Oh the horror, the horror:
Penelope Trunk runs a business called The Brazen Careerist, which is described as “a social network to help young people manage their careers”. This one little tweet, intentionally or not, probably generated more awareness of it than 52 weeks of 1/4-page ads in the New York Times, but never mind that.
Oh-so-predictably, response to Trunk’s horrific tweet was swift and terrible. As with anything related to female reproductive activity, the news quickly made its way to the fetosphere where it was held out as proof positive that pro-choicers are cold-hearted, emotionally unstable bitches who have abortions like morning mocha lattes. Melinda Henneberger of Politics Daily, who was more concerned with Trunk’s openness about something she should properly be hiding in the dark and flogging herself over, harrumphed:
I’ve written a lot about my conservative abortion views; nonetheless, I do not think Trunk’s wahoo, drive-through view of abortion is typical. Most normal women take these and other serious decisions seriously. No, it’s her ‘tude toward disclosure that I see as a sign of the times.
That’s the general flavour: people were disturbed that Trunk tweeted about something so personal. But so what? If she wants to, who are we to say she can’t? It’s her choice, and if it’s too much information, her readers also have a choice.
But the outrage grew and soon Ms.Trunk was on CNN giving an admirably upfront, no-bullshit interview (video here). Flummoxing a tut-tutting Rick Sanchez, Trunk rightly emphasized that the real outrage was the obstacle course she had to navigate to get an abortion in her state.
Sanchez’s “Have you no shame” attitude and the Politics Daily article raise something else that irritates me, something characterized by this patronizing horseshit from Henneberg: “Most normal women take these and other serious decisions seriously”. Like the only way to legitimize our private decisions is to beat ourselves up over them. “As if”, as they say.
Hopefully an elegant little PR move (if that’s what it was) like the “miscarriage tweet” will remind women that we aren’t obligated to genuflect before the Fetus Gods, cower and self-flagellate in order to validate our reproductive decisions to the world. And if we feel like sharing, good on us.
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“Tweeting your miscarriage is nothing sacred” is what the harridan wants to know. Since when is a miscarriage sacred? It is a simple fact of biology. There is nothing sacred about a friggin’ miscarriage or a fertilized egg. If a woman is trying to have a child then she will have a markedly different reaction than a woman who has made the decision not to bring a pregnancy to term. To expect the same reaction of both parties is foolish and selfish. But there’s no mystery there, these busybodies live to stand by their windows peering out at the world, peeking into your bedrooms and lives casting judgment and sneering.
Stanek calls it crude because these deranged maniacs, drunk on religion, see their own bodies as crude receptacles for the whims of their cruel and capricious god. The same mad cattle with their terminal cases of spongiform christopathy see nothing crude about parading around with grizzly medical images, trying to browbeat and bully women to succumb to their will. They can shrug and feign disapproval as their followers murder doctors and harass and abuse clinic workers and patients. Kudos to Ms Trunk for having the courage to demystify a natural biological process and shine a light on the truly crude state of a medical regime that seeks to punish certain patients undergoing certain procedures.
Perhaps a few weeks of guilt and shaming would have an impact on other elective surgeries, plastic surgery perhaps. Billboards with chests half filled by saline balloons, faces covered in blood as cartilage is chiselled out of a nose all accompanied by the guilt that a person would dare to tamper with the face or body gifted to them by Jeezizgawd almighty. Hmm, might make for some amusing agitprop now that I think of it
Abortion? Fine.
A welcome-under-the-circumstances miscarriage? No problem.
But interupting a board meeting and bragging about it to the whole world?
Hang her!
She must really know her body to know she was having a miscarriage. And it must have been an early and easy one, thank the odds.
I’ve been terrified by relatives and acquaintances about ‘ack, there goes the works’ miscarriages that required medical intervention to stop bleeding and other factors. I’m *never* going to tell a woman she doesn’t have the right to legally control what she wants to do with her body when she’s facing possibilities like that just because circumstances decide that’s the event of the day.
But hey, regressives, too bad them new fangled technologies allow womens’ voices to be heard without a filter to such a large audience. Why, they might end up mainstreaming radical notions like female biology being a matter-of-fact notion of life!
Woo, psa, great rant. I’m so stealing ‘spongiform christopathy’. Credit to you every time I use it, of course.
And the fetus fetishists wonder why we also call them panty-snifffers? Pure purience here. With the added fun of finger-wagging. Pathetic.
cheers fern, it ain’t stealing when its free, help yourself. if i have nothing else to offer, perhaps i can turn an occasional phrase.
You’ll notice that this is precisely the point that Jill Stanek missed in her post on the subject, either because the spongiform christopathy is cutting off the oxygen to her brain, or because she feels that seizing an opportunity to engage in demagoguery about “the stigma of abortion” is more important than reporting the facts.
psa –
WOW
That is way too good to be just a comment.
I wish I’d said that!
RB
Niles
I suspect the worst of it (ie. expulsion of embryo) was probably over… the process lasts for awhile after that. Certainly it would have been early, since she was already planning to abort.
Exactly. No doubt it’s TMI for a lot of people, but if they don’t like it, they can click off and read something else. I don’t get what is so hard to understand about that concept.
What really makes Trunk’s tweet significant is that although it got the usual response — slut-shaming — she’s not having any of it, and feels a fair amount of outrage herself over how women are jacked around when trying to get an abortion. This chick’s got balls (so to speak). She’s a good example for the rest of us.
fern hill – This is what happens when we don’t go by the script, and be all torn up over things like miscarriages (and abortions). Sometimes we are, sometimes we aren’t, and so what?
I love this chick Penelope, she’s got cojones!
JAB
Of course she would. Stanek is one of the people who works 24/7 to make sure there are obstacle courses, and she’d make the obstacles a lot worse if she could. She’s probably outraged by the fact that the wait time is ONLY 3 weeks… she’d be happier with about 32 weeks.
Thanks, psa.
Wow. Now I’ve watched the video (can’t at office). Yay, Penelope!
who, on their death bed will say ‘geez, I’m so glad I spent those extra days in the office rather then having another baby’
‘Brazen’ is the perfect word for this women.
‘Brazen’ is a great word.
Repeat after me: ‘I am Brazen!’
“This chick’s got balls (so to speak).”
No she doesn’t have balls JJ, if she had any balls, she would not have killed her 2 unborn children. If anything, pro-life women are the ones who have the balls, they go through labor and give life to their children and raise them. That’s the tough part.
Pro-choice women are wimps.
I am BRAZEN!
Testify, Sister Fern
Jasper
When I’m on my deathbed, the office, the extra days I spent there, and minor surgical procedures that allowed me to do so will be the last things on my mind. I’ll probably be thinking about scotch whiskey and cocaine.
ETA – I am brazen!
Jasper
Come here and say that.
Besides, most pro-choice women have kids (Penelope Trunk has 2) — pretty sad little failure of a generalization there, Jasper.
“Come here and say that.”
LOL. No, I’m a wimp!
“LOL. No, I’m a wimp!”
and a sputtering dimwit but hey, no mystery there.
CALLER: Well, I am changing the subject. You had been discussing recently about why women are unhappy?
RUSH: Well, I’ve been reporting that there are people in the media studying why women are unhappy.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: Yes.
CALLER: Yes. And I have been listening to that, and since the first time I heard you mention that, I knew the answer. I was in the car with my 18-year-old son on Tuesday when you were talking about that again, and I looked at him, and I said, “I know why women are unhappy. Do you?” And without skipping a beat, he said, “Yes, because they’re stepping outside of their God-given roles.” And I think he hit the nail on the head. And in saying that I’m not saying it’s a lesser role, it’s a different role, and I think that women were designed and created to nurture babies, to love them, to educate them, to teach them to achieve their full academic potential, to love their fellow man, to become entrepreneurs, and I think that they’re stepping outside of that and pursuing roles and stuff that just leaves them empty.
RUSH: I have a hard time disagreeing with this. Look at Hillary Clinton.
I missed the whole thing .. saw the true horror being that of her being trapped in another soul destroying board meeting.
Perhaps the reason women are depressed is that they are now going to more board meeting than ever?
croghan
Could well be. Meetings suck!!! There was an account supervisor I once worked with who loved meetings. LOVED them. He used to force everyone to sit in 6 or 7 hour meetings where the individual’s contribution lasted maybe 20 minutes… one meeting went on til 1:30am
Unspeakably horrible. This guy used to come into my office every Monday morning and tell me the lineup of meetings he had planned for the week… “…we’ll have 6 minor meetings about this account, then we’ll have 4 minor meetings about that account, then on Friday afternoon (Me: Friday afternoon, of course) we’ll have a Major meeting to prepare for next week’s MASTER meeting…” I am not kidding 
He drove me apeshit 
Eventually I quit and went to another agency. Two weeks (and no meetings) after I started, the Director comes into my office and tells me he wants to introduce me to a new Account Supervisor he just hired, and brings in…
Me: SHRIEEEEEK!
Jasper – Ah, Jasper’s feeling playful this morning
Sense of humour, eh Jasper?
psa – I’m still suspicious that Jasper might be a Poe.
Bruce – O/T but guess what!!!
8) There were 12 turkeys at my house tonight! 5 on the roof and 7 on the ground (I think they’re all in the tree now). My camera batteries were hooped so I couldn’t get any pics 
Maybe tomorrow, I’m setting my alarm for dawn.
12?! Wow, party at JJ’s. I was wondering about those guys, but 12?
I know! Twelve(12)!!
A whole bunch of females and 2 or 3 males. And one of them is smaller than the rest — must be the baby that was out there a couple of months ago.
12! I hope they don’t break any tree branches out there.