“Be Quiet”: The Long History of Silencing Women’s Voices
Introduction: When Speaking Became a Crime
“Be quiet.”
Two words that have followed women for millennia — from the ancient forum to the modern comment section.
In our November book of the month, The Woman They Could Not Silence by Kate Moore, Elizabeth Packard defies polite society and braves the backlash to speak publicly about her experience. The result? Elizabeth was ignored, ridiculed, and demonized for her public speech. However, her persistence eventually paid off, and she became an agent for change.
And as we look at today’s culture — where women who speak publicly still face reprisal, threats, and disbelief — we see that this societal pattern of keeping women away from the power of public speech persists. The methods may have changed; the intent has not.
InWomen & Power, historian Mary Beard traces how women were explicitly excluded from public speaking, because public speech defined power and authority. In this post, we will explore how silencing women in public forums has always been used as a form of control and how we must persist (just like Elizabeth) to continue to make change happen.
The Ancient Roots of the Silencing
Mary Beard begins Women & Power with one of the oldest scenes of female silencing in Western literature: Homer’s Odyssey.
When Penelope tries to address the suitors in her home, her own son, Telemachus, interrupts:
“Speech will be the business of men — all men, and of me most of all; for mine is the power in this household.”
Beard notes that this is more than simple family dynamics — it’s the moment the patriarchal rule is set. Public speech is masculine; female speech is disorderly.
Women in classical literature are often portrayed as dangerous when they speak — think of Medusa’s hiss, Clytemnestra’s manipulative rhetoric, or Cassandra’s “mad” prophecies that no one believes. The cultural equation was clear: women’s voices were threats to order. They were dangerous and dysfunctional.
That belief hardened into law, religion, and social custom. Women could pray, whisper, or sing — but not preach, legislate, or command. Their words belonged to the private sphere; the public one was reserved for men. And, sadly, the battle against this rule rages on today.
Voice as Power — and Threat
Fortunately for us, Elizabeth’s husband’s efforts (and the efforts of the asylum she was wrongfully imprisoned in) did not have the intended effect of silencing and erasing her. After her time in the asylum, she took to public speaking to raise awareness and lobby for reform despite the fact that women speaking in public was frowned upon.
And despite what some may say, silencing women has always been political – our voices are a threat to the patriarchy. Women speaking out represents our independence and the patriarchy’s loss of control.
For centuries, women were excluded not because they had nothing to say, but because their saying it would disrupt hierarchies built on male authority. To speak is to define reality; to narrate the world on one’s own terms.
That’s why silencing takes so many forms. It’s not just forbidding women to speak; it’s undermining them when they do.
Beard points out that even today when women in modern politics — from Hillary Clinton to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — speak forcefully, they’re often described with words like “shrill,” “aggressive,” or “nasty.” These terms are linguistic descendants of ancient anxieties about women’s voices disrupting the public order – created by men for men. It’s a way of undermining a woman’s words.
Similarly, Moore shows how Elizabeth Packard’s calm, reasoned speech was twisted into evidence of instability. Her husband argued that her very act of debating him — as his wife — was proof she was “unhinged.”
Clearly, it isn’t necessarily the content of a woman’s words that makes her dangerous. It is her right to have them at all.
From the Asylum to the Internet: New Spaces, Same Silencing
One might hope that, in the 21st century, these old dynamics would be relics of history. But today, digital platforms have become the new public forums — and the increase in anonymity has only increased the misogyny in many cases.
When women speak online (whether with authority or just to share an opinion), they’re often met with harassment, threats, or ridicule. A 2020 Pew Research Center report found that women — especially younger women — experience online abuse at twice the rate of men, and that this abuse disproportionately targets their voices and credibility.
This effort to silence with threats and harassment mirrors the social and institutional tactics Moore described in The Woman They Could Not Silence:
- Discreditation: Labeling outspoken women as “crazy,” “angry,” or “unhinged.”
- Isolation: Flooding their digital spaces with hate until they withdraw.
- Inversion: Portraying their responses to abuse as proof that they are the problem.
When a woman deletes her account, steps back from politics, or stops speaking out for safety’s sake, the system has succeeded. Silence has been reimposed — not by law, but by culture.
The Double Bind: Speak and Be Punished, or Stay Silent and Disappear
Women face a “damned if you do damned if you don’t” scenario: speak, and risk condemnation; stay silent, and disappear.
Elizabeth Packard’s resistance cost her lost years of her life, her home, and her children. Mary Beard, meanwhile, frames her own experience with online backlash as part of a continuum: “When you open your mouth as a woman, you have to negotiate a cultural history of being told to shut it.”
Women who lead, write, or organize today still navigate this bind. In politics, women are told to be assertive yet likable. In workplaces, they’re told to speak up but not too loudly. On social media, they’re told to use their platforms — but not to “make everything about gender.”
Silence, it seems, remains the preferred female virtue. Some of us have even had our own mothers say something like, “keep that to yourself” or “don’t share that with anyone else” in an effort to keep us safe from ridicule or backlash. They have been tricked into believing the cultural norm of a silent women is safe, that silence = protection.
Echoes in Today’s Culture
The patterns Beard and Moore describe are alive and well — visible in multiple spheres of contemporary life:
1. Politics
Women in public office face disproportionate harassment and scrutiny, not for their policies but for their demeanor. Female politicians worldwide receive targeted online abuse that drives many from public service — a digital echo of the old rule that women should not speak in the political forum.
2. Media & Entertainment
Female journalists, critics, and creators face online mobs for expressing opinions, while men rarely do. The “angry woman” trope persists across media, subtly reinforcing the message that passion in a woman’s voice equals instability.
3. Social Media
Platforms like X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, and TikTok are double-edged swords — offering women visibility while exposing them to relentless silencing tactics. The digital “asylum” isn’t physical, but psychological — a space where women’s credibility is constantly questioned until they self-censor.
4. Reproductive Rights and Bodily Autonomy
When laws dictate what women can do with their bodies, they also dictate who gets to speak about them. Limiting women’s autonomy has always gone hand-in-hand with limiting their speech. The recent erosion of reproductive rights in parts of the U.S. reflects the same logic of control that once justified coverture and confinement.
Breaking the Cycle
1. Vocalizing:
Breaking the silence is not just an act of courage — it’s an act of revolution. Continue to speak up, speak out, and be your own advocate. It won’t come without repercussions, but you are strong, and you will continue on.
2. Listening:
If the silencing of women is a centuries-old tradition, then the act of listening — truly listening — is a radical act. Listening is the bridge between voice and power. Without it, speech is just noise in the wind. Listen to each other, support each other. We can’t force others to listen, but some will. Some will hear it and want to change.
3. Reimagining:
Mary Beard calls for women to redefine what power sounds like. In Women & Power, she argues that instead of forcing women to “speak like men,” society must learn to value the female voice as authoritative in its own right. True equality, she suggests, isn’t about women entering a male-defined public sphere, but about reimagining the sphere itself. Today, this reimagining is happening all around us — in feminist journalism, activism, art, and academia — where women are reclaiming storytelling as a political act.
Conclusion: Women Who Won’t Shut Up
The essential truth is: every time a woman raises her voice, she challenges history itself.
The silencing of women has evolved — from asylums to algorithms, pulpits to platforms — but so has resistance. Women are refusing to be quiet, reclaiming public space, and rewriting what authority sounds like.
And maybe that’s what scares the world most — not that women are speaking, but that they’re finally being heard. Together, we can revolt against a culture using silence as power.
