Rachel Martin, NPR website, October 2:

Following a hearing last week that sought to look into sexual assault allegations brought against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, the FBI is investigating further and discussions of assault have been kicked off around the country.

Traister says Ford's polite and constrained demeanor was in stark contrast to Kavanaugh's use of a full range of expression.

"He had in his arsenal the ability to use anger, fury, tears in a way that he felt confident would resonate with the American people. I don't think that Dr. Christine Blasey Ford — I can't imagine a scenario in which she would have gone into that hearing room armed with that same weapon, that same tool; that she could yell and be furious in her retelling of what happened to her," Traister tells NPR's Rachel Martin.

Traister's new book, Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger, is a deeper exploration of that dynamic. She says the idea for the book came to her just before the 2017 Women's March. She describes a buildup of anger — her own anger, the anger of other women that spilled over from the 2016 election of President Trump, and anger at many of the white women who voted for Trump in that election — as a catalyst for her book.

Though the Women's March had a massive turnout and has been followed by "a year that has women protesters opposing the health care repeal, teacher strikes, women running for office in historic numbers, and then #MeToo," Traister says the potency of women's anger and activism is still routinely diminished.

In an interview with Morning Edition, she discusses why she chose to examine women's anger and how it has been both politically transformative and perilous for women throughout U.S. history.

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Plenty of folks here are familiar with her work.  My wife and I went to Traister's talk last night before a packed house of several hundreds in DC.  I like her and I think she is sharp.  Blessedly, she is also very funny.

The matter of race within feminist movements, now as well as historically, received significant attention, including in the Q&A.  The gist of what she said is that white women active in feminist movements have much to answer for, now and historically, when it comes to inclusivity with black women.  She said this is something she actively works on and implicitly was urging the tilting-young (20's and 30s--my wife I felt, um, old in that company.) audience to do as well.  She said she believes one of the critical questions for our time is whether coalition among the various social movements is possible, across the different lines of tension, and that she does not have an answer but hopes that those involved will try.

The audience was overwhelmingly white, young, and female.  I was one of maybe 10 or so dudes present.  Traister, on being asked for dating advice by one audience member, along lines of how do you suggest attempting to locate a good man?, expressed her view that there are good men, but that she is a disaster when it comes to dating and parenting advice, both.  She went on to say to the woman who asked that question: if you meet a man who is interested in listening to you and knowing you for who you are, all of it, including what makes you furious about the world, then you may have found someone good for you.  She allowed that there were long stretches in her 20s and 30s when she simply could not and did not date.  She also mentioned that her 7 year old daughter stayed up late watching the entirety of a Nixon-Cuomo debate and woke her mom up in the wee hours of the morning saying she couldn't sleep and was wondering why she was feeling anxious.  Traister offered this comically as an example of what a bad parent she is--for being unable to help her 7 year old girl fully reconcile irreconcilables.  The audience was charmed and laughed uproariously.  

She strongly and openly supported Clinton for the '16 nomination but noted that her own politics and issue stances are much closer to Sanders' than Clinton's and that, had Sanders won the nomination, she would happily have voted for him.  BTW.  Just to open up that particular boil around these parts, because there aren't enough of them open as is, right?