I WOULD MUCH RATHER HAVE MY VOICE THAN HAVE A MAN!
There was a moment in high school when I realized how powerful my voice was. We had an assignment for our civics class to come up with a law that we thought should exist and than to give a speech convincing the class to pass it. I choose to do a law that would make hate speech illegal.
Being a racially mixed woman I was well aware of the damage that things like racism, sexism, and homophobia have on those who cannot change who they are. Everytime I was degraded in one way or form by someone else's voice I was told that they had that right, because we have something called freedom of speech. Isn't it amazing how those people who so adamantly protect that right, are also those who tend to be straight white men, and thus free from the abuse and the effects of it themselves? They are the only people in our society who have equality, and the affects of this hatred destroys lives, although I imagine it wouldn't destroy your life if you're not a part of one of the groups being affected by it.
My speech started off talking about Matthew Shepard, the young gay man who was brutally killed because he was gay. I than spoke about the violence and brutality that women face constantly at the hands of men, and about an African-American man who was also brutally killed by a bunch of white men because of the color of his skin. I told the class that it starts with a word, and it ends in this. I told them that this needs to be outlawed, and that the whole point of freedom of speech from the beginning was to ensure that we could be a progressive society that spoke intelligently to each other in order to continuously advance everyone forward. The intention was for it to be used for good, to uplift and empower people, not so that women will have to constantly hear men joking about how funny and necessary rape is.
The second I ended my speech, I realized that a strange almost disturbing silence had filled the room. I went back to my seat and sat down. One of my friends who was an openly gay man thanked me for the speech, as well as did the one and only African-American man in our class, and so did my friend who was pregnant at the time. The rest of the class was just very still. In those moments my teacher ran over to me with this completely shocked look on his face, and all he could say was "did you really write that?" He was definitely impressed, and I think he wondered if someone else had helped me with it. I guess it's important to note that I was always quiet in every class, and had spent much of my life just trying to be invisible. So I imagine that was definitely not what anyone expected from me.
He than asked the class to vote on my law, and while the few minorities in the class enthusiastically raised their hands (my entire town is pretty much white and wealthy) the rest of the class was too shell-shocked to even respond. Around that point I almost started crying, not because I was upset per say, but I was just so confused by the very strong reaction people had, that I thought I had done something wrong. I didn't understand why they were acting that way, because I figured they should've already known this/were aware of it, and this would be an obvious law choice. It was in those moments though that I realized how powerful my voice was. This became more evident as I went onto college and had professors read my essays out loud to the entire class, as I got an A+ on my college thesis paper, and as I watched how my voice was transferred into the films that I created. I could use my voice to help empower people, to let them know they are not alone, to help inspire them, and to change the world.
I'm not sure what the long term effects of my speech were on that day. I would like to think that it at least touched those few people's lives so strongly that maybe when someone degraded them in some way, they remembered that I had stood up for them. That they were never really alone, because there was at least one person who wasn't okay with them being treated that way. I would also like to think that it changed the way the rest of the class viewed these topics and saw them for how serious they are. While I don't really know if it did, I would like to think that at the very least that me as a young woman standing in her power for those 5 minutes in front of her entire class, captivated and ultimately changed the course of history. That it shifted the world into a higher state of consciousness, one in which women's voices are respected and heard.
Being a racially mixed woman I was well aware of the damage that things like racism, sexism, and homophobia have on those who cannot change who they are. Everytime I was degraded in one way or form by someone else's voice I was told that they had that right, because we have something called freedom of speech. Isn't it amazing how those people who so adamantly protect that right, are also those who tend to be straight white men, and thus free from the abuse and the effects of it themselves? They are the only people in our society who have equality, and the affects of this hatred destroys lives, although I imagine it wouldn't destroy your life if you're not a part of one of the groups being affected by it.
My speech started off talking about Matthew Shepard, the young gay man who was brutally killed because he was gay. I than spoke about the violence and brutality that women face constantly at the hands of men, and about an African-American man who was also brutally killed by a bunch of white men because of the color of his skin. I told the class that it starts with a word, and it ends in this. I told them that this needs to be outlawed, and that the whole point of freedom of speech from the beginning was to ensure that we could be a progressive society that spoke intelligently to each other in order to continuously advance everyone forward. The intention was for it to be used for good, to uplift and empower people, not so that women will have to constantly hear men joking about how funny and necessary rape is.
The second I ended my speech, I realized that a strange almost disturbing silence had filled the room. I went back to my seat and sat down. One of my friends who was an openly gay man thanked me for the speech, as well as did the one and only African-American man in our class, and so did my friend who was pregnant at the time. The rest of the class was just very still. In those moments my teacher ran over to me with this completely shocked look on his face, and all he could say was "did you really write that?" He was definitely impressed, and I think he wondered if someone else had helped me with it. I guess it's important to note that I was always quiet in every class, and had spent much of my life just trying to be invisible. So I imagine that was definitely not what anyone expected from me.
He than asked the class to vote on my law, and while the few minorities in the class enthusiastically raised their hands (my entire town is pretty much white and wealthy) the rest of the class was too shell-shocked to even respond. Around that point I almost started crying, not because I was upset per say, but I was just so confused by the very strong reaction people had, that I thought I had done something wrong. I didn't understand why they were acting that way, because I figured they should've already known this/were aware of it, and this would be an obvious law choice. It was in those moments though that I realized how powerful my voice was. This became more evident as I went onto college and had professors read my essays out loud to the entire class, as I got an A+ on my college thesis paper, and as I watched how my voice was transferred into the films that I created. I could use my voice to help empower people, to let them know they are not alone, to help inspire them, and to change the world.
I'm not sure what the long term effects of my speech were on that day. I would like to think that it at least touched those few people's lives so strongly that maybe when someone degraded them in some way, they remembered that I had stood up for them. That they were never really alone, because there was at least one person who wasn't okay with them being treated that way. I would also like to think that it changed the way the rest of the class viewed these topics and saw them for how serious they are. While I don't really know if it did, I would like to think that at the very least that me as a young woman standing in her power for those 5 minutes in front of her entire class, captivated and ultimately changed the course of history. That it shifted the world into a higher state of consciousness, one in which women's voices are respected and heard.
