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While the historical disdain & hatred for women isn't a surprise, the severity of suffering & the unrevealed stories are frightening & devastating. I balk at what we don't know. This report covers 18/41 of these dark mills & only a fraction of the 231 years of their existence. 1/
I'm overwhelmed by the threads & accounts I've been reading over the last few days. I don't want to do it anymore, but at the same time I feel like we all need to bear witness to this atrocity. 2/
We rightly quiver at the though of the innocent babies. those pure beings so effectively eliminated in a fashion the worst of 20th century humanity could have provided; so callously offered up to strangers, given away by those who had no right to rend. 3/
We rightly shudder at the abject sorrow of mothers forced to return to the prison of the Laundries bereft of a part of their soul, forever in a prison of loss, forever shamed. Their humanity was forfeit due to a society of men who hated the idea of women having bodily autonomy;4/
because of a society of men who abdicated the responsibility of their actions because their dogma insisted upon their right to do so. & this is something that continues to this day & by entities that are, much like Church & State were, meant to protect. 5/
When @AmnestyIreland, its CEO, @NWCI showed incredible myopia & overreach in signing a letter which lobbied the Gov & media to deny legitimate representation to whom they considered undesirables;they told women that their biological reality is meaningless, hateful & overstated.6/
& those forsaken women of our very near past, who were reduced to their component parts & removed from their humanity are now, like their granddaughters & daughters, being referred to by some as "people with vagina's." 7/
& the women who speak against this, who bristle at this, are being cried out at, "Shame, shame." It's not right. Intimidated into silence. The same as always. Belittled into obedience. 8/
History walks beside us. It's up to us to listen to the ghosts so that the path ahead isn't as dark for us as it was for them.
I wish there was an edit button. I read 41 yesterday, but that obviously only referred to certain orders. the total number of these institutions was far greater apparently, 182. The misery of thinking of 41 was bad enough. 182. https://twitter.com/ladybethwallace/status/1349441156875128834
