The US Day of Silence: Sexualities, Silences, and the Will to Unsay in the Age of Empire

Abstract

As one of the largest student-led activist actions in the United States, the Day of Silence (US DOS) was established in 1996 to call attention to the quotidian and ubiquitous acts of violence committed against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) individuals in this country. As two educators who are deeply committed to social justice and inhabit distinct social locations, we decided to participate in the US DOS in an effort to reflect on the complexities surrounding the politics of silence. Using a combination of personal narrative, conventional academic writing, and dialogue, we examine and reflect on the multiple meanings of silence and their potential for social change.¹ To accomplish this, our essay is divided into five sections.² The first, “Exploring the complexities of silence,” examines the meanings of silence in LGBTQ communities and proposes a “queer methodology” (Halberstam, 1998, p. 10) for this examination. The second, “Historicizing silence: A brief history of the US day of silence” provides an historical context for this yearly event. In “Reflecting aloud,” our third section, we draw on our own biographies and histories to make sense of the day. In the fourth section, “Conversing about silences and voice,” we engage in dialogue to discuss the complex relationship between silence and voice, presence and absence, agency and resistance, oppression and liberation.

Silence, in all its diverse forms, contributes to the creation of our social realities, from the mundane micro-level practices of our everyday expressions to the structuring of our macro-level institutions and back again.

(Robin Patric Clair, 1998, p. 24)

The notion of silence has long been a trope in liberation and social justice movements in the United States, including feminist, lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender, and civil rights and antiracist struggles and movements of people of color.

(Patti Duncan, 2004, p. 7)