No More Silence!

Too many writing projects and not enough time! I guess it’s time to drag out another old chestnut from the storage trunk of thoughts and see if I can make a blog post out of it…

Have you ever noticed the tendency of people to feel bad for “telling on” someone else?

As survivors, of course, we have a heightened awareness of this feeling, since so many of us learned not to tell under threat of dire consequences, but it’s not a feeling that is limited to survivors. In fact, it seems like a pretty universal feeling.

People are worried that there might be some kind of backlash…
Or they worry that someone will be angry with them…
Or they want to protect someone by not breaking bad news to them…
Or they think it’s none of their business…
Or they just don’t want to get involved…

If you think about it that way, the threats that were used to make us all too afraid to “tell” were really only emphasizing a message that everyone is learning. But what a terrible message…

Why should the person who exposes wrongdoing ever feel like they did something wrong?
Why are we all bending over backwards to protect the person who actually did the wrong thing?

This is the kind of mindset that allowed many of us to be abused for years without relief, even if we believe there were adults who knew (or at least had an idea) that it was happening.

This is also the kind of mindset that allows crime to flourish at all levels – from the streets to the board room. Someone always knows what’s going on, what was done, who did it – but regardless of whether the justification is that “they’d kill me if I ratted” or “I’d lose my job if I blew the whistle”, the end result is the same. The criminals are protected by the conspiring silence of everyone around them.

It’s the kind of mindset that allows teenagers to bully each other until they commit suicide or go on murderous rampages, and everyone knows it’s happening, but nobody says anything until it’s too late.

It’s the kind of mindset that causes us to teach our children that “nobody likes a tattle-tale” and end the lesson there, so that we can raise another generation of people who are afraid to “tell” on anyone, for any reason.

It’s also the kind of mindset that allows someone to present themselves as a hero for daring to “tell” something, even if what they’re telling is lies. We’re all so impressed with the strength it takes to tell, that we don’t bother to question the content of what we’re being told, and we certainly don’t bother checking it out to see if it’s true. Society at large is so conditioned against “telling” that we can actually be manipulated through a false show of courage.

It’s so ingrained, so habitual, so taken for granted by absoutely everyone, that it doesn’t even stand out as odd or unusual to hear someone agonizing over whether to tell something… we never even ask why they’re hesitating. It seems obvious.

But as survivors… we also know what that hesitation can cost. We know how much damage can be done, while the world is protecting perpetrators with a shield of conspiring silence. We know what it is to suffer through what the silence hides, and how desperately we wished that someone, anyone, would have the courage to help us, by daring to break the silence.

And is the situation always that serious? No, of course not. But if nobody dares to “tell” in the small situations, then is it any wonder that nobody dares to do it when the situation is that serious?

So it all matters. Small or large, every conspiring silence causes damage somewhere, to someone – if nothing else, by simply reinforcing the idea that silence is preferrable to speaking the truth.

I can’t change the world. I can’t change everyone’s perceptions or change how everyone does things.
But I can change what I do. My complicit silence, and the complicit silence of everyone around me, stole decades out of my life. The complicit silence of society allows crimes large and small to be committed with impunity every day.
I am speaking, not only in defiance my own history of secrecy and silence exacted by threats and torture, but also in defiance of the social malaise, the mindless willingness to protect the criminal at the expense of the victim.

My complicit silence has come to an end.

I will not let someone else’s wrongdoing be hidden and protected by my fear or my indifference – I will not hide the truth with my silence.
And the more of us who join together in speaking the truth – about anything, large or small – the more we change the currently prevailing perception that the criminals and the perps and the liars have the power, and that the truth should not be spoken, about anything, anywhere, because nobody dares to speak it.
I dare.
How about you?