How Far Should My Voice Carry?
As a note, I do talk about topics like violence, guns, shootings, and abuse so this is just a content warning.
I’m someone with a lot of thoughts about a good amount of things. I’d love to be able to talk to someone about ways to bake better cookies or how I feel about the current socio-political climate. I fully believe in the pursuit of knowledge to better understand the world around us. I hope that’s something about me that never changes.
But I’m also someone with a lot of privilege. I’m an East Asian, Cis-gendered heterosexual male who grew up middle-class for most of his life. I have two parents who are alive and well that love and support me, I was able to pursue higher education and get my bachelor’s degree, and I have a full-time job that can pay me enough for me to live.
The previous two sentences that describe me hold a lot of privileges that I won’t go into specifics about right now; the previous two paragraphs are both true sentiments that help make up my whole being. And for the most part, that doesn’t seem to be an issue. I’m just a privileged guy who likes learning and talking about things, so what? But for me, I’m starting to wonder about what kind of spaces my voice should actually contribute to.
Let’s start with an example, people love examples. At the time when I’m writing this, gun violence and gun policies are heavily in the news after shootings in New York, California, and Texas (twice). My Twitter feed is in a massive stir (along with the Depp v. Heard trial for some reason) and there are so many threads, articles, and opinion pieces just flowing around in the sea of the internet. And I’m not here to call anyone out, I myself was thinking about writing a blog post about gun violence after hearing all of this happen.
But I paused before I started writing that post because I wondered, is this a space where my voice should be carried into? Here I am, someone who has never shot, owned, or even held a loaded gun. My family has also never owned or shot a firearm with no strong desire of changing that reality. I am someone who has the privilege of never being affected by situations involving guns and mass shootings. So as someone with no direct ties to gun ownership and usage, what right does my voice have being here?
And this does not mean that I do not care. Just because I haven’t been personally directly affected by guns or shootings does not mean that I cannot care. In fact, I think that learning empathy in these situations is extremely important to ideas of being good neighbors and learning to love our communities, even if it means that our hearts break and grieve in these times. However, what I am asking is where do I draw the line of projecting my voice out with the thoughts and opinions of my care? At times like these, shouldn’t the voices of the direct stakeholders from all parties be highlighted above all? Should we have our news be split so we have “stories from the directly affected” and “stories from other parties”? Do we really need the thoughts of people who weren’t in the situation because collective sentiments aren’t enough?
Maybe I’m overthinking it. I wonder if those who write their own opinion pieces ever have these same thoughts, or if they can just believe in their own voice and believe that they’re not crossing any lines. I’m just not in a spot where I can feel like that right now and it really makes me question myself. I’ve spent a lot of time learning about random things that I love talking about, but is there a filter on which of those topics I should actually try and highlight my voice in? Like is there a difference between sharing what I learned from a recent nature documentary about fish and sharing what I learned about The Gaza Strip? I don’t know. I want to share what I know and feel. I want to engage in the crossover of ideas and thoughts with others that create solace or engagement. But I also want to make sure that the right voices are being heard in every situation and I don’t know when my voices will ever be the right one.
