“My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you.” – Audre Lorde.
I remember reading these lines back in 2019, and even after five years, they have stuck with me and continue to influence how I perceive and react to the injustice happening around me.
Audre Lorde was a black, lesbian, intersectional feminist, who wrote immensely about sexism, racism, and homophobia that she encountered on various stages of her life. Whenever I read Lorde’s work, I feel as if someone collected all of my jumbled thoughts and feelings and put them into words that fittingly convey my feelings as a queer woman.
The struggle against a heteronormative, patriarchal world has been around since the time women and queer people have been around. But as I read these lines by Lorde along with her other works, I asked myself, “What is your contribution in the fight against this oppressive structure?” and started to reflect on my actions towards the injustice prevailing around me.
I would like to take the opportunity of sharing my Feminist Joys with you all by revisiting the words of Audre Lorde and talking about how Lorde has influenced my feminist journey and helped me turn from a socially awkward kid to an unapologetic feminist and a queer person who no longer hides their identity.
Up until my early days of college, I was never really a person who would initiate any social interaction. I used to be an introverted, socially awkward kid who preferred silence over conversations and confrontation. Whenever I would see something wrong happening around me – people getting mocked for behaving in a particular way, any violent encounter between people in the form of fights, women shunning themselves because a man is speaking – I would feel terribly bad about it but could not get myself to take some action against it and then, end up feeling guilty which made things worse.
So, when I read Lorde’s take on silence, I realised that my silence protected no one. It did not protect the person who was being subjected to wrongdoings and it did not protect me as I would constantly be in a state of guilt and blaming myself for not taking a stand. As I read more of Lorde’s writings, I realised that I needed to stop being silent and start speaking up. But the question that came after was, “How?“
I used to wonder if verbally speaking to people was the only way to break silence. The answer to the question is “No.” The silence in Lorde’s work refers not solely to verbal silence but silence in terms of not preventing the injustice happening around you. Silence refers to becoming a part of that injustice where you remain silent and do not do anything. It refers to you not taking any action to protect the other person or community because it does not affect you. Silence is being unaffected when the people and world around you are torn to shreds because the injustice done to others does not affect your existence.
I started my feminist journey by breaking my silence and by doing it one step at a time. Since I was not comfortable interacting with people and sharing my thoughts verbally in a social setting, I decided to start writing. When I wrote about the injustice happening around me and condemned it loud and clear through my writings, I was making a statement, taking action against the perpetrators of injustice, against the system that oppresses the minorities and continues to marginalise the marginalised, and hence, I was no longer silent.
Over time, I started to share my writings with other people and started discussing with them the various possibilities, perspectives, and lenses through which we can look at those particular incidents. I started to get out of my comfort zone by interacting with more people and engaging in healthy debates, arguments, or confrontations if we felt something was wrong. By gradually increasing my interaction with people, I realised that you can break your silence in so many other ways apart from speaking and writing!
Every action that you do, no matter how big or small you think it might be, has an impact and when there is an impact, silence ceases to exist. For instance, as a queer woman, I used to stay in a constant fear of being isolated by others if I wear a certain kind of clothing or carry my pride batch with me. Due to this fear, I started to change the way I dress, avoid talking about the queer community in public places, and started to feel lost and out of touch with myself.
Lorde’s take on silence made me reflect on my actions towards the injustice prevailing around me, realize the importance of collective actions and help me get in touch with my identity. So, I started to ask people to respect my pronouns, dress comfortably in the way I want, talk about the queer community without any fear or guilt, confront people if they say something problematic and make them aware of the consequences of their harmless jokes.
I stopped being silent and created a space where I did not have to hide or change any part of my identity.
