Don't tell me to shut up!

I am fed up with people (with both good and bad intentions) telling me to shut up. Sometimes it's nicely phrased. Sometimes it isn't. Either way, it's unwelcome.

I have spent my life shutting up. As the child of an alcoholic mother in a verbally abusive home (and sometimes physically and sexually abusive home), I learned to shut up. If I "smarted off" at my mother, I got a slap across the face as a reminder to shut up. If I told anyone our "family secret," the penalty was unimaginable. If you have ever read "Barn Burning" by William Faulkner, you may remember the part where the father takes his son aside after a trial in which the son very nearly testified against his father. "You were going to tell 'em, weren't you?" (said in bad English, but that's the gist of it). The boy admitted that he was going to tell the truth. The father reminds the son that telling the truth would end the family. "Blood's thicker than water. If you don't stick to blood, ain't no blood gonna stick to you." In other words, if you don't take my side, right or wrong, you will become an outcast. (That, of course, is what eventually did happen.) Like little Sarty Snopes, I knew that if I told anyone, my mother would make my life a living nightmare.

As a Southern female, I learned to shut up. The Bible Belt has its own penalties for women who speak up. I have attended church with a girl whose church expressly forbade allowing women to speak inside the church AT ALL. I have been with my husband and had sales personnel address him, and him alone, about a product that we both would use. My input was not important. I have been a student in classes where male students' opinions were treated with dignity and female students' opinions were ignored or derided.

As an American woman, I have yet to see a female president or vice-president. There is even, of late, a concerted effort to demonize women and take away rights that women have fought hard to get. As a woman, I am told to shut up, en masse, along with all other women.

I am told to shut up by conservatives because my liberal voice is loud and persistent.

I am told to shut up by theists because my atheist voice rubs them the wrong way. I am told to "live and let live" by religious people, even as they work to deprive me of my rights and force me to live in (what recent studies show) may become a theocracy of their making.

I am told to shut up by people who think I am not informed enough. I am told to shut up by people who think I am too well informed. I am told to shut up by people who want me to keep secrets, even though they did not ask me if I was willing to keep that secret. They just assumed that telling me to shut up was sufficient.

"Don't make waves. Don't embarrass yourself [i.e., me]."

One of the biggest arguments I ever had with my husband was when my older son told me not to talk about X with his intended bride. X was nothing big. No skeletons in the closet. Just normal family stuff. I refused to shut up then, and I refuse to shut up now.

In fact, I don't plan to ever shut up. I know I am rude, crude, bawdy, insensitive at times, crass, perhaps even mean. That doesn't matter. You have the right not to listen. You can slap on some head phones and listen to jazz, if you like. I don't care. You have the right not to read what I write, even if I write it in a public forum. Half the time, I don't read what any of you write either. I'm not cursing you to your face, or even behind your back. I am not telling your spouse you're being unfaithful. Even if you were, and I knew it, I wouldn't tell. Most importantly, I'm not lying. I am being as honest and truthful to my way of thinking as I can be. If that isn't your truth, then you go tell your own. But whatever you do, don't tell me to shut up.