Quote of the Day
“For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”
— Nelson Mandela
Mandela wrote these words in his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom. They capture something we sometimes miss when we talk about freedom: it is not only about what I am allowed to do. It is also about the kind of space I leave for you.
Freedom sounds simple when we are asking for our own.
Let me speak.
Let me worship.
Let me vote.
Let me choose how I live.
The harder test comes when another person asks for the same freedom and uses it differently.
Someone disagrees with us.
Someone belongs to another political party.
Someone practises another religion.
Someone chooses a life we would not choose for ourselves.
Do we still believe in freedom then?
A society cannot call itself free merely because the people we agree with are comfortable.
Freedom becomes meaningful when the person across the table can disagree with us and still remain our neighbour.
Perhaps that is one of democracy’s most difficult lessons.
We do not have to become alike.
We have to learn how to remain different without denying one another’s dignity.
Source: Nelson Mandela Foundation — Selected quotations from Nelson Mandela
Did You Know?
Nearly 1 in 3 women worldwide have experienced physical or sexual violence.
It is a statistic repeated so often that there is a danger we stop hearing what it means.
The latest estimates from the World Health Organization and UN partners indicate that about 840 million women—almost one in three—have experienced physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner, sexual violence by someone other than a partner, or both during their lifetime.
The number is enormous.
But violence does not arrive in someone’s life as a percentage.
It may arrive as a partner checking her phone.
A threat behind a closed door.
Money deliberately withheld so she cannot leave.
A slap nobody else sees.
Sex she did not consent to.
Or fear that becomes so normal that she begins arranging her day around avoiding another person’s anger.
The WHO says intimate-partner and sexual violence can have serious consequences for women’s physical, mental, sexual and reproductive health. It also emphasizes that violence against women is preventable.
That last word matters: preventable.
Because if violence is preventable, then it is not enough to ask survivors why they stayed, why they returned or why they did not report sooner.
There are questions for everyone else too.
What did friends notice?
What did institutions ignore?
What behaviour did a community excuse because “that is a family matter”?
And what could have been done before violence became somebody’s normal life?
A statistic can tell us how large the problem is.
What we tolerate tells us whether it will remain that large.
Sources
For discussion: What behaviour do communities still dismiss as “private” even when it may be an early sign of abuse?
Continue the conversation in the TUBUO Writes Gender-Based Violence & Women’s Rights room →
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