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The idea that hate speech silences its victims has been put forward by a number of the advocates of campus speech codes and broader legal restrictions on speech. A very similar view has been taken by some critics of pornography. Catharine MacKinnon describes how she believes pornography silences women:
Thus, while defenders of pornography argue that allowing all speech, including pornography, frees the mind to fulfill itself, pornography freely enslaves women's minds and bodies inseparably, normalizing the terror that enforces silence on women's point of view.
In liberalism, speech must never be sacrificed for other social goals. But liberalism has never understood this reality of pornography: the free so-called speech of men silences the free speech of women. It is the same social goal, just other people. This is what a real inequality, a real conflict, a real disparity in social power looks like.

A related point is made by Charles Lawrence III:

When racial insults are hurled at minorities, the response may be silence or flight rather than a fight, but the preemptive effect on further speech is the same. Women and minorities often report that they find themselves speechless in the face of discriminatory verbal attacks….
Regulation of face-to-face verbal assault in the manner contemplated by the proposed Stanford provision will make room for more speech than it chills. The provision is clearly within the spirit, if not the letter, of existing first amendment doctrine.
Reference: Catharine A. MacKinnon, Toward a Feminist Theory of the State, p. 205. Charles R. Lawrence III, "If He Hollers Let Him Go: Regulating Racist Speech on Campus," in Words That Wound, p. 68-70.