I found this in my Facebook memories today so I copied and pasted the whole post as it was, typos and all. The timing is perfect. Today is the day I speak on a panel for Slutwalk International, a global Zoom call that will be recorded and posted around the world. How much louder can I get?!
I am doing a 30 day writing challenge. It started out as a way to overcome writer's block. With every passing day it becomes an opportunity for introspection, to dig deeper into what I need to say. Today's topic was "very loud". My loudness has been an issue for me all my life so I didn't know where this was going to go until it was written. When it was done I knew it had to be dedicated to Sass Shultz. Sassie, 2011 was a long time ago but the impact of your actions on that one day will live on in all that I do. You will never know how important your courage has been in changing my life. Thank you. This is for you, my mentor and role model. Day 7: Very Loud. It is amazing how the words of people we respect stay with us through time. The words, “raucous laughter” have haunted me since I was sixteen years old. The teacher was late for class and being high school kids we were not exactly sitting at our desks studying quietly in the absence of an authority figure. Maybe some were. I don’t know. That wasn’t me. Mr Tewary walked in and said, “I can hear that raucous laughter all the way down the stairs.” In apartheid South Africa in 1990 there were not many Indian people who used words like “raucous”. It was one of the reasons I loved Mr Tewary. He knew the kinds of words I read and he used them often in everyday speech. He didn’t need to resort to raising his voice or corporal punishment for discipline. His words cut like knife. That day I knew he was talking about me. I had been told before. My laugh made me sound “kachra”, like a rubbish woman. Only women with loose morals could laugh that loudly, draw attention to themselves with such reckless abandon. My voice was loud too. Everything about me was too loud – my personality, my bright pink nails with glitter on, my whacky dress sense that was anything but fashionable, my courage to express opinions that were unconventional. Later, my drinking and smoking and clubbing flew in the face of all that we were taught as girls growing up in a world where being very loud was punishable by rape. You know, if you’re willing to draw that much attention to yourself then of course you can’t be surprised when you attract the wrong kind of attention. Some parts of me got louder but some parts of me grew very, very quiet for a long time after that. The self-blame was silent, the guilt and sadness didn’t make a sound. I didn’t want to wake the very loud voices of I told you so. I took my punishment in silence. I kept the loud bits so loud that people wouldn’t find the parts that had been silenced. Then one day somebody louder than me spoke up. She shouted from the rooftops that the punishment was unjust. She left no doubt that I wasn’t to blame. She helped me break the silence. Now once again, all of me is loud. Very loud. Maybe just maybe by being loud I can also free others to be loud. Very loud.
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KarmillaWhy can’t I be pretty and a feminist and a mother and a healer and an activist and an educator and a warrior? Archives
March 2024
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