{"id":4706,"date":"2016-11-29T19:21:22","date_gmt":"2016-11-30T03:21:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wou.edu\/westernjournal\/?p=4706"},"modified":"2026-04-14T19:21:45","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T03:21:45","slug":"a-year-of-silence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/a-year-of-silence\/","title":{"rendered":"A year of silence"},"content":{"rendered":"
By: Samantha Lindsey\r\nGuest Contributor<\/pre>\n
My labels include: 21-year-old, white, woman, pro-cannabis, pro-marriage equality, pro-choice, pro-universal healthcare, pro-LGBTQ rights, pro-border security, registered Independent, who voted for Donald Trump. I urge you to read on.<\/p>\n
About two months ago, I was doing my homework in the Academic Learning Center, as I do most mornings. Across the room, however, the cubicles made noise. Employees chattered, sipping their hot, morning beverages. What I heard were the familiar sounds of scoffing and wonder: reminiscing shards of rhetoric regurgitated from the second of three presidential debates. Condescending banter, the kind that had made me silent for more than a year now.<\/p>\n
In my time at university, I\u2019d learned to keep my tongue pressed between my top and bottom jaw. These days, at a place that claims to accept all minds and opinions, those against the hive lose civil rights, and human dignity.<\/p>\n
University made a promise to me, a promise that when you are in this environment, you will have your views challenged on fair and just grounds. Yet, in the last year, what should have been a healthy political debate, generated a persecution. I was labelled: bigot, sexist, racist, xenophobic, transphobic, victim-blaming, slut-shaming, woman. In the course of a year, I was called all of those names, and more, that can be generally embodied in the label: ignorant. Needless to say, I spent a year living in a country divided, in a community of like-minded peers where outliers were overwhelmingly unwelcome.<\/p>\n
It was a year spent where I could not speak on a topic I care so deeply about and followed so closely. I could not speak freely, and when I did, my views on platforms such as the economy were dismissed and I was labelled. A long year was spent watching my white, 17-year-old brother, and my white, 23-year-old boyfriend be stereotyped as rapists and sexists because of their color and gender.<\/p>\n
It was a year where professors would subtly mention Hillary Clinton in their lectures, as if everyone shared the same view, as if this election was a no-brainer. It wasn\u2019t. A year where, if you weren\u2019t solidified in your vote by the time the primaries were over, you were ignorant. It was the year I was too afraid to even speak to anyone in my community without being labelled a sexist, racist, xenophobic, transphobic, etc.<\/p>\n
I was relieved on Nov. 8, 2016, at 11:43pm. Not because the candidate I voted for won. No, I was elated to finally re-stitch the part of my tongue that had been severed by my community, in order to prevent pronunciation of my political views.<\/p>\n
I listened, for a year, and what I got out of it is that this society is much more biased than I knew before: from hot-headed-headlines condemning Mr. Trump, to being called a bigot by my peers, and being silenced. I wanted to be heard, yet nobody would sit down and listen.<\/p>\n
When The New York Times admitted the need to embrace the mission of journalism again, it became clear this election was nationally ruthless. We were left in this burning dump-yard of a nation: where we no longer listen to one another\u2019s views peacefully, rather, we persecute and stereotype. All I can hope is that we learn something: because four years from now, we vote again.<\/p>\n
Contact the author at slindsey16@mail.wou.edu<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By: Samantha Lindsey Guest Contributor My labels include: 21-year-old, white, woman, pro-cannabis, pro-marriage equality, pro-choice, pro-universal healthcare, pro-LGBTQ rights, pro-border security, registered Independent, who voted for Donald Trump. I urge you to read on. About two months ago, I was doing my homework in the Academic Learning Center, as I do most mornings. Across the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1652,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"modified_by":"saragerrick","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1652"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4706"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25474,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4706\/revisions\/25474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}