This essay is not about gender differences in anger, but rather concerns two primary modes of anger expression which, though labeled masculine and feminine, occur in varying combinations in both females and males. My emphasis is not on anger as a psychosocial phenomenon, but as an energy, a passion, a raw force.

Masculine anger is mainly a thrusting passion, feminine anger an enveloping passion. Masculine anger delivers lightning bolts, feminine anger an encircling conflagration. Where masculine anger is missile-like, feminine anger is a tidal wave, a centripetal avalanche. Both move toward, both speak through flame and fierceness, and both are equally intense and powerful, but they differ radically in style and shape. The goal may be the same, but the approach is not.

Where masculine anger is a phallic fire-bolt, feminine anger is an all-enclosing ring of fire, a lava lassoing. Shiva and Shakti. Step from the cosmic to the archetypal, and consider Zeus, armed with his thunderbolt, his huge and enormously potent electricity making the other gods tremble, with the notable exception of his wife Hera, whose less spectacular but nevertheless still riveting fury surrounds, closes in on, and consumes those who have dared cross her. Though she does not destroy Zeus, she is certainly not a passive spouse. The fact that Hera is not Zeus's equal is not a statement about his energy or power actually being greater than hers. but rather a reflection of the culture in which they were conceived and granted Olympian status. Shakti and Shiva are purer models for the feminine and masculine poles of anger, since they are equals, their differences being more complementary than oppositional.

The imagery of anger in its masculine and feminine modes of expression is intertwined with the root imagery of sexuality, at least in its shapings and directionality. The metaphors of potent thrust and equally potent wrapping-around, so basic to erotic imagination, are central in the conception of anger in purely energetic terms -- they may throb and pulsate less juicily when linguistically sheathed in anger's employ, but they are nonetheless still very much present. It is no accident that metaphors for anger and lust share plenty of common ground -- both are anchored in an intensely arousing passion, the imperatives of which can easily bypass or override commands from "above" (one's headquarters), as when we are "consumed" by anger or lust.

If anger -- at least in energetic terms -- can be conceived of as a fieriness originating in the belly (locus of the third chakra), and lust as a fieriness originating in the genital region (locus of the second chakra), it is easy to see that too much focus on one (or domination by one) might outflame or override the natural intent or behavior of the other. For example, if the fiery energy in a man's third chakra gets out of control, is repressed, or is harnessed to an exaggerated appetite for retribution, he may find that his second chakra -- his sex center -- is doing the work of his third chakra -- his power center -- acting as a discharge valve for his anger, or, at the extreme, as a rape outlet. (Such a man literally is "fucking angry.")

Or excessive fire in the third chakra might take a different route, "rising to the occasion" and finding some translation and expression through inflammatory thoughts, which may in turn generate such stress that the release possible through sexual discharge becomes exaggeratedly attractive. However, when our sexuality gets assigned -- or sentenced -- to stress-release, manipulation, ego-building, rage management, or the obligation to make us feel better, we are only, so to speak, "screwing" ourselves -- hence the unwittingly precise lament, "I got fucked!"

At its worst, masculine anger is a blind, steel-encased missile, headed by a poison-filled, indictment-clutching fist; all it wants to do is blast the other into subservience or even oblivion. It is a warhead too dense to hear any recall instructions from saner quarters -- there is an enemy that must be obliterated, or at least punished. Such anger is obsessed with penetration, and, even more so, with unloading its bombs, whether coolly or hot-headedly. It has no heart.

And feminine anger, at its worst, is just as blind, being a recklessly unbounded, self-fueling wildfire, rooted in a desire to annihilate the other. Whatever obstructs it must be surrounded and gutted; its flaming pseudopods enloop offending material, then shrink the circle until that undesirable "other" is eaten by fire.

Such excesses, however, are not peculiarities of a few of us; we all carry them in us, if only in seed form. Their epicenter lies in toxic shame, toxic pride, toxic waste, for which no containers are completely leak-proof. What is needed -- and it is far from easy -- is a radical conversion. An alchemy that does not reject, but accepts and transmutes, and, yes, loves.

The fieriness and potent intensity at the heart of both feminine and masculine anger does not ask for smothering, spiritual rehabilitation,nor psychological marginalization, but rather for a mindful embrace that requires no dilution of passion, no lowering of the heat, no muting of the essential voice in the flames.

As I conclude this essay, thrust is present, but so too is an encompassing force, both working together, hard and soft, penetrating and surrounding, birthing through their encounter something that simultaneously is both, and yet is more. If such fire destroys, it is only in order to create. In its flames, resurrection is more than a myth. In its fiery heart, love burns brilliantly, ever replenished, illuminating more than we can imagine.