The Lunch Report: Twelve Angry Women

Someone strides into my office and blurts out “What is this? I don’t understand it,” shaking a document in my face. His lack of comprehension must be my fault.

While discussing an ambiguous agreement with another one of my mild-mannered colleagues, he lurches back in his chair and yells “So what if there’s language missing. Everyone knows what we mean.” I can’t recall the “everyone-knows-what-we-mean” explanation ever persuading a client or a jury, but something tells me I ought to nod emphatically in agreement.

I’ve probably mentioned it before, but I’m a lawyer at a top corporate law firm in NYC. Ever since I’ve been at this firm I’ve struggled with cultural issues. It’s an American firm. I’m American. It’s a New York-centric firm. I’m from New York.

The cultural issues I wrestle with are not as subtle as issues of national or metropolitan identity. I wrestle with emotional identity. With few exceptions, everyone around me speaks a foreign emotional language. But like any foreign language, we usually marvel at the elegant inflections and unique sounds before we realize we cannot understand a word being said.

In a group meeting forming part of my interview three years ago, I witnessed a freedom of expression that seduced me. No awkward pauses or three minute cautionary prefaces—everyone chimed in freely with random observations, so much so that they forgot they had directed questions at me. It was suggestive of the liberation I would taste if I joined this firm. Soon I would be able to express enthusiasm without shocking my colleagues. I might even use exclamations!, BOLD ALL CAPs and emoticons ;-)

So I joined the firm.

It never occurred to me my colleagues would be just as uninhibited when exploring other parts of the emotional spectrum, namely anger. Or, what I call “anger,” because therein lies the cultural rub.

I see crass and immature displays of anger; my colleagues see people “taking charge” and “showing interest.” So, until I raise my voice, interrupt others and make my nostrils flare on command, no one will believe I am truly engaged or on top of my game.

Forget the bestseller "Getting Past No: Negotiating Your Way from Confrontation to Cooperation"* that was distributed as mandatory reading when I was a junior associate. The books I need now are "Getting Past Rationality: Screaming Your Way to Success" and "Verbally Bitchslapping Your Colleague Into Agreement: The Power of Monosyllabic Epithets." As long as I live in their world, I must speak their language, right?

Actually the American Psychiatric Association doesn’t see it that way. The APA’s efforts to demarcate the norms of emotional expression in American culture mean certain forms of anger constitute “mental illness.”* The offspring of Intermittent Explosion Disorder,* Temper Dysregulation Disorder (TDD), promises to make its way into DSM-V:*

n. A disorder characterized by severe recurrent temper outbursts in response to common stressors. Usage: “Because he suffered from TDD, he lashed out at everyone when he was diagnosed with ED and realized he would never experience a two hour erection without medication.”*

Could it be that most of my colleagues are mentally ill? Possibly, but, gosh, for mentally ill folks they sure generate a lot of revenue and rack up a lot of legal accolades every year. If their temporal lobes, where anger resides, were “cleaned up” (a lobotomy being one form of cleansing), they might not be as successful. Recipes for success are always highly individualized.

At my prior firm, I was accused of being a “guy” at the office. I don’t grab my crotch while speaking or use football analogies, but I don’t sugar coat my criticism either. I don’t soften statements by turning them into questions through a pseudo-English inflection? I say it like it is.

Yet, despite leaving the sugar, spice and everything nice at home, I’m just not angry enough. Anger just isn’t my style. So why the title “Twelve Angry Women” then? It’s hard enough to find twelve senior women at my office, much less twelve angry women.

The original “Twelve Angry Men” (1954) was premised on the frictions and frustrations of twelve male jurors trying to overcome cultural prejudice to reach a consensus. There were no women jurors in the script. Was it unimaginable that women might also get angry in the same context or is it that the writer just couldn’t figure out a single adjective that would capture the emotion of a mixed gender group striving for agreement?

She calls it anger; he calls it enthusiasm; the APA calls it illness. Isn’t it just style? The demands on rationality and analysis implicit in the lawyering process should pave a wide common ground between the genders, pushing objectivity to the fore and emotions—which always exacerbate the gender divide—to the back. Not here. I must be in left field.*

Notes
*William Ury (1991).

*See “When Anger Is an Illness,” Wall Street Journal, D1, March 9, 2010.

*IED was recognized by the psychiatric profession as early as 1980.

*DSM V stands for the fifth edition of the APA’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, expected to be published in 2013. Considered the bible in America for mental disorders, DSM V is also expected to introduce Negativistic Personality Disorder and Sluggish Cognitive Tempo. Sounds like a must read!

*Advertisements for erectile dysfunction (ED) medications warning of erections lasting more than four hours would appear to suggest that erections of shorter duration, say three hours, are perfectly normal.

*Originally written in 1954 by Reginald Rose, the teleplay was made into a film in 1957, starring Henry Fonda and remade in 1997 with Jack Lemmon.

*”Twelve Angry Women” was adapted from the original play by Sherman Sergel in 2004. There were no male jurors in the script.

*“Hey, you’re in left field!” Act I, p. 14, Twelve Angry Men.