Day of Silence

Today was the Day of Silence at school and, while I strongly believe in the cause and I tried to commit to the event as much as possible, I found myself surprised at the amount of people not participating at all and I ended up gaining a new perspective on what I personally think the day should be about.

I started out the day with the intention of remaining silent for its entirety, but I soon found this to be a redundant and pointless aspect of the Day of Silence. I completely respect those who were able to go through the whole day without talking, and maybe this is all just an excuse for my lack of the ability to shut up, but I found myself feeling very uncomfortable and confused during the time I spent in silence. Maybe this is the point of the day: to experience the uncomfort, confusion and anger that in-the-closet or openly GLBTQ students feel every day, but personally I felt that being open with my opinions would have made a much stronger impact on those around me.

When I walked through the halls at school wearing all black and refraining from speech, I still heard people making fun of those who were choosing to participate, yelling out things like "Day of Silence is so gay!" and the like, for the sake of irony. And there was nothing I could really do about it. People at my lunch table used the word 'fag' on purpose, just to see if they could provoke me to speak. Ultimately, I ended up giving up on remaining silent just because I felt like it was not only an unrealistic representation of the suffering GLBTQ students face, but it also put me at a disadvantage in defending the cause I was supposed to be taking pride in.

Like I said, maybe my frustration with my inability to speak is exactly what the day is supposed to be about- the frustration that students feel every day when they're forced into the socially-molded niches of straight boys and straight girls. At the same time, I don't think that silencing the students in school who want to speak out against abuse is the right way to go about making a change. If we want to encourage more students to end their silence, don't we want to encourage speech?

I understand the gesture of giving up one's own ability to speak to encourage another to exercise theirs, but it all just seemed too forced to me. While I will continue to support the Day of Silence and I'll continue to try every year to keep myself quiet for a day, (it hasn't worked in the last three...) I really wish that there was something more I could do- something more vocal and more active. Something that wouldn't be so difficult for the whole school to participate in, but would still ellicit a positive response. Something that would make GLBTQ students see the amount of support that they have from the New Trier community, without having to walk through the halls and hear the voices of hundreds of students on a day when supporters are supposed to remain silent.



P.S. I don't really know how this relates to anything that we've talked about in class... Umm, Perilous Times? Freedom of Speech y'all.