Writing about Mill's The Subjection of Women, Martha Nussbaum expresses her disappointment that the book lacks a theoretical chapter exploring “new rules” for marriages, alternative life styles and “experiments in living” (2010: 143). Although Mill was queer because he condemned the tyranny of the social norms over eccentric individuals, Nussbaum believes he was not “queer enough” because he was silent about many experiments that were going on at the time. Like many feminists (Annas 1977; Okin 1979; Eisenstein 1981), Nussbaum claims that the argument of The Subjection of Women is not radical enough. Mill's reluctance to ask men to participate in child rearing and his failure to imagine women's work opportunities stemmed from his conservatism. Mill was silent on radical gender projects because he shared a deep attachment to “the orderly forms of Victorian life” (Nussbaum 2010: 142).

In this chapter, I propose to rethink Nussbaum's assumption about the inherent conservatism in the philosopher's silences. Nussbaum is not unique in thinking that silence, as opposed to speaking out, is a conservative gesture. Here I utilize the counter-figure of disturbing silence to contest the demand to always speak out about sexual injustices. This figure reconceptualizes shame as an interruption of norms instead of constituting a stand-in for an undemocratic disciplinary affect. Disturbing silence is the first trope that I deploy to change a contemporary view about shame as negative and restrictive. To further this genealogical project, I argue that disturbing silences open up a space to live a life that unsettles normalized sexuality.