For those of you who don't know. Day of Silence is an annual event where students of all races, ages, locations, and interests go without speaking for one day. For one day, everyone participating makes a point to "stand up for those who can't stand up for themselves", spotlighting lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgenders who are being bullied, discriminated against, and mistreated in a surprisingly large host of ways. For one day, students put their food down to end the silence that many people in the LGBT community are forced to live in out of fear of being condemned by our society. Each person sports a little tag for the length of the day that reads:
Please understand my reasons for not speaking today. I am participating in the Day of Silence (DOS), a national youth movement bringing attention to the silence faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people and their allies. My deliberate silence echoes that silence, which is caused by anti-LGBT bullying, name-calling, and harrassment. I believe that ending the silence is the first step toward building awareness and making a commitment to address these injustices. Think about the voices you are not hearing today.
Actually, a surprising amount of people at my school participated. Which really REALLY was a good feeling. It's wonderful knowing that at the very least, there are so many young people just within my own community who are willing to do so much as publicly state that they support the LGBT community. And I gotta say, I was REALLY into it. I mean, I'm not gonna lie and say that I didn't say a single word all day. but from the time I slid the pass around my neck to the time I walked through the door, I seriously tried my hardest not to speak. Which is really. really. REALLY HARD. There were only two times that I directly abandoned the hope of making it through a certain scenario without words: in AP English class, when we were working on our partner essays (it's a lil' hard to write an essay with someone who has to pause and type out their response every time you say anything to them, I'd imagine) and in Creative Foods when we were planning our appealing meals groupy thingamabob. I knew what was going on 20x more than anyone else in our group, and it would've taken waaay more time than we had for me to write it all out.
I gotta say though, part of me was really upset today. Y'know why? Because I saw numerous people cheerily hosting the tags around their necks describing the message of DOS, but not even putting a fraction of effort into the Silence that composes the entire day after, what, the first hour? And maybe I'm just really really overreacting, but it sorta just added a certain amount of factuality and realism to what my US History teacher always says - that we can say we want to make all the change in the world, but 90% of us will give up on the cause before we even start it. Which is a horrible thing to say, y'know? But it's so much more horrible to see how much of a reality that is.
Still, even just for me, the silence was moving. And it was a lot quieter, even with the people who didn't follow through with the message. For myself alone, it really helped pound in the weight of not being able to convey something you really wanted, and in some cases even needed to say. Sexuality is such a large part of who you are, and I almost wanna say that I feel lucky to be straight. Simply because I honestly don't know if I'd have the strength to deal with some of the torment that's part of the package of homosexuality. We're learning about the Civil Rights Movement in my US History class right now, and participating in the Day of Silence really made me feel like I was part of a whole new little Civil Rights Movement, y'know? And it's so powerful to me, to know that even if there were a few kids around school with "Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve" tags around school, there were hundreds more supporting the cause.
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