Imagining a World Free from Gender-Based Violence
This reflection began with a question written on a wall — an invitation for survivors to write their visions of freedom.
I carried it home with me, because it would not leave me. What follows is my own reflection, shaped by that moment, and by the knowing that we have never lived in such a world.
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First we must admit this: we have never known a world without violence. Not once.
To imagine it is to resist everything we have been told is unchangeable. And each of us, in ways big and small, has been shaped by these violences — sometimes as those harmed, sometimes as those holding power, often both at once.
To imagine freedom is to admit we all have unlearning to do.
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A world without gender-based violence is a world without violence at all.
Because oppression itself is violence.
Rape. Assault. Harassment.
Police killings.
Stolen wages.
Medical neglect.
Poverty. Exclusion. Hunger. Silence. Erasure.
The theft of land.
The poisoning of water.
The burning of forests.
And the quiet violence of paychecks that mark some lives as worthy of ease and others as disposable.
All of it.
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Because gendered violence cannot be separated from economic, racial, state, or ecological violence — they are bound together, each feeding the other.
A world free from gender-based violence is one that refuses hierarchies of worth. No wealth piled at the top,
no power hoarded by a few,
no resources locked away behind qualifications that decide who is “worthy” of survival.
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Wealth itself must be redefined:
not wages or contracts that disappear with rent
or end when budgets shift.
Wealth is ownership, assets, resources, and choice — what lasts, multiplies, and circulates in the hands of those who create it.
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In that world, wealth circulates where it is created:
in our labor, our care, our creativity, our survival.
It does not stop at the hands of organizations, saviors, or employers, but flows through our communities, sustaining those who make life possible.
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In that world, we are not dependent on organizations, governments, or saviors. We are helping one another, building together.
Survivors do not just exist — they thrive. And saviors, as we know them now, no longer do.
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To picture this world is not naïve — it is revolutionary. Imagination is the first act of freedom.
But we have to be careful. Titles and identities — especially the ones we most cherish, the ones that claim closeness to our struggles — can be claimed.
But if they are used to extract, to protect wealth or power instead of dismantling it, then they are not freedom. They are another form of control.
And if we find ourselves clinging to power in ways that shrink others — even unintentionally — that is our call to soften, to release, to choose differently.
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And when harm rises through us —
as defensiveness, control, or silence — that, too, is our call.
To soften. To repair. To transform.
We matter, even when violence moves through us, and we are still called to change.
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And when those violences show up — when systems or people try to keep us small — we are not wrong to push back.
Our survival has never been passive.
We have always had the right to resist, to defend, to disrupt.
If the world comes for us with violence, we meet it with our right to survive — by every means our survival requires.
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And so — why gatherings? Why joy?
Because gathering has always been survival.
Our ancestors circled in song and prayer,
in dance and whisper,
even when the world tried to strip them bare.
Once upon a time, joy was outlaw.
Because power knew the truth:
when we gathered, we revolted.
When we expressed joy, we were already free.
Even now, our joy is policed.
Our gatherings surveilled.
Our survival contained.
Yes, those gatherings matter.
But ours must lead.
Because we already carry what is needed:
care, imagination, survival, joy, accountability, memory, love.
Not small things.
Everything.
We are enough.
We already are.
To end gender-based violence,
to begin the world we deserve,
it will take our joy.
Our gatherings.
Led by us.
Unsupervised. Uncontained.
Joy is freedom.
Gathering is revolution.
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We also must honor what is often unseen.
The grieving.
The quiet.
The ones still carrying sadness, loss, or fear.
Because we, too, matter.
We, too, teach.
A world free from gender-based violence cannot ignore our tears while celebrating only our joy.
It must hold all of us — messy, questioning, hurting, healing.
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And alongside grief, there is another truth often hidden: care.
And let us be clear:
care is not a weakness, it is power.
Raising families, tending to one another, carrying memory — these are labors that sustain whole communities.
For too long, many of us have dismissed care as “less than,” even in ourselves.
A world free from gender-based violence invites us all to honor care — not as a burden, but as the ground of real power.
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And when we speak of worth — let’s be clear.
Worth is not earned.
It does not wait for perfection.
Sometimes we see it clearly,
sometimes we cannot.
But even in those moments, we are not outside the circle.
Because none of us are disposable.
Belonging is not conditional; it is shared.
We carry each other’s worth until we can feel it for ourselves.
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That is how our communities live and thrive.
That is how we practice freedom now.
A world free from gender-based violence also does not erase accountability; it transforms it.
Accountability becomes a practice of repair, not punishment. A way forward, not a cycle of harm.
And accountability is not only personal.
It is collective.
It asks us to hold each other — not to discard, but to bring one another back into the circle.
It calls those of us who have caused harm into responsibility and change, without stripping away our humanity.
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So yes — we must ask the hard questions.
Who decides?
Who gets to hold the resources, the power, the wealth?
And what if the questions are met with silence?
What if nothing changes?
Then you must decide.
Will you accept the silence?
Or will you build with us anyway?
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Because we already are.
Because we are enough.
Because in practicing self-love,
in seeing our own value,
we loosen the grip of the systems that profit off our doubt.
To love ourselves is to resist the world that tells us we are not worthy.
To build joy is to defy the violence that wants us gone.
And to gather, to grieve, to protect one another — that is not only healing.
It is revolution.
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We are not the first to dream this world.
Our ancestors held it in song, in secret, in survival.
Their vision lives in us still — unfinished prayers, carried forward in our breath, our work, our love.
And let us not forget love.
Not the shallow love we are sold,
but the kind that restores dignity,
that refuses disposability,
that binds us in care.
Love, too, is revolution.
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Even our doubt belongs here.
Even our contradictions.
Because none of us are disposable.
We are worthy of transformation,
worthy of joy,
worthy of freedom.
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A free world is also one where the earth is healed — where water runs clean, land is cared for, and forests breathe with us.
This is the world our children deserve to inherit, where safety and freedom are not dreams but the ground they stand on.
This is not a world that belongs only to them. It is a world that belongs to us.
To free us from gender-based violence is to free all oppressed people.
Nothing less is freedom.
And it begins now — in how we love, how we resist, and how we choose, together.
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With love and honor,
Chriseithia
Founder of Black Self Wellth™
This is sacred work, not open source.
Please honor the heart behind these words.
All rights reserved © Chriseithia Collins | Black Self Wellth™