On Silencing Voices

Our whole team at Athena Talks didn’t sleep yesterday.

We made a mistake. A corrected one, but a mistake nonetheless. It might be part of the reason for one of Medium’s more popular authors to leave the platform — hopefully only temporarily. And the author, Kel Campbel, happens to be a woman, whose voice we respect.

As a publication, we are deeply sorry.

As a woman of color who has had her fair share of sexism and racism, I cannot help but feeling personally invested in Kel’s spiraling story and her decision to go silent.

It goes back to my original reason of why and how I was inspired to start Athena Talks in the first place: 1. to promote equality and invite open discussion about the social constructs that are misogyny and sexism. and 2. to invite men in the discussion rather than merely blaming them.

I wasn’t always that clear.

Right before Athena started, sexism was hitting me in the face. I saw one of my friends’ comment about how Theanos’ Elizabeth Holmes must have “let some VCs touch her boobs” in raising funds for her unicorn startup. “Elizabeth are like flies in silicon valleys”, he said, “because true startups never let sluts be CEO”.

I couldn’t believe my eyes upon seeing those words from a prestigious scholar of a government-funded program. I was scared of the poisonous voice he was able to bring back to his own country.

So I stood up to him, calling him out, asking him to apologize to all women he had violated by saying those words.

He did not. In return, my attempt of opening up the conversation was met with complete, startling silence. I felt unheard, unvalidated, irrelevant. It felt like a joke to him, not even worth a come-back.

Worse, I realized that this is not at all a rare occasion: sexism is prominent not just in my little circle of friends, it is every-fucking-where. Ever wonder what it’s like raising money in Silicon Valley as a female founder? Read this.

That’s when the light bulb hit. I realize: This is a struggle we all face, and misogyny affects all of us, men and women alike.

As opposed to fighting against misogyny, we should all fight for equality.

We have blamed each other enough. Attacking will never solve anything. It will only fuel the hate at worst and feed off the trolls at best.

So, as opposed to silencing people’s voice and undermining every single one of people’s most valid concern, including ours, we should embrace them, give them where the credit is due, condemn them where they are wrong, understand where they are coming from.

Too often, feminists have a bad rap for being everything bad, whatever feet we get off. We are too much of everything and not enough of anything. We have been labeled everything from being “too angry” to being “too white”, or “too politically correct”. Feminists themselves attack each other. In the process, no one was taken seriously.

We can’t let ourselves become just a fad.

With all due respect, I beg Kel to comeback. With her original article and the response it’s created, she was on her way to becoming a very influential voice of the movement. As opposed to silencing herself, she should continue to speak her truth: copy infringement, sexism, and everything else.

I also beg for her to take back the “middle-finger” she gave me for raising my voice, or the mocking she gave Jim Levy for discussing copyrighting. I understand that she’s angry — but anger doesn’t give you the right to discredit all goodwill, it certainly shouldn’t lead to complete silence.

When Shawn raised to me that Athena Talks’ attempt to publish Mark’s response was “the same lame attempt to silence all women voices”, my response to him was simple: I am a woman. My voice matters.

So does Shawn’s. So does Kel’s. So, please come back and continue the conversation. This is not a battle anyone can fight alone.