Silence Is Better Than Pain: Psychoanalytic Reflections on Gender, Voice, and the Legacy of Patriarchy in Asia

Introduction: The Voice Lost Before It Speaks

Across large parts of Asia—India, China, and Japan—women’s experiences are often rendered invisible, unspeakable, or dismissed. The loss of the female voice is not a sign of weakness but a survival strategy, learned early and passed down through generations. In cultures where women’s bodies are heavily regulated as sites of moral, familial, and national investment, silence often becomes a form of protection.

In India, the widespread practice of female feticide and entire villages existing without women send a clear message: the female body is seen as a threat to the symbolic order. In China, daughters are raised to perform masculinity, punished if they express softness or vulnerability. In Japan, laws surrounding reproductive technology and custody erode maternal identity and voice, reinforcing paternal authority.

This reflection uses a culturally sensitive psychoanalytic lens to explore how the trauma of women’s silenced voices embeds itself somatically, within early attachments, and across generations. The silence carries loss, fear, and unspoken pain—an inheritance as real as any spoken word.

India: The Body as a Burial Site for Voice

In many Indian regions, misogyny is deeply structural—woven into legal systems, cultural rituals, and economic preferences. Despite legal bans, female infanticide and sex-selective abortion persist, creating dystopian landscapes where women’s existence is negated.

From a psychoanalytic perspective, this goes beyond overt hatred; it is the foreclosure of feminine symbolic space. Women learn early that silence is safer than expression, that autonomy invites punishment. The body becomes a container for unprocessed trauma—somatization, reproductive difficulties, and disorders of eating often manifest when pain cannot find language.

Trauma, some analysts note, is transmitted “in breast milk”—not biologically toxic but laden with the weight of unspoken loss and shame.

China: The Performance of Masculinity in Female Flesh

In contemporary China, many daughters are raised as symbolic sons in families prioritizing lineage and continuity. Women harden themselves with masculine traits, striving for success, yet face punishment for losing traditional softness.

Many young women speak of a split self—one part performing masculinity to gain social acceptance, the other mourning lost softness and authenticity. The cultural memory of ancestral warfare and rigid gender roles continues to shape identity formation, creating psychic conflicts around gender and belonging.

Questions such as “What does it mean to be female if I cannot be soft?” or “Am I male? Am I female?” are urgent psychic dilemmas rather than abstract musings, reflecting the collapse of symbolic gender space under societal pressures.

Japan: The Legal Body and the Erasure of the Maternal Voice

Japanese laws around reproductive technologies and custody rights reveal a deep paternalistic logic: sperm defines legal identity, and mothers—especially in cases of egg donation or divorce—risk losing parental recognition.

For many women, this provokes terrifying questions about the reality of their motherhood. Paternal ownership is enshrined, while motherhood is framed as service or function.

For boys raised in this context, the father symbolizes invulnerability and authority, a figure who “does not need help.” This dynamic complicates the development of a healthy masculine identity capable of vulnerability and empathy.

The Psychoanalytic View: Trauma Beyond Language

Across these contexts, trauma disrupts symbolization. When women are denied the possibility of naming pain or expressing truth, the psyche retreats inward. Identity becomes performance, and the body holds the archives of trauma.

Psychoanalysis must adapt beyond Eurocentric frameworks to engage with these cultural specificities, recognizing silence as laden with meaning and history rather than emptiness.

The unspeakable may find expression through the body, through breakdown, through creative work, or through the analytic space. Recognizing this is essential for both analysts and societies striving for transformation.

Conclusion: Giving Voice to the Silenced Body

What happens when a girl’s body is already marked as a liability before birth? When mothers cannot pass on words, only fear? When daughters learn to smile through pain and obey rather than speak?

Across India, China, and Japan, women face layered struggles—external cultural violence and internal psychic conflict. Yet, change stirs in the cracks: more women are breaking silence, asking difficult questions, and claiming voice.

The body remembers. The psyche bears witness. Psychoanalysis, culturally attuned, can become a space where silence transforms into voice, and voice becomes a catalyst for change.

References

Bion, W. (1962). Learning from Experience.
Benjamin, J. (1998). Shadow of the Other: Intersubjectivity and Gender in Psychoanalysis.
Kristeva, J. (1982). Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection.
Laub, D. (1995). “Truth and Testimony.” In Testimony: Crises of Witnessing.
Ueno, C. (1994). Patriarchy and the Modern Family in Japan.
UNICEF and official reports on female feticide and gender imbalance in India (2022).
Chinese cultural analyses from digital platforms (Xiaohongshu, 2022–2024).
Japanese family law and custody reports (2021–2024).