Silence is Killing Us

On silence, false safety, and the belonging that requires your erasure.

I learned silence early.

As a queer, fat, Black, multiply neurodivergent woman, I learned that my voice was too much. Too loud. Too honest.

Even when I whisper, even when I covered my words in flowers and acquiescence, even sometimes when I was silent I was still too loud.

Imagine that, my silence was too loud. My step-mother walking into a room and asking my mother “why does her face look like that”. My mother saying nothing. Silent.

And even as I learned it the silence chafed. It inevitably led to so much noise. Inside of me and out, it was the loudest thing I experienced.

And I watched others learn silence, chafe against it or embrace it.

Those who embraced it so often used it as a weapon against the rest of us. Their expectation and need for silence adding to the chafing, adding to the pressure.

I imagine they feel it keeps them safe. I have to hope it makes them comfortable at the very least. I have to hope there is something they are gaining by holding the rest of us so tightly in the vice.

And so often the message is:
If you want to belong shut up.

Shut up when you feel hurt.
Shut up when you see harm.
Shut up when you’re not sure.
Shut up when you’re confused.
Shut up, *shut up*, **shut up**!
But what about when the shutting up hurts?

It hurts.

I feel physical pain when trying to swallow my words which I want to use to protect myself and protect others. The pressure feels all consuming and leaves me fighting against myself.

And there’s something I’m betraying in myself.

Do you feel that? That the silence is overtaking relational safety and the safety of communities all while pretending it is the safety? While saying “it is the naming that is the problem, I can keep you safe.”

It hurts us and it hurts our relationships and yet it is so seductive.

We get stuck.

I've been thinking about this as I experience certain conversations in autism spaces.

There’s this thing in autism spaces people talk about “sensitivity justice”. To be honest I see it mostly from white autistics claiming some innate sense of justice which they feel they notice and react to more strongly than others. I have my feelings about it (which can be heard in an upcoming episode of the Aces Up Your Sleeve Podcast).

The thing is, those same white autistics are some of the staunchest warriors in the fight for silence.

And so silence becomes justice and voice becomes injustice.

And the hurt disappears from the view of those who claim to care. To be digested alone.

That’s not community. That’s not belonging. That is violence.

We know it’s white supremacies handbook dictating this. Remember “ruinous empathy” and “manipulative insincerity” from the book referenced in “At The Center of Racial Communication Challenges”? There is undeniably a racial aspect of this demand for silence. That affects how those of us who don’t fall in line, who speak up and out, are seen. “Obnoxiously Aggressive”.

I don't know yet what belonging without silence looks like. But I know it doesn't feel like this. It doesn't require me to disappear. It doesn’t see voice as threat. It doesn’t tolerate my mistreatment.