By Sophie Hayes
Winter 2017 Kaplan Award Winner
“When we’re thinking about Hegel, what is the first thing you should connect him to?” My philosophy professor hastily asks the class. When a loud silence follows, she heaves a sigh.
I know the answer. It’s dialectical analysis, Hegel’s method of inquiry.
“Anyone?” She hesitates. “No one?” She’s probing for the answer but silence dominates again.
I don’t open my mouth. My voice doesn’t have a place here. And I would sound like a know-it-all.
“Everybody turn to your neighbor and go back to your notes. We’ll come back together in two minutes.”
~
I don’t speak in my university classes. I don’t voice my opinion in general. I’ve been perpetually told through a lifetime of social interaction that my voice doesn’t matter. I know it has something to do with my gender. But I’m still figuring out the details.
It’s not that I don’t have opinions. I have strong ones. They come to me during class discussions. But before I open my mouth, something stops me. A voice inside my head tells me that what I’m about to say is stupid, worthless. I revert to the voice and its power. I am silenced.
~
I was a Campfire girl as a kid. Each week had a themed activity. They were usually endurable, but I was bored most of the time. The candle ceremonies were strange. I preferred the days spent outside, learning to camp.
One day of being a Campfire girl permeates in my memory. Laundry was our activity. The women leaders gave us heaps of garments to practice with: long sleeves, short sleeves, pants, sweaters, and socks. The women demonstrated the task in detail. When I folded improperly, I was corrected. I was probably around the age of 10.
I remember feeling a strong sense of confusion. How is folding laundry an educational activity? Why do I need to learn how to fold laundry the proper way? I already knew how to do laundry. I did it with my dad every Sunday. The importance that was placed on the skill struck me. From that day onward, I saw Campfire girls differently. I dreaded going. I started to question it internally, among other things.
~
I was probably 15 when I began to feel the immense discomfort that came with society’s preoccupation with my body.
One morning during high school while heading out the door, my mom stopped me.
“You can’t wear that, you’ll attract the wrong crowds.”
I was wearing a mini-skirt. It was a hot spring day.
“What is that supposed to mean?” I asked, for which she didn’t have an answer.
Another familiar moment of confusion and frustration. I had been catcalled by garden workers on the street a few times before, which was also confusing.
All I knew was that it felt bad.
Until I reached college I was instructed to dress conservatively in public school. It makes the male teachers and students uncomfortable, so girls must refrain from wearing V-necks, spaghetti straps, or skirts above knee-length.
My favorite dress had spaghetti straps. My principal once called my parents when I wore shorts just above my arm’s length.
I understand the intent of dress codes in schools. But I couldn’t help but notice it was only the girls who were policed.
~
A lot has changed. Today people generally accept that the fight for equality is over. Women finally have equal value and opportunity in society, right?
It’s true that we have moved somewhere closer to equality. In many ways, my generation has it better than our female successors once did. This makes it seem unjustified for women to complain. Because we have come this far, we should be satisfied and grateful, society tells us.
And so I am silenced.
~
I don’t spend much time with my grandparents, but when I do, I feel the burden of my gender.
I spent last Christmas with them in Hawaii. Just the regular small talk, never below the surface. I tell my grandpa that I’m studying journalism at the University of Washington.
A pretty young girl like me would be perfect for FOX, he says. I would look great on TV. He tries hard to convince me. He knows people, and could get me set up. FOX News is the best news, the most accurate, the most balanced, and the most liked. When I ask him according to what, he avoids the question.
I tell him about my upcoming news internship as an editorial writer at Seattle Weekly. His eyes gloss over, he loses interest, and eventually leaves the conversation.
My appearance matters more than my voice. I should consider myself lucky for my beauty. It will get me far in life, I’ve been told.
But I see my beauty as a burden. It taints the words that come from my mouth, detracting value from voice.
~
I work as a server at a breakfast restaurant. One recent Sunday, a couple of my customers were giving off a hostile vibe. Each time I approached their table I felt as though they were dissatisfied with my presence.
As I bussed their table, I noticed something scrawled on the receipt they left behind.
“Try smiling.”
To add insult to injury, they tipped me less than five percent. I gave them good service. Greeted them quickly, coffee refills, checked in multiple times. With a full section of 20 people, they failed to notice I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off. A ball was rising in my throat. I felt stomped on, defeated. It wasn’t fair. I can’t change the fact that I take my work seriously. Why was I being punished for that?
It pains me to know that it is only acceptable to say something like this to a woman. Women are still expected to look happy and beautiful to put others at ease. One of my male coworkers saw my pain, and apologized on behalf of his sex.
~
Participating in the Women’s March last month was a conflicting experience. I felt strong standing up for my beliefs. I had butterflies for the enormity of the march and its positive energy.
But as I looked around me, I couldn’t help but see the men who have oppressed me in my lifetime. I saw young men, who appeared to be marching as a social event with friends.
The Women’s March was a total bandwagon thing.
I watched an older man in an apartment up above, looking down in disappointment. While others cheered and waved, his energy was cold. The march, a result of the current administration, reminded me of my biggest fear in life: powerful men.
The march wasn’t even really a women’s march. It was a general anti-Trump protest. Once again, women were shifted to the back burner. The march was intended to be silent, but it was loud throughout.
It took the election of a man that has bragged about sexually assaulting women for people to protest. To think that men are still controlling women’s bodies baffles me, yet it shouldn’t, because it’s never stopped.
I recently read a news story about how all the yarn stores in Seattle had sold out of pink yarn in the weeks before the march. So to show their support for the movement, women had to go out to a yarn store, buy materials, and knit the hat by hand. The pink pussy hat was the symbol for the Women’s March. Yet it subverted to traditional gender norms that women do best in domestic activities like knitting. The symbol of the march was an ideal that has been keeping women in their place for ages.
My sister was similarly conflicted about the march. Our dad and his girlfriend invited us to march with them, but we both felt the need to be with our girls. My dad may support the legislative side of women’s rights, but he has always treated us, along with the rest of our gender, as inferior.
~
Over cold spring rolls and beer one recent evening, Sarah and I talk about how Trump’s election has endorsed sexual assault and control of women. We don’t know where our future is headed and we feel more powerless than ever.
She’s my big sister, so I often go to her for advice. She had two presentations that day at school, and I had one the following week.
“How do you do it? Do you get as nervous as I do? Because speaking in public is absolutely debilitating for me.”
“I don’t know Soph. It’s hard for me too. You have to remember that you’re really smart. You have to just say, fuck it. You have to stop caring.”
Sarah majors in philosophy at the UW, and summarizes philosopher Miranda Fricker’s concept, hermeneutical injustice: “there are gaps in the social knowledge about how humans interact with one other. The gaps can disproportionately impact minority communities. For example, sexual harassment hasn’t always had a definition in society. When a woman was being harassed in the workplace, all she knew was that it felt bad. She became confused, angry, and frustrated, but couldn’t explain why, simply because sexual harassment hadn’t yet entered the social knowledge.”
Is my silence something yet unknown? Do other women experience this effect? I have a hunch that my experience isn’t unique.
“But what’s the gap? What don’t we know?”
“That’s the thing, we can’t know. It takes time. It happens when enough people speak out about their experiences.”
She tells me to be like Hermione Granger. Raise my hand in class. Be a know-it-all. Show them what I’ve got.
I want nothing more.
~
There is a term for what I (and I’m sure many other female students) experience in the classroom. Stereotype threat, according to Cordelia Fine, is “the real-time threat of being judged and treated poorly in settings where a negative stereotype about one’s group applies.”
A study at the City University of New York tested over 100 students enrolled in a difficult calculus class as a pipeline to the hard sciences. The students were split into two groups. All were given a test made up of Graduate Records Examination (GRE) questions. Students in the stereotype threat group were told that the test was designed to measure their math ability, to try to better understand what makes some people better at math than others. Students in the non-threat group were told that despite testing on thousands of students, no gender difference had ever been found. The men and women in both groups had received on average similar grades in their classes. So, it would be logical for both groups to perform similarly on the test. Instead, the researchers found that females in the non-threat group did better. Both genders in the stereotype threat condition, and men in the non-threat condition, scored about 19 percent on average. But the women in the non-threat group scored 30 percent on average, outperforming every other group. When the test was presented to women as equally hard for the sexes, it “unleashed their mathematics potential,” according to the study.
The takeaway from this study is that individuals who belong to negatively stereotyped groups can be pervasively hampered by stereotype threat effects in their academic lives.
The effects can be debilitating. When the mind is struggling with anxious thoughts, it’s not in an optimal state for doing intellectual tasks.
“And it’s important to bear in mind that these jittery, self-defeating mechanisms are not characteristic of the female mind – they’re characteristic of the mind under threat,” Fine says.
Fine’s book, Delusions of Gender, debunks studies that claim there are “hardwired” differences between the male and female brain. Rather, she reminds us that everything we do, we do with a mind that is exquisitely sensitive to the social environment around it.
My gender is a large part of my self-conception. In the classroom and professional settings, the subconscious and conscious associations that come with being a woman are amplified.
Conversations are male-dominated, and I can’t help but envy the ease I observe when a male student raises his hand in the classroom. He shares the first thing that comes to mind, entering the discussion as ritual.
On the rare occasion that I do speak, I meticulously rehearse my argument in my head before opening my mouth. My heart pounds, and after I’ve said what I’ve said, for a time afterward I can do nothing but internally question the worth of my expression.
~
Silence comes in many forms.
While my silence most clearly manifests in the classroom and professional settings, all women are impacted uniquely. Perhaps their silence reflects an intersectional experience. I’m a straight white woman, and will never fully grasp the depth of intersectional experiences.
Often, a woman’s silence is a result of sexual violence. According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, rape is the most underreported crime. Sixty-three percent go unreported. On college campuses, more than 90 percent of victims do not report.
~
My sister has confided in me that she was a victim of sexual violence. When she told me, a year had passed since the incidents.
When we talk about it now, she’s slow with words. She struggles to describe her understanding of her experience. I’m here for her. I want her to share her truth, because it’s important. And I know there is something to learn from it.
Before she realized her experience was sexual violence, she focused on the issue as being her own.
“When I would talk to people about it, I would just say he was an asshole, and that sex hurt. In my head I thought there was something wrong with me, like maybe I’m asexual or gay.”
Deep down a part of her knew it was abuse, but it wasn’t what she was focusing on. Time eventually allowed her to shift her focus.
She does not like the term, “sexual assault.” The term’s rigid popular definition ignores the vast spectrum of sexual assault.
“When people think about sexual assault, they imagine a woman getting drugged, being brought somewhere, and being brutally raped. When you tell someone about your experience, they’re going to think something along those lines. Because that’s the only kind people really hear about, the only kind that’s ever public.”
This popular conception of the term ignores the countless forms sexual assault. It can occur within relationships, in the workplace, between friends. When sexual assault is covered in the media, we only hear about the kind Sarah describes. In turn, these fixed associations discount other forms of sexual violence.
Victims falling outside of this category are blamed for exaggeration or hypersensitivity.
So Sarah stays quiet about her experience, because it’s easier than facing hostile audiences that probably wouldn’t sympathize. Worse, she might be accused of wanting attention.
Just think of the term “attention whore.” Women are blamed for wanting attention when they speak or do something controversial. The term reflects the basic idea that women are emotional beings, that their expression can be equated with a need for attention. The term does not apply to men.
Today, Sarah knows that what happened to her was sexual violence. Still, nobody wants to hear about that kind of stuff, she says.
“It’s a male-dominated society and males don’t want to make public what hurts them. There’s only so much that’s going to make it into mainstream media. And there’s only so much that women are going to hear and feel like they can relate to.”
~
Philosopher Kristie Dotson provides a useful framework for understanding how silencing functions. Silencing can be understood through the concept of epistemic violence: “in testimony is a refusal, intentional or unintentional, of an audience to communicatively reciprocate a linguistic exchange owing to pernicious ignorance. Pernicious ignorance should be understood to refer to any reliable ignorance that, in a given context, harms another person (or set of persons).” One method of executing epistemic violence is to damage an oppressed group’s ability to speak and be heard.
In order to communicate, speakers need an audience willing and capable of hearing them.
“The extent to which entire populations of people can be denied this kind of linguistic reciprocation as a matter of course institutes epistemic violence,” Dotson says.
Testimonial smothering is a specific form of silencing in which an audience commits epistemic violence against a speaker. According to Dotson, it “occurs because the speaker perceives one’s immediate audience as unwilling or unable to gain the appropriate uptake of proffered testimony.” Simply put, testimonial smothering is coerced silence: the speaker truncates their testimony either partially or wholly in avoidance of their audience’s apparent ignorance.
An example of testimonial smothering would be the Twitter hashtag #NextFakeTrumpVictim and the experiences recounted in #WhyWomenDontReport. From @OhNoSheTwitnt: “the fact that #NextFakeTrumpVictim is trending should tell you exactly why women fear coming forward about sexual assault.”
Sarah’s avoidance of telling her story in anticipation of being called an attention whore is clearly revealed in Dotson’s explanation of smothering.
I see my own silence as perpetual self-smothering. Beyond just occurring in isolated interactions, smothering becomes deeply engrained in my identity and how I choose to interact with the world. The question becomes, when am I not being smothered?
Tim Brown, Teaching Assistant and Ph.D student of feminist philosophy at UW, describes how smothering goes beyond the immediate context in his experience: “As a black guy, I can’t just be aggressive. I can’t be forceful, there’s certain things I just can’t say. It’s mostly because people will take it as more hostile than if I were just a white guy. There’s a persona that I’ve cultivated in myself, an outward expression of my personality that I have a habit of expressing, and it’s hard to break out of that.”
~
Gaining awareness of an issue is the first step toward change. Marginalized people are now targets for extreme cases of injustice in public view, and some are taking the opportunity to speak up despite attempts to quiet them, or despite a culture that smothers their testimony before they even try to speak up, Brown says. He offers practical suggestions for supporting people who are trying to speak up in the post-election climate.
“When people who are different from you share personal stories, listen as closely as you can. It really helps to have a sympathetic ear. Keep your counterexamples, clever arguments, and suggestions to yourself.”
Brown recommends we use body language and verbal cues to discourage silence and promote uptake. For example, make eye contact with the person telling a story about oppression and not the person that wants to quiet them.
From her experiences, Sarah recommends discussing as much as possible with as many people as possible, absolutely any social situation that brings a sense of discomfort.
~
To the person being silenced, working at embracing who you are is a technique for overcoming silencing, Brown says. Know that you’re not the problem, the world is.
Know who your friends are. Know who supports you. Know your enemies, and know how to protect yourself. Acknowledge that there are both forces trying to keep you silent, and forces trying to push you into the light. In finding yourself, and knowing where you float, you will find a sense of freedom.
Remember the power of choice. Whatever you choose; to remain silent, to speak up – is okay.