Choosing Silence, Naming It Oppression

This week, Wangari and I interviewed student leaders as part of our research on Mental Health Promotion Strategies in our school and their Outcomes on Undergraduate Students’ Knowledge. But the conversation quickly became more than research—it made us question what we thought we knew and challenged each other’s assumptions.

We were trying to understand how various stakeholders promote mental health awareness and shape students’ knowledge in our school, not just what appears in reports or campaigns, but how it actually plays out on campus.

During one of the interviews, one student leader told us something that caught my attention immediately. He said that the number of men experiencing mental health issues in the school was higher than that of women.

Not because men go through more.

But because men do not speak.

He said men keep things to themselves, while “girls are mostly defended” and people speak up for them.

So I asked him, who speaks up for them?

He said, “women themselves.”

He went on to explain that women are often seen as weak and vulnerable, and that over time, with conversations around equality, feminism, and even ideas like the “third gender rule,” women have found ways to speak and be heard.

So I asked him again, who started those conversations?

And he said, “the girls themselves.”

That answer stayed with me.

Women have fought to be heard. They have challenged being labeled weak. They have pushed against systems that made them invisible. They did not wait quietly for space to be given to them, they created it.

So I asked him, what about men?

He told me it is society. That society has blinded men into believing they must always be strong, that they should not speak up, that expressing pain makes them less masculine. That society has left men without language for what they feel.

Maybe he was right.

But I could not let that sit without question.

So I asked him, is it not the same society that once made women voiceless? Unequal? Unheard?

Because it is the same system.

He looked at me and said, “you’re saying that because you found that other women had spoken up for you.”

For a moment, I paused and thought to myself: How does he see me?

Then I asked,

“So you think if I had been part of the women who came before, women would still be facing the same problems?”

He laughed and said, “ Not really but tell me, how would you have made the change?”

I told him,

“I would have spoken up, just as others before me did. Change is not something handed to anyone, it begins with the courage to stand, to name what is wrong, and to act. Women found their voices, not because someone gave it to them, but because they refused to remain silent. If you see injustice, your responsibility is to challenge it yourself."

Maybe I am able to speak because someone before me refused to stay silent. But that doesn't free me from responsibility. I will take a stand for social justice, and I would never be at peace until I have raised my voice at least once to make a difference, for humanity.

Then I asked him,

"If you recognize that women speak up for themselves, why not encourage men to do the same? Why not challenge your fellow men to stand, to speak, to feel, to be heard? what will be your responsibility in all this?"

Because awareness without action is just observation.

If you can see the problem, then you are already part of the solution.

The conversation shifted.

Because now it was no longer about “society” as some distant, invisible force. It became about him. About responsibility. About choice.

And that is where I refuse to stay silent too.

Why does it feel like men are silenced just because women have found their voices?

Why does empowerment on one side begin to sound like oppression on the other?

Women speaking up was never meant to silence men.

So why do some men choose silence and then call it oppression?

Why blame women for speaking, instead of questioning why men are not?

If society taught men to be silent, then who will unteach it?

Because the truth is, women did not wait for permission to be heard.

They challenged. They resisted. They spoke.

So why can’t men do the same?

Why can’t they confront the same system instead of pointing at women who refused to be crushed by it?

Because change does not come from watching others rise.

It comes from deciding you will rise too.

Mental health cannot be a conversation where one group fights to speak while another chooses silence and calls it injustice.

If men are suffering, then their voices matter.

But those voices must be used.

Not hidden. Not postponed. Not shifted onto women to carry.

Because at some point, the question stops being who silenced you?

And becomes, why are you still silent when you know you don’t have to be?