“Hello,
How are you?
Sending you love and strength during these stressful times, and hope that you and your loved ones are safe.”
This is how I’ve started a lot of my emails this past year. These emails were written with an aching heart and the awareness that somewhere around us, someone is experiencing some form of violence and is fighting to live, and that this violence affects all of us; all of our hearts are aching.
The year 2023 serves as a reminder of many challenges and opportunities that we collectively and individually faced in the past year. It was not easy, with three active genocides, surveillance capitalism and tech monopoly fuelling authoritarian violence, continued gender-based violence online and offline, consistently increasing abuse of various kinds, draconian laws criminalising identities of individuals and groups around the world, increased scrutiny of bodies (particularly gendered bodies), attacks on fundamental human rights, countless international meetings and events among those who hold power to discuss the future of the world while the present looks equally uncertain – 2023 was a reminder that we need to hold on to hope for peace around the world a little tighter, and we will have to fight back against violence in all its forms for a little longer.
Continue reading at GenderIT.org.