The Value of Silence
Apr. 28th, 2013 03:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sparkindarknessToday I’m going to talk about the value of silence
Yes, privileged folks, flock around, I be SILENCING YOU, oh how very mean! How very mean indeed! Please clutch your fee-fees and form an orderly queue to tell us how oppressed and persecuted you are.
Except not, of course, because minorities don’t really have the institutional power to actually silence people; so instead I’ll settle praising silence.
Because sometimes silence is, indeed, golden. It’s precious and it’s something we should value. And that’s hard to do – it’s even harder to say or advocate. That spectre of “silencing” will raise it’s ugly head. We live in a time in many places where “freedom of speech” is squealed so often (and so inaccurately) it no longer has meaning; “censorship” is howled whenever anyone refuses to offer a platform or dares to criticise what is said. With the internet, we have even more chances to speak and be heard - in many ways and in many places we truly do have a thousand voices all speaking at once.
Such a shame that 950 of them are speaking such bullshit.
So eager are people, especially the privileged who are so used to dominating discussions, to protect their right to speak that they often don’t question whether they actually have anything relevant to say – or the standing to speak in a discussion and rarely does this matter more than when we are talking about marginalised people where privileged people truly do need to learn the value of silence.
It should go without saying the most basic of silences – we don’t need you to speak for us and GBLT voices should be the ones raised to speak about GBLT people. That doesn’t mean never speak up, don’t oppose bigotry and don’t support us. But it means you aren’t the spokespeople, you aren’t the experts. You shouldn’t be the ones writing books on what slurs mean, or what it means to be GBLT, what it’s like to live as one of us or what it’s like to face homophobia or transphobia. You shouldn’t be the spokesperson at the conference or the convention, you shouldn’t be the “expert” called upon and straight people shouldn’t be the primary source when trying to learn about GBLT people. You certainly shouldn’t be posing as us and passing yourself off as “authentic”.
Some discussions do not need your opinions. If a group of GBLT people are discussing something – maybe their priorities, or focus of their attention, maybe their opinion on the actions of another GBLT person and their activism, maybe the use of various terminology or any number of discussions or arguments we could be having – then we don’t need your opinion or input. Really. You do not have the insight to enter the conversation, the lived experience to have and knowledgeable contribution. It would be like me running up to Steven Hawking and giving him my not-even-remotely-learned opinion on quantum physics (or, for that matter, any physics). Why should he listen to my ignorant drivel? Most sensible people would say he shouldn’t. So why should we listen to yours? Especially if you’re entering our ongoing discussion.
This is especially true of in-house discussions, every marginalised group has issues that they’re hashing out and debating, where there are strong differences of opinion and even internal strife. Why are you stepping into that? Why are you inserting yourself into a family discussion? What do you honestly think you can add here? It is the height of arrogance to insert yourself here! Some things don’t involve you, some things are too complex for an outsider’s opinion to have relevance .
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Yes, privileged folks, flock around, I be SILENCING YOU, oh how very mean! How very mean indeed! Please clutch your fee-fees and form an orderly queue to tell us how oppressed and persecuted you are.
Except not, of course, because minorities don’t really have the institutional power to actually silence people; so instead I’ll settle praising silence.
Because sometimes silence is, indeed, golden. It’s precious and it’s something we should value. And that’s hard to do – it’s even harder to say or advocate. That spectre of “silencing” will raise it’s ugly head. We live in a time in many places where “freedom of speech” is squealed so often (and so inaccurately) it no longer has meaning; “censorship” is howled whenever anyone refuses to offer a platform or dares to criticise what is said. With the internet, we have even more chances to speak and be heard - in many ways and in many places we truly do have a thousand voices all speaking at once.
Such a shame that 950 of them are speaking such bullshit.
So eager are people, especially the privileged who are so used to dominating discussions, to protect their right to speak that they often don’t question whether they actually have anything relevant to say – or the standing to speak in a discussion and rarely does this matter more than when we are talking about marginalised people where privileged people truly do need to learn the value of silence.
It should go without saying the most basic of silences – we don’t need you to speak for us and GBLT voices should be the ones raised to speak about GBLT people. That doesn’t mean never speak up, don’t oppose bigotry and don’t support us. But it means you aren’t the spokespeople, you aren’t the experts. You shouldn’t be the ones writing books on what slurs mean, or what it means to be GBLT, what it’s like to live as one of us or what it’s like to face homophobia or transphobia. You shouldn’t be the spokesperson at the conference or the convention, you shouldn’t be the “expert” called upon and straight people shouldn’t be the primary source when trying to learn about GBLT people. You certainly shouldn’t be posing as us and passing yourself off as “authentic”.
Some discussions do not need your opinions. If a group of GBLT people are discussing something – maybe their priorities, or focus of their attention, maybe their opinion on the actions of another GBLT person and their activism, maybe the use of various terminology or any number of discussions or arguments we could be having – then we don’t need your opinion or input. Really. You do not have the insight to enter the conversation, the lived experience to have and knowledgeable contribution. It would be like me running up to Steven Hawking and giving him my not-even-remotely-learned opinion on quantum physics (or, for that matter, any physics). Why should he listen to my ignorant drivel? Most sensible people would say he shouldn’t. So why should we listen to yours? Especially if you’re entering our ongoing discussion.
This is especially true of in-house discussions, every marginalised group has issues that they’re hashing out and debating, where there are strong differences of opinion and even internal strife. Why are you stepping into that? Why are you inserting yourself into a family discussion? What do you honestly think you can add here? It is the height of arrogance to insert yourself here! Some things don’t involve you, some things are too complex for an outsider’s opinion to have relevance .
Read More