Un-silenced

By Leila Hall

We remove our gags together.
The 56 women who are wearing ‘RAPE SURVIVOR’ shirts and the 62 men with shirts that read
‘IN SOLIDARITY WITH ♀ WHO SPEAK OUT’ stand up first and begin to chant…

STOP THE WAR ON WOMEN’S BODIES
STOP THE WAR ON WOMEN’S BODIES
STOP THE WAR ON WOMEN’S BODIES

...and then those of us who for the whole day have had black masking tape across our mouths –
295 women with shirts that proclaim

‘SEXUAL VIOLENCE = SILENCE’

– we stand up together and, finally, after a whole day of no talking, no eating, no drinking, pull off our pieces of tape and tentatively at first (because it feels strange for just a minute to open our mouths), then steadily louder and louder, with increasing confidence and a mounting sense of relief, begin to chant, begin to shout, begin to scream with the rest, until soon the whole lecture hall rings with our sound so that you eventually lose track of your own voice – drowned as it were in this multitude of feeling and noise.

I keep running my tongue across my teeth, suddenly self-conscious. My breath, quite honestly, stinks. It tastes musty, it smells – I imagine – much like anything that’s been kept closed for too long. My breath, seems a huge part of this metaphor we are engaged in. Those of us who are gagged represent the 8 in 9 women in South Africa who are raped and who never go on to report the rape — who are effectively silenced by it. The silence of rape, I suddenly realise, doesn’t just mean no sound. It also means this dank, slightly stale smell — this taste. It means feeling like you can’t, you shouldn’t, open your mouth too wide, shouldn’t lean in too close to the person next to you, because what if they catch a whiff of it? What will they think of you?Will they move away? It means carrying something foul with you, something that sits on your tongue, fills your mouth, refuses to leave.

I’ve had few moments like that today. For the most part, I’ve struggled to realise the metaphor. I have struggled to feel like I can understand at all — silenced, as I’ve been, for only a day, and even then not really silenced at all because I could still sms, could still facebook, could still giggle, my hand continually pressing down on my gag so that it didn’t move too much when I did. One of the most astounding, moving, admirable things about today is the fact that many of the women wearing the ‘RAPE SURVIVOR’ shirts have, in fact, been raped. Unlike the majority of us, they are not simply a representation of the statistics — their speaking out is real. As we sit and hungrily, thankfully, tuck into our food, many of them stand up. Some read poems, others speak about the relief of being able to break their silence, others simply speak about their day, about the reactions they encountered on campus.

And then, towards the end of it, she stands up. Through the sudden rush of pent-up words, of
emotion confined and now let out in sobs, you can make out what she says:

I didn’t want to wear one of those ‘RAPE SURVIVOR’ shirts because I don’t feel like a survivor
at all, I am not brave enough

my own family didn’t believe me
it happened twice
in my own room
on my own bed
I haven’t spoken about it until now.

The room has gone quiet, gone still. My helplessness caught in my throat. But then a few people stand up, go over to her, and as she cries, as she breaks down, they hold her. And then someone says ‘why don’t we all stand up?’ and we do, one by one, many of us in tears by now, some of the girls letting out choked sobs. Still so much pent up, still so much waiting to be released. But suddenly this is real and suddenly this is something, because after a while, after hugs and holding and soft words from a room full of people

she manages a smile.

Together, we remove our gags.