Consent and Composure

What do we do when someone ignores the rules of consent and we're too shocked to assert a reaction? Maybe we just get used to things. We learn to adapt and acquiesce. We become composed.

We get used to things. Things like not speaking up to condescension, interruptions, and insults. Things like going along with being objectified. These gradual, unexpected, and seemingly small concessions train us for silence until compliance not only becomes the norm in private but also on a national scale.

Trauma in private is one thing. Watching our society is becoming its own trauma. It echoes life with an abusive partner: constant diminishment, threats, being bullied into compliance, and hypervigilance. This is no longer private. It’s collective.

Speaking up often carries risk of punishment, ridicule, and dismissal. So we learn restraint and stay composed, even as our voice is clipped short. We tolerate it because we were told young to be seen and not heard, to speak only when spoken to.

photo by Darí Dorofeeva

The compromises add up. A joke at our expense that we don’t challenge. A patronizing comment we brush off. The moment we’re suddenly sexualized and go along with it because resistance feels more dangerous than agreement. In those moments, shock leaves us suspended between disbelief and silence. These are the quiet concessions we make every day, the unspoken consent that society demands. These aren’t isolated slights. They’re expressions of misogyny, disguised as normalcy.

And lately, it feels like this private conditioning is playing out on a national stage. The creeping restrictions, the erosion of rights, the rising fear, echoing the tactics of an abuser: control, isolation, gaslighting. We learn not to speak, not to fight back, not to stand up for ourselves.

So we begin to daydream of escape. Reevaluating what freedom means. Contemplating survival in patriarchy and authoritarianism. Creating a vision of something new. Because composure is not compliance. Silence is not consent. And waking up means realizing we were never meant to stay quiet.

– April Uhlir