The GSA at the school I work at is putting up flyers for the annual Day of Silence, which is a day that LGBT students stay silent the whole day. When I was in high school the kids participating usually wore a t-shirt or sign that indicated they were observing the day of silence and handed out cards explaining it when people talked to them.

My beef with Day of Silence has always been this: I’m pressured to shut up every day about being queer! I’m supposed to shut up every day about caring about queer and trans and genderqueer people! I’ve never entirely understood why I should observe a day in which I shut up even further; I get told, directly or indirectly, to shut up just about every single day. I would much rather have a day of protest where I am loud, where I do NOT shut up about just how many queer and trans and genderqueer people I care about but am always scared for, how often I am scared for myself, all the situations I’m supposed to keep secrets.

Is there more to this that I don’t know? It seems almost self-defeating, cause it’s not like every other day there’s tons of safe space to talk about being queer or trans. Am I missing something?