Baa, Baa, Black Sheep
Is it truly better not to hurt, offend or create conflict when simplifying the surface comes at the expense of the self?
Recently I was scrolling through Facebook when I realized that a friend from my elementary school days had unfriended me. There hasn’t been any animosity between us since we were in middle school, so I suspect she read this previous essay of mine that I had shared.
Where I wrote about my two best friends in seventh grade and us protesting reading The Red Pony by John Steinbeck, she was one of those friends, but if you’ve read the essay, you know it wasn’t about her or even about The Red Pony. But — generally speaking — there are people who may feel hurt, angry or offended about anything, and I suppose I hurt her, even though I didn’t mean to.
But leaving out the part altogether would have been an act of self censorship.
“When you censor yourself, you lose the best parts of what makes you, well, you. … Being exactly who you are is a radical act.” — Shay
I’ve spent years censoring my thoughts, feelings, beliefs — pieces of myself, in order to make other people feel comfortable, in order not to instigate or engage in conflict. In order not to hurt the people I love.
The truth is, while I don’t like hiding behind a keyboard and I don’t appreciate when people do — if you have something to say to me, please, walk up to me and say it — I find it easier not to censor myself when I’m sharing it online with hundreds of people I don’t truly know than to engage in an uncensored discussion in person with a friend or family member.
I’ll be honest if they ask me what I think. But more often than not, if my parents and their friends are discussing politics at the dinner table I quietly take the opportunity to scroll through my phone. If the ladies in my book club are discussing their Christian values, I take the opportunity to check in with my husband. I censor my language when I’m with most friends or family members and when I’m at work (one of the things I miss about working for the newspaper is being free to curse as much at work as I do at home), and I’m guessing my mother would like me to censor it more when I’m around her, too.
So if what shay. wrote is true, I am concealing who I am when I’m with all of these people, and I come away with this sense that, truly, they don’t know me.
Sometimes it’s lonely. More often than that, it fosters a sense of insecurity about things like my family reading everything I write because there are pieces of my point of view that they’re not going to like, or about the people in my book club or my writing group knowing the grittiest details of who I am because they might wake up one day and decide that I’m not an influence healthy for their lives, that I’m just too much of a black sheep.
Already there have been times around family that I’ve felt like one — particularly where it concerns religion or politics, and of course it would be the hot-button topics — and I keep my mouth closed because it’s simpler for everyone that way.
Censorship is simple, but when it’s self censorship, who does it really hurt?
The day after Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration in 2017, several hundred thousand people marched on Washington, D.C. I would’ve liked to have participated, but being a college student in Houston didn’t exactly afford me that opportunity; instead, I wrote a blog post about the event and about how I wanted to do something and it didn’t feel like I was doing anything by just sitting in class.
I’m having a hard time writing this down right now because my mom recently subscribed to my Medium posts, so I know she’ll likely read this — and I don’t intend to hurt or offend either of my parents. But the fact is, what happened was my dad had a very negative reaction to the blog post I’d written about the Women’s March — negative enough to frighten me into deleting the entire thing. So that’s what I did.
I love my dad, and I respect his opinion and think his response was a valid one because it was his point of view. But to this day, I regret having reacted to his anger by committing self censorship. In doing so, I invalidated myself.
According to the American Civil Liberties Union, censorship is when some people succeed in imposing their personal political or moral values on others. What’s censored is what’s considered offensive — well, that can be anything, and these days it is.
This article about the findings of a 2020 study conducted by the Washington University in St. Louis states that “pressure to keep one’s views to oneself seems to originate from one’s immediate social environment — one’s friends, family, co-workers and neighbors,” and that 45% of Americans with at least some college education tend to self-censor, compared to 27% of those without a high school diploma and 34% of high school graduates.
I thought that was interesting.
“‘Worry that expressing unpopular views will isolate and alienate people from their friends, family and neighbors seems to drive self-censorship,’” says James L. Gibson, an author of the study, according to the article.
Yes.
The truth is, I’m probably going to continue to self censor, at least when I am with people. At least for the foreseeable future, and may I work up the courage to speak out. Because if censoring myself is to deny the best parts of who I am, then isn’t it in essence a complete denial of myself?
When I interviewed for the job I have now, I had prepared in my head a response to the usual, “Tell me about yourself.” My planned answer began with, “First and foremost I’m a writer, and I would be denying myself if I didn’t share that.”
I didn’t share that, because it didn’t seem relevant as I was not applying for a writing job. Part of me — the writer part, I suppose, which is most of me — somewhat regrets that, too.
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.
