Anyone who has lived with, or remembers being, an adolescent is familiar with the Subjective Knower position in Belenky et al.’s taxonomy. Common wisdom, especially in the United States where individualism is highly valued, suggests adolescents inhabit a developmental stage in which they are establishing themselves as knowers and authorities separate from other authorities. These moves toward personal authority can be quite frustrating for the others whose earned authority is challenged repeatedly by the adolescent, who has little experience but “knows it all.” I argue, though, that educators are wrong to assume that adolescents have little experience, even if adolescents have had fewer experiences than they. As Patricia Sullivan’s (2003) genuine dismay over the source of Ellen’s refusal to write the personal narrative/memoir paper indicates, teachers have trouble seeing and understanding one experience set most likely to challenge their students’ abilities to stay in school: a history of domestic abuse or violence. Teachers have trouble seeing and comprehending the abuse and violence that affect literacy development because in many ways, we too are Silenced Knowers, not enabled or supported in our readings of the institutional and systemic nature of abuse and violence in our culture. In order to teach more effectively students with legacies of abuse and violence, teachers must learn, as women who become survivors of violence must learn, first, to recognize what constitutes abuse, and second, to create networks of people who publicly and materially support those cognitions.