Friday, April 11 was the Day of Silence. If this is your first time hearing about it, here’s the official description from the website:
The Day of Silence is a student-led national event that brings attention to anti-LGBT name-calling, bullying and harassment in schools. Students from middle school to college take a vow of silence in an effort to encourage schools and classmates to address the problem of anti-LGBT behavior by illustrating the silencing effect of bullying and harassment on LGBT students and those perceived to be LGBT.
This is my first year participating in Day of Silence. I actually first heard about it in my freshman year. Regrettably, although I attended the info meeting and wanted to participate, I was too afraid of drawing attention to myself. I had never met anyone who was out at school and I didn’t know how the school as a whole or my friends would react; since I had heard about people elsewhere being bullied to the extent of committing suicide, I imagined that it would happen to me, too, if people drew their own conclusions about me after seeing me participating in Day of Silence. It wasn’t until last year that I was finally ready to participate, but yearbook and journalism’s trip to a conference in San Francisco overlapped with Day of Silence, so I wasn’t able to be a part of it at my school. But I finally got to do it.
I expected that staying silent for the whole day would be easier for me than for a lot of other people since I’m usually pretty shy and don’t talk much, but I realized that I actually do communicate with people quite a bit during the day. I ended up relying on nodding, facial expressions, laughter or miscellaneous sound effects, and in times of desperation/necessity, writing on pieces of paper to get through the day (if you gotta go to the bathroom or get people’s emails for a project, and it’s the day right before spring break starts…can’t be helped). But I still do feel that I was greatly limited in expressing myself, even when it came to asking for trivial, everyday things that I have taken for granted being able to say, let alone saying something important. As of now I am out to some people, though not everyone, so I am far less afraid of being honest about myself as I was a few years ago, but not speaking all day really gave me a wake-up call about what it must be like on a daily basis to feel invisible. As if you have to keep swallowing the words you wish you could say until you suffocate.
In the past year or so and especially on this Day of Silence, I have been more heartened to learn that my school was more supportive than I once feared. There are certainly still more than a few students who, on a regular basis, make homophobic or transphobic “jokes” or who insist on using the word “gay” to refer to things they don’t like. It it still certainly something I am ashamed of because I still do not have the courage to confront anyone about that. However, over the years, I have learned that several teachers and many of my peers are accepting of those who are not cisgender and heterosexual (even if a lot of people still may not know what cisgender means). Despite being a very pessimistic person, I do have some hope for the future if more and more of society will treat everyone as equal regardless of orientation or gender.
The day did not quite as smoothly for everyone, though. My school’s Day of Silence participants had a debriefing at the end of the school day and I heard from one of them them that at the beginning of the day, someone offered to pay her $5 if she would talk. (I guess some people don’t really get the point of the day…they seem to think it’s some sort of game to be won?) And later on, during our silent vigil at lunch – we sat in a circle in the academic court with prayer flags that had pictures of LGBT murder/suicide victims on them – apparently, someone came over and yelled “I’m gay! Accept me!” or something like that. (I say apparently because even though I was there, I was playing Meow Meow Star Acres with my friend on my cellphone and didn’t hear…) It seems that he was trying to stir up some sort of commotion, but of course no one reacted or said anything. Obviously, if we’re participating in Day of Silence, we already do accept him if he is gay and he wouldn’t have to demand it.
There’s one other incident that wasn’t so pleasant, though it did not happen at my school exactly. I wore a pink card with info about the Day of Silence around my neck all day. One of my classmates saw it and told me about something that had recently happened at the elementary school where her mom works. A kindergarten teacher gave her students the assignment of writing about or drawing (I forget which one it was) what they want to be when they grow up. One boy wrote that he wanted to be a princess.
The teacher threw away the paper. She told him he couldn’t be a princess because he was a boy. He responded, “When I grow up, I can be whatever I want.” However, he was sent home early with a note to his parents.
I was really appalled by this. He’s only in kindergarten and he’s already not only having his dreams crushed by adults but also having gender norms forced upon him. He’s still young, and kids certainly change their minds about what they like and want to be, but even if he does still feel the same way when he’s older, that isn’t a bad thing. I can only hope his parents will stand by him and not try to make him like only masculine things ): And it seems unfair to me that someone who was designated female at birth can dress masculinely and like things that are traditionally considered to be “for men” without getting that much negative response – she would probably just be called a tomboy – while someone who was designated male at birth would certain be called whole plethora of insults like “sissy” or homophobic slurs if he liked something that was traditionally considered to be “for women”. I’m sure if a little girl had decided she wanted to be President or a scientist or a police officer, it would be fine. But if a little boy wants to be a princess or a ballet dancer or a baker, all hell breaks loose…
I did hear of one amusing anecdote from a peer who participated in Day of Silence, though, in which a person was ignorant but not with any malicious intent. Apparently a student asked what LGBT stood for and his friend responded, “It’s Lesbian, Gay, Bilingual…” (I don’t know if he said T or not but I expect he gave something like “Transportation” for it). Well, maybe it’s double the silence if someone bilingual takes part in Day of Silence.
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