"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."
~ Audre Lorde
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