This image is free of copyrights. Feel free to use this image to raise awareness about gender based violence.

Day eleven features a photograph by T.

In our homes, on our roads, in our classrooms and at our workplaces, women and men are subject to harassment, abuse and injury on a daily basis. A reported 60% of women suffer from domestic violence; simple extrapolation suggests that all of us are victim to some form of gender based violence.

And yet, we remain silent. The woman who speaks out is too much; she was asking for it. The man who speaks out is a coward; he couldn’t take it like a man. We are told to keep it to ourselves, it’s no one else’s business, it is shameful, it is our fault.

So we do not see it, we do not hear it, and we do not speak of it. And it continues.

Speak out today. Talk about what you’ve heard, write about what you’ve seen. Point fingers, name names. The shame is not ours, it is theirs. For unless we speak now, it will be too late.

– T

Watch this blog for the next 6 days. We’ll be posting a featured photograph each day till 10 December as part of WMC campaign against GBV.

For more information about this campaign click here

T is a member of the steering committee of Beyond Borders. She works in the development sector and has mad culinary skills. She’s a writer, a poet and she dabbles in photography. She blogs at Dance in a Triangle. Her opinions are her own.