But Audre Lorde said it as well as I ever could want to, so I’ll just select and borrow some of her words:
“What is most important to me must be spoken…even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood…
Your silence will not protect you...
What are the words you do not yet have? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence?
We can sit in our safe corners mute as bottles, and we will still be no less afraid…
It is never without fear…but we have lived through all of those already, in silence…
It is not difference that immobilizes us, but silence. And there are so many silences to be broken.”
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Lorde, Audre. “The Transformation of Silence Into Language and Action.” Sister Outsider, 1984. New York: Cross Press, 40-44.
darlene anita scott 