had a nervous breakdown that inspired "The Scream". There's a video of people screaming at this point that some find moving. Me, I move away when someone starts screaming.

An distressing sample:
https://m.facebook.com/watch/?v=489399072891426&paipv=0&eav=AfaJeAP7M-e_B7F9vgnXEP7MDrakURkFAui6PzsEiQIcx2mcnyVT9in7yoXxB7wFhiQ&_rdr

Iman said...

“Put anothah shrimp on the bahbee!!!!!”

Gusty Winds said...

Blogger tim maguire said...
Where are men allowed to yell but women aren’t?

Worse than that. Get 50K of them together as Christian men who want to work and do right by their families, call them The Promise Keepers, and the feminists who want to scream in the park call these guys dangerous fascist.

I'd want to scream if I thought like that too.

Randomizer said...

Are women insulted by articles like this?

The women in the article are from different countries and cultures, so it's unlikely that the problem is with society or the patriarchy. The reader is left wondering why women require an emotional outburst, and if the need to scream is as common amongst women as the article suggests.

I know a few women who would indulge in a good tantrum, but most are as steady as most of the men. This article perpetuates an old stereotype of hysterical women that just doesn't apply.

JAORE said...

"This is my small way of saying ‘no, we are here, we have something to say and you’re going to hear it’"

I believe you. Let's hear that "something".

AAAhhheeeeeiiiiiiii!

Yeah.... Good talk.

mikee said...

When my daughter was 3 she started telling me to "stop yelling" when I was merely saying something she disagreed with, such as, "Time for bed." In a normal tone of voice, at normal volume.

She grew out of it. Her mom and I helped her along by really yelling at her when necessary.

Yelling follows Tuco's Rule: If you're going to yell, don't talk about it, YELL.

Michael said...

How many scream groups have formed around the world. 8? 20? None?

Eva Marie said...

The difference between men and women is that men are encouraged to reign in their natural inclinations and women are encouraged to give in to their natures.

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

Scream, scream, scream, scream
Scream, scream, scream, scream
When I want you to not mansplain
When I'm pissed off and you must take the blame
When you need to shut your pie hole, all I have to do is
Scream, scream, scream, scream


- The Neverly Sisters - Meadehouse Records - 2022

JK Brown said...

I'm reminded of long ago at a mall. A young girl of likely less than 2 yrs old was in a stroller yelling about everything. She wasn't throwing a tantrum or anything, just yelling. She was being attended by a young mother who looked terribly embarrassed. The mother smiled when I remarked, "Found a new toy, huh?".

So smile and indulge these women as you would any toddler with a new toy. It's when they feel they can scream in inappropriate places that they should be rebuked.

n.n said...

When a baby is aborted, does anyone hear her scream? Put on your pussyhats.

That said, women scream in all the same places as men. Why the diversitism? Ole. Ole.

veni vidi vici said...

Getting really tired of what I call "dumbcunting". Namely, the propensity for a certain type of woman (and we all know the type) who always phrases utter banalities that are less true than bullshitarian faith-based shibboleths about how women uniquely "don't get to" do this or that.

Nobody's stopping you, hun, so stop being an insufferable twat. Get in the car, drive, roll up the windows and holler and bang on the steering wheel. That's what nearly all of the rest of us do, so GFY with the dumbcunting; you're proving the Mullahs had the right idea about women, so you're no friend of mine.

Joanne Jacobs said...

About 45 years ago, when I worked for a small magazine housed in an old Victorian, I had to say to a new hire: "Please, no primal screaming in the office." She agreed to scream on her own time in her own space.

Gospace said...

Primal therapy redux. Seems psychological fads wax and wane but never die out.

Ampersand said...

I live in an urban area in a "safe" neighborhood. I listen for sounds of people in jeopardy. The only men I hear screaming are mentally ill. Women scream for a host of reasons, mostly not out of fear. Joy, surprise, humor, anger, etc.
Screaming is an important self defense tool. It's made less effective by uses unrelated to jeapordy.

Bunkypotatohead said...

Apparently there was a coven of them at the next table of the restaurant we were dining in last night.
They get a drink or two in them and the screeching never ends.

Mary Beth said...

Screaming and yelling are different. Yelling is powerful, screaming is not.

Arizona Pirate said...

My teenaged niece does scream therapy. She goes to semi-pro Wrestling matches and screams as load as she can during the matches. The wrestlers love it, the owners love it, and she feels better afterwards. It's all a matter of finding the appropriate place for your outlet.