If she utters what’s on her mind without an edit button – please don’t suggest its something women all over should start doing!

Publicly mentioning a miscarriage at all, even if not celebrating it, is considered distasteful.

Talking about what really happens to women or anyone frankly has got to be good.
Miscarriage is one of our last taboos, one reason is that greiving about the loss of a baby that others would abort is considered crass.

You couldn’t make it up.

If any twitter followers actually had a thought process along the lines of “She’s been talking about sex and periods all this time… but I never thought she’d actually talk about something to do with reproduction!” then they need their head examined, not hers. Someone finding the tweet in question particularly horrible when sex and periods are totally okay has some really strange standards, even if they don’t admit it to themselves.

But if we should all start following these standards, I’m going to have to start getting really careful with my blog. Wouldn’t want someone stumbling, lost, out of cyberspace and being massively offended by something I posted to share with *my friends and online contacts*. A fundamentalist Christian might find out that girls go to fetish clubs in short skirts! A strict monogamist could discover that people sometimes have more than sexual partner at the same time! A mormon might find out that I regularly bare my shoulders! Shock! Offense!

“On Twitter, the micro-blogging site, my feed is one of the most popular around. I have tweeted about my sex life, my period, and even a minor run-in with the police. For me, Twitter is a way to make a note about the most important things that happen in the day.”

People who maintain “one of the most popular” feeds on twitter, do not do so in order to keep notes to themselves.

People who state, on one of the most popular feeds on twitter, that “I’m in a board meeting. Having a miscarriage. Thank goodness, because there’s a fucked-up three-week hoop-jump to have an abortion in Wisconsin.” do not do so to avoid attention.

They do so to shock people and attract attention. I think that is a perfectly reasonable use of twitter. But I think it a little odd to complain that many of the people whose attention was attracted were shocked.

Spoken like a true, pompous, obnoxious, middle aged, middle class conservative man. But then we knew that already.

If men could give birth , abortion would be legal the world over.

The only reason trolls are getting their knickers in a twist about this is that they have a very Victorian, hypocritical view of icky woman’s things and would like to sweep it all under the carpet, away from the view of prying eyes.

All this woman did was point out that the miscarriage stopped her from having to answer to a lot of fascist, man made laws which are their to control woman. And as usual the brown shirts don’t like that.

Only if they search for it, in which case they’re masochists.

“And being offended because you’ve been through or have watched someone go through a traumatic miscarriage, is not “bias and prejudice”. It was flippant and she got the tone wrong.”

It most certainly is bias. It is the subjective projection of your own wishes on to everyone else’s actions.

I would not have thought it difficult to make abortions profitable for the people paid to carry them out.

Great that women like Trunk exist and are able to articulate clearly on subjects which affect us all.

And being offended because you’ve been through or have watched someone go through a traumatic miscarriage, is not “bias and prejudice”. It was flippant and she got the tone wrong.

Having said that, people say stupid things they shouldn’t have said all the time, especially when they’re going through something that’s quite traumatic. Anyone who suggests that she should have thought it through first should probably think first themselves. She’s clarified her feelings, and that should be that. The circus around it is ridiculous.

Jesus Christ, I can’t stand this sort of argument.

a) Twitter only tweets to people that know the original tweeter (or have chosen to know). Anyone that retweets the message should be responsible for the feelings of those that it may affect, not the original tweeter.

b) If people are offended by it that is their own bias and prejudices causing them to be offended or distressed, not the original message. If people are supposed to self censor over every little thing (and I’m not even talking about racism or homophobia here) then twitter will become even more benign and pointless than some already argue it is.

So, not “everyday”, but surprisingly common, and likely to affect “most” women in their lifetime. Yes, I think this is something we should talk about.

There’s clearly a meaning of “everyday” which I was previously unaware of.

Miscarriage, seriously (whether desired or not) an everyday event?

Laurie, my point was not to try to defend the abortion arrangements in Wisconsin (which sound deplorable) but to argue that there are some personal events where, though they are not shameful, it is tasteless to relate the details.

Clearly some on Twitter are arrogant enough to believe that every part of their life is so important that others will be interested in it and, as Penelope Trunk has a large following, many people clearly are interested.

I’m not.

The other wrinkle is that I don’t follow the logical thought process by which publicising her miscarriage in this way becomes empowering to women.

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/women_now_empowered_by_everything

I do see how appearing to take a callous or indifferent attitude to an event that many women (who want to have a child) would find distressing is challenging to our view of traditional gender roles.

But that is the same mechanism whereby the motives of a rapist or child killer challenge our view of humanity.

But maybe another woman, who felt she couldn’t have an abortion, but didn’t want a child & ended up miscarrying, would feel relieved that it was okay not to feel shameful about it, that it was legitimate to feel a different way.

I’m not sure if I’d have tweeted it, but then I’ve never had a foetus growing inside of me. Yes, there are downsides to her tweet, but there are upsides to her honesty too.

Personally I’m happy for you to tell us all about your bottomly adventures, but please don’t imagine there’s some sort of ideological equivalence?