The Ethics of Imposed Silence

Sor Juana was ultimately silenced—forced to stop writing, forbidden intellectual life, her works destroyed or lost. She understood deeply what it means when power demands silence, when one's voice is deemed dangerous. Animals exist in imposed silence—unable to articulate their suffering in human language, their reality systematized out of existence through euphemism (harvesting instead of killing), abstraction (protein instead of animal), and active suppression of their voices through physical restraint. We don't hear animals' calls as meaningful speech. We silence animal advocates who speak too loudly or too frankly about realities of animal agriculture. The ethics of imposed silence requires we ask: Who benefits from silence? Whose interests are served by not speaking about, not seeing, not hearing? Sor Juana models resistance through insistence on intellectual voice and presence. Similarly, we can honor animals by refusing enforced silence about their reality, by creating spaces where their existence, their suffering, their agency become audible. This might mean changing language, bearing witness, supporting animal advocacy, or simply refusal to participate in euphemistic speech that obscures violence.