Webster's Dictionary first defines silence as "the state or fact of keeping silent; a refraining from speech or from making noise." The fifth and final definition of silence, however, leaps out of the newsprint page, screaming to be recognized: "oblivion or obscurity."
But what does it actually mean to be trapped in the oblivion and obscurity of silence on this campus? The politics of silence are distinct and infinitely complex.
As I listened to Wendy Brown, a visiting feminist scholar from the University of California at Santa Cruz, last week present a speech titled "The Pleasures and Freedoms of Silence," I could not help but gasp when she stated we should refrain from contributing to the general "noise" with our "confessions" of abuse. I was horrified that this woman should tell me I must use my silence "strategically," that is, to speak only when I can benefit the political cause of the women's movement. Who was she to deem whose story was worthy for exposure?
Granted, she approached the topic with a political slant, and in this sense, anything political can be better served by speaking strategically. However, for the battered woman in Enfield, who knows nothing of her political self, making sense of the oblivion by speaking up is as essential to the women's movement as Wendy Brown's academically privileged political viewpoint.
A couple of days later, I entered my Sexual Abuse Peer Advisor training session confident that emerging from silence was the difficult, but somehow correct course of action. I was ready to write of the triumphs of ending silence through the Committee on Standards process on this campus.
The ensuing two hour discussion on racial identity and ethnic communities pointed out a painfully obvious hitch in my hypothesis. While no community allows for a clean break with the silence induced by sexual or domestic violence, many communities of color have additional concerns with this sort of exposure. In fact, exposure often only compounds the problem and adds to a woman's burden in these communities.
In order to crystallize this point, take the example of the sheer horror of telling your parents you have been raped. For any woman this can be traumatic, and many can never tell relatives due to the stereotypes and victim-blaming that still pervade our society. But many women of color face additional obstacles in telling their parents, which are intricately connected to their culture -- a consideration white women are not often forced to deal with.
In a more specific example, I learned calling the police in Korean-American society is quite possibly one of the worst things a woman could do in her cultural context. So what does such a woman make of the pressures to report a sexual abuse incident to the police?
I realized in some sense I was sitting in Brown's position, which I had criticized only a few days earlier. I had blindly advocated "speaking up and speaking out" without considering the consequences for women who were not like me.
Certainly in a society where white skin is a privileged vantage point, there is no way I could explain to a woman of color the benefits she would reap from emerging from silence. Essentially, there is no way for me to empathize. Indeed, I can little describe the numerous types of obstacles women of color must hurdle in addition to being battered or abused.
Still, I stand firm in my belief that silence can only harm women (or anyone for that matter) who are victims and survivors of sexual abuse or domestic violence.
But gender does not exist in a vacuum. The only way to understand the politics of silence is to view the problem of violence against women as one aspect of the structural confines of gender, race, class and sexual orientation in our society.
And sadly, or maybe disturbingly, these structures do often confine us.Frequently they force us to "refrain from speech or making noise," as Webster so politely and succinctly phrases it.
I question these politics of "oblivion and obscurity" and their agenda, wondering when, if ever, we will be able to break free of the fetters which bind us and trap us in the web of silence.
