as small as a world and as large as alone

10:08am April 21, 2015

madeofpatterns:

crimegrampa:

snail-prince:

so I hate Day of Silence right

front text: Silence is Violence
back text: I will not support a day of silencing a group that is systematically and violently spoken over// Being silent is not a protest if it is what they want from us.

pretty much my feelings abt the whole “day of silence for LGBTQ injustice” thing

I don’t know if I like it now.

But when it started, I think it did really important things.

Because what the day of silence did is make silence VISIBLE. it made people have to notice and acknowledge it.

And a moment of silence is, in American culture, a fairly universally acknowledged sign of disrupting things in order to show respect for the dead and victims of violence.

The Day of Silence is a way to call attention to silencing and its consequences, in a way that can’t be ignored.

It’s also a powerful act of solidarity that doesn’t require anyone to be either eloquent or out.

I went to a high school that was mostly populated by gay students who were physically unsafe in mainstream high schools, and the Day of Silence was important to some of them for both of those reasons.

There is power in symbolic gestures. There are things words can’t say.

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