Voluntary Mutism

I don't know about anybody else but I can understand voluntary mutism from my childhood (my mother said I was a good baby as I didn't cry) and later life. I am now 72 but get fed up with free speech that consists of someone else shouting you down (the passive part of free speech is listening in silence to the other person, until they have said what they want to). Also not listening to what you are saying in general communication, so you have to shout to be noticed or constantly repeating the same thing over and over and over again or being told to speak up by people not interested enough to listen in the first place, making it out to be 'your' problem. Then there is the constant interruptions by those who can't shut up long enough for you to finish what you are saying (a TV science show in the sixties displayed that if you hear your own speech played back at you, you eventually have to give up because of the feedback confusing you). All of this is extremely tiring and wears you down, so that in the end you just shut up.

Writing has the advantage that you can finish what you are saying, compose it without interruption and finish it when and where you want to, without the demands of others ignoring you, demanding your attention or generally being a pain in the neck.