Men make angry music and it’s called rock-and-roll women include anger in their vocabulary and suddenly they’re angry and militant.

DiFranco points to a gendered double standard in how anger is culturally received. When men express rage loudly—especially through music—it is often aestheticized and legitimized as authentic, edgy, or commercially viable (e.g., “rock-and-roll”). When women express comparable anger, it is more likely to be pathologized or politicized: they are labeled “angry,” “militant,” or unreasonable, as if anger were an illegitimate emotion for them. The quote critiques how language polices women’s emotional range and discourages dissent, while granting men a broader license to be confrontational. It also implicitly defends anger as a valid, even necessary, part of women’s self-expression and social critique.