You shouldn’t be reading this. No, really. You shouldn’t. It shouldn’t have been published. Soon, any moment now, someone will realise it was a mistake to publish it.
Rules have been broken in getting this on a screen for you to read. Sometimes we read words that have been smuggled out of jails to reach us. Sometimes we read words that have been found in an attic long after the writer has passed away. Sometimes we read words written in fragments between battles in a warzone. Sometime words have to overcome barriers before they connect a writer with a reader.
These words are no different and the barriers they had to overcome are common.
The final barrier these words had to face was being chosen by an editor as being worthy of publication: as something that might resonate with readers. But, before then, there were others.
These words were written, you see, by a woman. And generally we don’t read the opinions of women. Pick up the main newspaper in your city, flick to the editorial and then check out the op-eds. A ratio of one piece by a woman to five by men is usual. Go to a major news site and check out the pictures of the regular columnists. The brilliance of Annabel Crabb and Jane Caro will stand out among male columnists that you don’t even remember from week to week.
Why don’t we hear more opinions from women? Because women are taught not to speak. Women live in a world where they are taught that their voices are not as legitimate as male voices from an early age. Women learn to self-censor. We learn not to have the temerity to presume that what we have to say could be valued. And that’s why you shouldn’t be reading these words. I should have, by now, learned the lesson of silence.
On Sunday, International Women’s Day, at the All About Women event at the Sydney Opera House, a whole bunch of talented women with amazing things to say spoke up and thousands of women listened closely to every word they said.
In this listening a common theme became apparent; far too many women are still silenced in many ways, in many parts of our lives. It has to stop.
Clementine Ford spoke of the silencing that occurs through the pervasive threat of violence that outspoken women endure. Anita Sarkeesian spoke of the “chilling effect” the threats she is inundated with pose: can you blame other women for wishing to avoid her fate and staying quiet?
Women spoke of the actual violence that they have had to endure after speaking out. Rosie Batty spoke about the silencing of domestic violence victims through the disbelieving of stories and through the need for women who do refuge in the legal system to silence their emotions. Germaine Greer spoke about the silencing of older women.
Speaker after speaker spoke about the need for women to continue to speak up, to understand that their voice matters, despite the threats of violence that are used to silence women. Jane Caro said that as a white, middle class married woman it was important for her to speak because doing so was less of a risk for her than others. Tara Moss said it is ‘one thing to believe in feminism, but another to advocate for it’. Elizabeth Gilbert of Eat, Pray, Love fame asked “Do you have the courage to bring forth the jewels that are hidden within you?”
These women have found their voices. They speak up for the rest of us on a regular basis. Every woman who benefits from the work of these women in exposing sexism and misogyny and systems that need to be changed, should give thanks to them.
And the best way to give thanks? By finding you own voice and using it. By letting your opinions be known in whatever way you have available. I do this through writing. But it has taken me over 50 years to get over the messages I internalised about why my voice, and therefore my writing, should not be heard. I will probably never write without having to silence the voice in my head that asks “What right have you? What do really know? Why do you not leave it to others who are more skilled and smart and knowledgeable than you?”
But the fact you are reading these words mean that I have silenced that voice once more. And I have, because as Clementine Ford put it so beautifully on Sunday, ‘the hurt one feels through shrinking one’s own voice through fear is far more painful than any external hurt could be.’
Isn’t it about time us women stop hurting ourselves and start making our voices heard?