Columnist, blogger, and CEO of the career site Brazencareerist.com Penelope Trunk sent a Tweet so unprecedented in its TMI-ness that it's now national news — but hopefully not part of the abortion debate. For the love of god, why?
When a friend told a group over drinks this past weekend that Penelope Trunk had "tweeted about having a miscarriage in a board meeting," everyone's first response was to ask if she meant it as a metaphor. I mean, we've all been in those kinds of meetings, right? But no, she sent this tweet last week:
"I'm in a board meeting. Having a miscarriage. Thank goodness, because there's a fucked-up 3-week hoop-jump to have an abortion in Wisconsin."
It seemed like a joke, but apparently it wasn't, because when people started blogging and emailing about it, Trunk took to her blog to defend it...or try to. After claiming that "most miscarriages happen at work" (based on the number of miscarriages, the number of working women, and the length of the average miscarriage), she gets into, uh, this?:
"To all of you who said a miscarriage is gross: Are you unaware that the same blood you expel from a miscarriage is what you expel during menstruation? Are you aware that many people are having sex during menstruation and getting it on the sheets? Are you aware that many women actually like period sex?"
Trunk ultimately tries to put herself in some kind of martyr role, arguing that we should be talking about this because women will never be truly equal until we can talk about our miscarriages in the workplace. Except, no, because do you want to hear about your male co-worker's hemorrhoids in the workplace? Or the details of his wife's miscarriage? And, unfortunately for everyone, now that this has gone national, the context and way in which Trunk framed this confirms the worst and most fantastical ideas of the anti-choice movement: that women (especially career women!) who have abortions all do so casually and callously on their lunch breaks, the way one might get a manicure. If Trunk thinks she's done anything to help women in Wisconsin get better access to abortions (her defensive post asks readers to donate to Planned Parenthood), she obviously doesn't know anything about how the anti-choice movement works.
I'm trying to be sensitive here, because it seems like she's is going through a difficult time, but I don't think most people have a problem with Penelope Trunk's inner thoughts and complicated feelings about her miscarriage. We just can't fucking believe she fucking Twittered them.