Speaking truth to power

It usually means a woman, particularly of color, is acting like a bitch but you don't want to say she is a bitch.

I would love to NEVER hear that phrase again. It was completely over used in 2020.

Shame you guys weren't around when that phrase was coined.

What it's supposed to mean is that people in powerful positions often don't get told the truth, so if you're speaking truth to power you're saying the way things really are to someone with power who is otherwise blinded to it.

But more often than not, it's just a woke excuse for being bitchy when dealing with authority.

Very stupid phrase, insufferable now.

It means “daring to say a truthful, but perhaps ‘controversial’/sensitive thing to a person who occupies a position of power greater than your own,” if I understand it correctly. It wasn’t clear to me what it really meant at first, mostly because it was so overused.

It describes somebody's outburst shortly before being fired.

[quote]The Speak Truth to Power pamphlet coined the term for non-violent protest, which is known and used throughout the world.

[quote]From their origins in mid 17th century England, Quakers first practiced Speaking Truth to Power when addressing people in authority. Seeking religious and social equality they would speak their truth to those who had the influence to make change happen. But it wouldn’t be until the 20th century that Speak Truth to Power would become a term in its own right.

[quote]In 1955, the American Friends Service Committee published Speak Truth to Power – A Quaker Search for an Alternative to Violence. Written by Bayard Rustin (1912 – 1987), a Friend who was a leader in civil and gay rights, the pamphlet was one in a series of five that explored how to “ease tension and move toward international peace” in a nuclear-armed world.

[quote] Seeking religious and social equality they would speak their truth to those who had the influence to make change happen

“speak their truth” ... there isn’t multiple versions of the truth. There is only the truth. There isn’t a “well, here’s MY truth” option. Something is either true or false. An opinion or a philosophy is not a ‘truth’. So sick of this shit.

[quote]A master strategist and tireless activist, Bayard Rustin is best remembered as the organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, one of the largest nonviolent protests ever held in the United States. He brought Gandhi’s protest techniques to the American civil rights movement, and helped mold Martin Luther King, Jr. into an international symbol of peace and nonviolence.

[quote]Despite these achievements, Rustin was silenced, threatened, arrested, beaten, imprisoned and fired from important leadership positions, largely because he was an openly gay man in a fiercely homophobic era. Five years in the making and the winner of numerous awards, BROTHER OUTSIDER presents a feature-length documentary portrait, focusing on Rustin’s activism for peace, racial equality, economic justice and human rights.

It means someone’s getting uppity and you support it because they’re not directing it at YOU.

The first time I heard "Speaking Truth to Power" was when Anita Hill put out her book. Anita Hill testified during Clarence Thomas' SCOTUS (nomination) Senate hearing. IMO, it's still a good saying.

It's one of those stupid phrases that mean nothing, like "diversity is our strength", blah, blah, blah.

Isn't it odd that so many of the (young, uninformed) gay men here have a problem with this phrase? Gay men have been "speaking truth to power" for many years now.