Why Speaking Up Can Feel Torturous
Women's voices have been muffled for centuries.
Consider the nymph Echo who, in Greek mythology, had her voice manipulated as punishment for talking too much. All she could do was repeat the last few words spoken by somebody else.
Consider also the experience of the abolistionist Lucy Stone who was blasted with water from a hose forced through her window in response to the general dislike of her speaking publicly on women's rights.
And consider also....
The story of Eliza Turner
In 1663, the town of Willowbrook, England, was a quaint and conservative community nestled between rolling hills and meandering streams.
In this picturesque town lived a woman named Eliza Turner, known for her animated personality and a love for sharing her thoughts with anyone who would listen.
Eliza was a vibrant soul, always eager to engage in conversation and offer her opinions.
However, Willowbrook was a town that valued tradition and conformity. The townsfolk, uncomfortable with Eliza's outspoken nature, began to gossip about her incessant talking. Some found her chatter charming, but others called it inappropriate and disruptive.
As whispers turned into murmurs and murmurs into complaints, the town council, of which her husband was a member, decided they needed to take action.
One day, as Eliza was strolling through the town square with her two daughters, she was approached by the stern-faced town magistrate, Mr. Hawthorne. He informed her that her constant talking had become a nuisance and disrupted the tranquility of Willowbrook. The council, he explained, including her husband, had all decided to impose a punishment to curb her chatty tendencies.
The punishment they chose was a relic of medieval times — a Scold's Bridle. It was a fearsome contraption made of iron, designed to stifle the wearer's ability to speak. The bridle consisted of a metal cage that enclosed the head, with a tongue suppressor that rested against the roof of the mouth, making talking nearly impossible.
Eliza was shocked and dismayed at the severity of the punishment for what she thought was a natural ability to engage people.
She argued passionately, defending her right to express herself and insisting her words were harmless. However, the decision had been made, and the Scold's Bridle was fitted onto her head in front of the townspeople, turning her vibrant eyes into silent windows of despair.
From that day forward, Eliza became a symbol of the consequences of deviating from the town's expectations about women animatedly speaking and expressing themselves in public.
Her daily life was marked by the clinking sound of the bridle as she moved through Willowbrook, and her attempts at communication were reduced to pleading eyes and gestures.
As each day passed, her shame magnified until she rarely ventured out, sending her daughters to run on errands on her behalf.
It would be 6 months before the townspeople took pity on Eliza and the Council agreed to release her from the torturous contraption, allowing her to find her voice once again, though significantly muffled, cautious and hesitant from that time forward.
Eliza's daughters grew up with the trauma of their mother's experience living on in their bones.
They were quiet, cautious, fearful and compliant. They found safety in keeping to themselves, only speaking when they were spoken to, saying yes even if they meant no. They brought their own children up the same way, passing the fear and anxiety associated with unbridled self expression from one generation to the next.
The moral of the story
If you identify as female and find public speaking, self expression or voicing an opinion harder than your logical brain tells you it should be, consider the inter-generational affects of all the Eliza Turner's from the past. It could be that your ancestors stories still live on in your bones.
This deep, unconscious, long lived barrier may be one part of your own story that provides an insight for change.
As Carrie Lyn Arnold points out in her book Silenced and Sidelined:
"Women self-silence not because we want to keep ourselves down, but most in part because our tongues are still healing".