Can the traumatized speak?

Comment published on New York Times online blog, September 20, 2018, in response to op-ed essay by Richard Friedman, “Why sexual assault memories stick”:

People have a need for what they say or claim to be recognized. This applies to all kinds of things, and especially to traumatic experiences.  

Violence or threats can be performed in order to silence, and then talking about them wins further threats, to punish the refusal to a continuing silence.  

When terrible things happen, the first thing that must be said is: This happened, it was done, it was a wrong, and it matters, because such things should not be done.  

I myself was openly harassed by the police in New York 3 years ago. Their vaguely articulated concerns were political. (I am a writer, and my politics are moderately left).
A lawyer confirmed that my subsequent psychiatric incarceration was indeed punitive and part of the harassment. It puts you outside "society," makes you responsible for the exclusion, and your purely privatized experience counts not. 

She also said I must not talk of it, or they will say I'm crazy and do it again. My experience and thinking then negated, what i say happened cannot be true.  

Obviously, the purpose was to silence and intimidate me. An implicit demand for silence about violence done to silence one is its continuation.


Citizens who speak must be treated as saying what is not necessarily true or false, but possibly true. There is no polity otherwise.