I was going to die, sooner or later, whether or not I had even spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you…. What are the words you do not yet have? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? We have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language.”
I began to ask each time: “What’s the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?” Unlike women in other countries, our breaking silence is unlikely to have us jailed, “disappeared” or run off the road at night. Our speaking out will irritate some people, get us called bitchy or hypersensitive and disrupt some dinner parties. And then our speaking out will permit other women to speak, until laws are changed and lives are saved and the world is altered forever.
Next time, ask: What’s the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare. Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it’s personal. And the world won’t end.
And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don’t miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And you will still flirt and paint your nails, dress up and party, because, as I think Emma Goldman said, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.” And at last you’ll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking.
from Lorde’s THE TRANSFORMATION OF SILENCE INTO LANGUAGE AND ACTION
– Happy Birthday Audre Lorde, born 18 February 1934.
American writer, feminist, lesbian and civil rights activist born Audrey Geraldine Lorde to parents from Barbados and Carriacou. Her work gained both wide acclaim and wide criticism due to the elements of social liberalism and sexuality presented, and her emphasis on revolution and change.
All of the above taken from Wayne Chen’s facebook post this morning. For those who keep saying I’m ‘brave’ to speak out as i sometimes do (is that a veiled warning i often wonder, rather than a compliment–‘gonna be working at loop after this…yuh brave’ as @Grindacologist said), please heed Audre Lorde’s words and join in breaking the silence…
Active Voice 