Kidwunda

I know it’s been said but I do often forget this website is free

[Kidwunda @KidWunda]

@latitude_fs your support channels are absolutely painful - I've been charged late fees incorrectly for the past 2 months and I cannot wait for 50mins on hold- with no other pathways for resolution. Also telling me that complaints are taking 5-7days for acknowledgent is ridic.

[MFWitches @MFWitches]

(CW: Sexual Assault)

If you think all this sexual assault noise everywhere doesn’t impact women, listen the fuck up.

I live in a small town, and often grab a coffee near my work. I’ve gradually come to know an elderly woman who’s sometimes at the cafe, too, while I wait for my takeaway. We chat a few times a week, and sometimes I sit with her for a bit.

On Friday she was there again, so I sat down in the sun.

She seemed a bit distant, and sad, and I asked if she was okay.

She said she felt down due to all the media noise about alleged sexual assaults inside Parliament House. She’d seen some of the reporting in the papers, and it stressed her out.

I was thinking: maybe she’s just of a generation which doesn’t like talking of such private things. That makes sense. But suddenly (out of the blue) she was crying, telling me about her own rapes.

The first, she said, was as a 15-year-old who went to a large urban park with a new boyfriend, and while walking down a quiet tree-lined lane he pushed her into the bushes and raped her.

The second was as a 19-year-old who went with a platonic male friend to a party in an apartment, and was gang-raped in a bedroom by 5 other men. She thinks the friend “sold” her for the night to his mates.

In both instances, she said, she never told anyone as she willingly went to where it happened and had been taught (as have all older women) that going somewhere freely with a man means you’re at least partly responsible for what happens when you’re there.

As I listened to her, my relaxed work break was suddenly dark, and awful. Because I’d been sitting in the sun with a beautifully dressed, beautifully spoken older widow, who was suddenly spilling her guts about terrible things which happened to her six decades ago yet which she remembers as if they were yesterday.

Her carefully applied mascara was now running unheeded down her cheeks. I was crying too. Because she said she felt so tortured and helpless hearing about the attacks happening to other women, knowing intimately how this feels. Knowing how it feels to spend the rest of your life being scared of parks, or apartment buildings, or groups of men, or certain smells, sounds or tastes, or of inadvertently being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Again.

Most of all, scared to tell anyone, because you know you’ll be ostracised and doubted and hated and denied even your own story, just for doing what everyone’s taught to do from the time they’re toddlers: tell the truth.

Unless it’s the truth about rape.

Because it isn’t true, is it, that the truth sets us free?

Far too often, for women, the truth just fucks us up.

There’s no real reason for this tale except to say: you can befriend a lovely frail old lady and have no idea what’s under the surface. You don’t know what she’s been through, or what she’s hiding, or her still-raw pain.

This is true for a lot of women of all ages, of course, but somehow it’s more shocking coming from someone who was a young adult at a time we were taught was a more chivalrous, decent, gentle era.

Well, no it fucking wasn’t.

It’s just that all those polite, thoroughly decent old women never told, and virtually nobody would’ve believed them if they did.

They (and nearly all of us as women) carry those scars around so men don’t have to. So men can continue the sweet delusion that everything was better when men were men and women didn’t carry on with this ridiculous #MeToo bullshit. So people (mostly men) can say on the internet that when the women of Australia aren’t safe in our own workplaces, we should just shut the fuck up. Suck it up, princesses.

Well, not on our fucking watch.

Our mothers and grandmothers are watching what we do now, and we won’t fail them as they were so often failed.

Thanks for trusting me with your story, dear D. I hope I was able to comfort you a little.

You’ve motivated me to keep going with this fight, and hopefully I can motivate others to go on, too.

#ToYourBrooms

[Liam Stack @liamstack]

The Satanic Temple launched a virtual abortion clinic in New Mexico where patients can receive tele-health screenings and "free religious medication abortion care."

They have named it "The Samuel Alito’s Mom’s Satanic Abortion Clinic." https://t.co/Zwian2NzM4

[Kidwunda @KidWunda]

#thingsjennasays ‘dipping juice doesn’t really sound that nice’

[FIFA World Cup @FIFAWorldCup]

Bounding towards the #FIFAWorldCup 🦘🇦🇺

[Kidwunda @KidWunda]

@PhaedraParks is the star of #RHUGT2 she’s the bomb

[philip lewis @Phil_Lewis_]

Megan Thee Stallion gets crowd of thousands at the Glastonbury Festival to scream “my body, my motherfuckin’ choice”

[News Breakfast @BreakfastNews]

BREAKING: @Socceroos are through to the World Cup 🟡🟢🟡🟢

@Tonaaayy_ was in the thick of it at Melbourne’s Fed Square when Australia defeated Peru in a penalty shoot-out!

#AUSvPER

[Kidwunda @KidWunda]

@bentyers and you constantly just look at the dogshit walls and then ur think about painting- and then decide it doesn’t look too dogshit… and the cycle continues till you die

[Kidwunda @KidWunda]

@Startrainia some relief

[Sharnelle Vella @SharnelleVella]

If you’ve been humming about ‘a hole in your bucket’ or perhaps you’re hearing a voice in your head saying ‘it’s not my job’ - then I’m here to let you know that political ads on TV and radio will stop running at midnight tonight. 🪣 🧯

[Kidwunda @KidWunda]

I live on the edge of #Macnamara near Goldstein and I counted 7 @stephhodginsmay signs on my walk today- things r looking green in #elwood #auspol

[Emily Porter, M.D. @dremilyportermd]

If you don’t know a handful of women who’ve had an abortion, you’re not morally righteous or statistically anomalous; you’re just not the kind of person women trust with their secrets.

[Kidwunda @KidWunda]

Sometimes it’s Better the bleph you know #thingsthatjennasays

[Kidwunda @KidWunda]

Maybe go eff urself instead

[HuffPost @HuffPost]

"If you say philanthropy is love of humanity, they are philanthropy," he insisted in an interview with the head of TED Talks in Texas. https://t.co/decqXMcLeD

[Senator Lidia Thorpe @SenatorThorpe]

It’s the 31st anniversary of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Death’s in Custody handing down its findings, 31 years later, over 500 deaths and no justice.

[H.E.R. @HERMusicx]

.@ladygaga ❤️

[Kidwunda @KidWunda]

Wordle 276 6/6

⬛🟩⬛⬛⬛
⬛🟩🟩⬛⬛
⬛🟩🟩⬛⬛
⬛🟩🟩⬛⬛
⬛🟩🟩⬛⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Another edging

[Kidwunda @KidWunda]

Wordle 265 X/6

🟨🟨⬛🟨⬛
🟨🟩⬛⬛🟨
⬛🟩🟩🟩🟩
⬛🟩🟩🟩🟩
⬛🟩🟩🟩🟩
⬛🟩🟩🟩🟩
honestly get fucked

[Telstra @Telstra]

We've organised an assistance package to help customers affected by the recent floods to stay in touch with family and friends. We know how important it is to be connected right now.