My silence was complicity

I once sat in a room and helped a man build a cage for his wife. I did not lift a hammer. I did not twist a wire. I simply listened. A friend, a man I respected, dissected his wife’s character over a low table. He listed her flaws as if reading a defective inventory. He critiqued her failures, her tone of voice, the very space she occupied in his world. We called it venting. We called it a private moment among men. We nodded. We offered him more tea. We changed the subject.

The violence was not in his words. The violence was in our silence. We absorbed his narrative like a sponge absorbs a spill, neutralising it, making the room clean again. We did not ask the single, vital question: “Is she safe from you?” We did not say the necessary, simple thing: “This is not respect.” Our collective silence gave him permission. It told him his contempt was a private matter, not a moral one. It assured him his audience was complicit. That was the day I understood complicity, not as a concept, but as a taste in my mouth. It was the bitter tea I drank to keep the peace.

What does it mean to keep a peace that is not yours to keep?

Complicity is not a dramatic act of evil. It is not a signed pact. It is the quiet nod. It is the subject changed. It is the awkward laugh that deflects tension. It is the decision, made in a heartbeat, to preserve a man’s comfort over a woman’s safety. It is the bricks of silence we lay, one by one, to build a wall around an abuser. We tell ourselves we are avoiding drama. We are keeping the group intact. We are being loyal friends. But what is the cost of this peace? Whose safety is the currency we spend to buy it?

When did we agree that a man’s frustration was more important than a woman’s humanity?

That room taught me a brutal grammar. Neutrality in a situation of injustice is a dialect of oppression. There is no neutral ground when a human being’s dignity is under attack. To say nothing is to speak volumes. To do nothing is to act decisively. My silence that day was not passive. It was an active endorsement. It was a vote cast for his version of reality. It was me, saying with my quiet, “I hear you, brother. Your grievance is valid. Her personhood is debatable.”

What is the architecture of a single moment of cowardice?

Let us deconstruct that moment, brick by brick. The first brick is social bonding. The unspoken rule that camaraderie is sacred, built on a foundation of unquestioned support. To challenge him is to break the tribe. The second brick is discomfort avoidance. The primal urge to flee from conflict, to smooth over the jagged edge of his anger rather than confront its source. The third brick is false neutrality. The lie we tell ourselves that we are ‘staying out of it,’ that his marriage is a black box into which we must not pry. These bricks lock together to form a wall. Behind that wall, a woman is alone. In front of it, a man is empowered.

How many cages have I helped build with my politeness?

The realisation did not come as a lightning bolt. It arrived later, as a slow, sickening dread. It was the memory of her face at a gathering, tense and watchful. It was the hollow sound of his jokes at her expense, met with our feeble smiles. I had confused conflict avoidance with peacekeeping. I had mistaken disloyalty to a friend for loyalty to some higher principle. But the highest principle is humanity. I had failed it. My voice, a tool I possessed, remained sheathed. I used it to murmur platitudes, not to speak truth. I chose the peace of the oppressor over the safety of the oppressed.

Can you locate the exact moment your silence became a weapon?

This is the personal, raw archaeology we must all undertake. We must revisit our own rooms. The family gathering where an uncle made a cruel joke about his wife. The office where a colleague was demeaned and we looked at our screens. The locker room talk we allowed to pass as banter. We must look at those moments not with the soft lens of nostalgia, but with the harsh light of truth. What did we build in that moment? What wall did we add to? Your memory is not an archive of shame. It is a blueprint for change. It shows you where the bricks are laid, so you know exactly where to start dismantling.

What is the weight of a subject changed?

I now know that my voice is a tool. It is a crowbar or a brick. I can use it to wedge open a space for truth, or I can use it to seal the silence tighter. That day, I added a brick. Now, I choose the crowbar. This choice is not grand. It is specific, daily, and uncomfortable. It is the refusal to laugh. It is the question asked instead of the subject changed. It is saying, “The way you speak about her is not okay,” when the room falls quiet. It is asking, “Are you okay?” to the person being discussed, not the one holding the floor.

Where does your loyalty lie when the price is another person’s safety?

This work transfers loyalty from structures of power to principles of humanity. It means being disloyal to the code of silence. It means risking a friend’s momentary anger for his ultimate humanity, and for his victim’s survival. It is understanding that true friendship can sometimes look like confrontation. That love for your community demands you disrupt its sickness. This is the active, muscular opposite of complicity. It is intervention.

Will you be a guardian of silence, or an architect of justice?

The path out of complicity is paved with deliberate, awkward words. It begins with a resolution: never again will my silence be someone else’s prison. The next time you are in that room—and there will be a next time—your body will remember the old script. Your pulse will quicken. You will want to offer the tea, change the subject, and leave the cage door locked. This is the critical moment. In that second, you must speak. The words need not be perfect. They must only be clear. “That’s not fair.” “I don’t see it that way.” “How is she, really?”

Your voice is a tool. Pick it up. Today. Not in a grand speech, but in a quiet room. Use it to dismantle the wall, brick by awkward brick. The architecture of violence is held together by mortar made from our collective silence. Refuse to be the mixture. Choose to be the water that wears the stone away. Start now. Your silence has a history. Let your voice change the future.