Women’s anger, concludes the US historian Rebecca Traister in her new book, Good and Mad, is despised by society – “vilified and marginalised in ways that … [reflect] the very same biases that provoked it”. This is a longer, better-researched version of what you already know: the sanity of an angry woman is immediately questioned. “Hysteria” was invented as a quicker way of saying “when men do it, it’s powerful, but this is just … squeaky”.

There is one exception: maternal rage – or, to give it its full, saccharine name, “mama-bear anger” – is not merely acceptable, but regarded with admiration, even awe. This is at its most pronounced when social conservatives talk about motherly fury in the animal kingdom: “Come between her and her young and that sweet-looking wombat/panda/seemingly harmless animal will hoof you in the head until you are dead.” It is biological determinism with a purpose (isn’t it always?): so long as the rage is rooted in altruism, it poses no challenge to the feminine ideal of someone who always puts herself last. The reverse-engineered lesson for a woman is that anger, while it may technically come from within, is actually generated by the biological externality of a baby, a bit like breast milk. It is not innate. It is just a magical thing she can do for the good of the tribe.

It is a dire mistake to think this means mothers are taken more seriously. If your feelings are only acknowledged and respectable because they are shared by a bear – well, this is not what being taken seriously typically looks like.

While the status accorded to the mother is double-edged to the point of being undesirable, the non-status attached to the non-mother is also real. If a child is the badge of altruism, the lack of one conveys that you are fighting only for yourself. A century since women were admitted to politics, they struggle to be child-free in that arena, which requires them to be angry (fierce, strong, passionate) yet simultaneously frowns upon this. The spectacle of the-inherently-untrustworthy-non-mother-in-politics is the only time I feel sorry for Theresa May, apart from all the other times.