By Brónagh Goff 

There’s a kind of violence that doesn’t bruise. Doesn’t scream. Doesn’t show up with fists or  blood or broken glass. It just lingers in the air – still, tight-lipped, watching. The kind of  violence that happens when you’re standing in a room full of people and no one says  anything.  

And it’s deafening. 

They say silence is golden, but I’ve found it tarnished. Mute. Because silence, when it  matters most, hurts louder than any word could. 

I’ve always wondered how it is that some people can see pain – raw, obvious, aching pain – and look away. Or worse, look and say nothing. Like watching someone drown while holding  the life ring, arms folded, dry on the shore.  

We grow up taught not to get involved. Not to make things awkward. Mind your own  business. Don’t poke the bear. Don’t stir the pot. Don’t draw attention. Be quiet. But what if  the pot’s already burning? What if the silence is the kindling? 

In school, there was a girl – quiet, soft-spoken, hair tucked behind her ear. She walked like  she was apologising for taking up space, like she was unfit. “She’s weird.” “She smells.”  “She asked to sit with us. Can you imagine?” And when her name became a punchline – when they wrote it on the walls of the bathroom with cruel hearts around it – I said nothing.  God, I said nothing. 

And that silence, it still lives inside me. A small ghost. Because I knew. I saw. I didn’t stop it.  

When we say nothing in the face of cruelty, we let it grow. We water it. We give it shade. We  pretend our hands are clean because we never held the knife – but we sharpened it, didn’t we? 

Not every war has bullets. Some have hallway glances, school gossip, group chats without  names. And every time someone shrinks under the weight of being Othered – too different,  too loud, too brown, too poor, too queer, too much – and no one stands up for them, we’re  part of it. 

I think about justice a lot – in courtrooms, in classrooms, in homes where dinner goes cold  while someone screams into a silence no one breaks. I think about all the times women stay  quiet because speaking is dangerous. I think about how easy it is to scroll past injustice. To  click ‘like’ on a post about Palestine or missing Indigenous girls or poverty, and then just…  keep going. As if awareness is enough. As if knowledge without action is activism. 

But silence in those moments, is not neutral. It sides with the oppressor.

Desmond Tutu – “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of  the oppressor.” And isn’t that exactly it? We dress silence up in manners. We call it respect,  call it staying out of trouble, but sometimes its just being a coward in a mask.  

Still, I understand why people don’t speak, I do. Because speaking costs something, It costs  safety, comfort, popularity, control. Sometimes even your future. And for young people,  especially, when the world already feels too big and our voices too small – shouting into the  dark feels like spitting into the sea. Like nothing will change anyway. 

But change has always started with one person saying something when no one else would.  One match in a room full of shadows. 

Silence becomes violence when it’s a choice made by those who can afford to stay quiet.  When privilege means you can walk away from a fight someone else is forced to live in.  When you can mute the world and still be safe. 

But there are people who cannot be silent. Who live in skin that makes them a target. Who  love in ways that others want to legislate. Who protest with their bodies everyday by simply  existing. 

And when they raise their voices, the rest of us should listen – and then speak with them. 

I want to live in a world where courage isn’t rare. Where truth doesn’t have to be shouted to  be heard. Where kids grow up knowing that speaking up is brave, not rude. That empathy is  action. That silence, can kill. 

Because words matter. And when used right – not to wound but to witness, not to dominate  but to defend – they can be the beginning of something better. 

So yes. Silence can be a form of violence. Not always – not the quiet of peace, or of healing,  or of reflection. But the silence is apathy. The silence is fear. The silence of knowing and still  turning away. 

That silence?  

It echoes. 

And it hurts. 

And I won’t be part of it anymore.

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