Marcel Verheyden

The absolute fkn nerve of Linda Reynolds’ scurrilous lawyer to say that Reynolds should receive a “substantial” payout plus a “permanent injunction” - inferring that Brittany Higgins should be restrained from “telling her truth” - because “her truth was devoid of truth”. If Higgins were not telling her truth - we would not be arriving at the pointy end of a sorry saga of patriarchal protectionism, media manipulation and partisan penmanship where the Lehrmanns, Albrechtsens, Sofronoffs, Credlins and Karens of this world were clearly cohabitating and co-existing in all manner of literary fiction to save face for an abysmal coverup of epic steam-cleaning proportions. What are we to say, as women, when we witness the appalling destruction of one woman’s truth - an event that took advantage of her vulnerability, violated her trust and her body - and exposed her vulnerability to an entire country via a spiteful and corrupted media motivated to protect everybody but the victim. .. and then we are told that women are at fault when they stand to speak their truth and should just shut the fk up lest they upset the patriarchy, the protagonist or the vipers of mistruths whose reputations are already so sodden that there will be no redemption for them. For those of us observing this event, as we have for years now - think about the damage that this has done to the mental health of one young woman. Think about the trauma and the message that this sends out to all of our women, our kids, our men - and the impact that this continues to have on the patterns of behaviour that are enmeshed in our communities and will emerge in the future. What do we want for our women in society? What are we prepared to do so that we can change the impact that patriarchal influence, misogyny and toxic masculinity has on our future generations?