Twittering a Miscarriage: Full Disclosure or Overexposure?
A friend of mine alerted me yesterday to the hoopla surrounding a tweet from entrepreneur and career counselor to young women, Penelope Trunk, who posted the following 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."
The tweet has sparked controversy throughout the blogosphere, particularly on women's sites, from feminist protesting Trunk's cavalier approach to abortion to concerns about the appropriateness of the material. Amanda Marcotte, controversial blogger and pot-stirrer par excellence, supported the tweet as "an elegant instance of the power of Twitter."
Comments ranged from the predictable "gross!" to the sympathetic "perhaps this is how she expresses her grief" and naturally, the moral implications of abortion have been front and center.
My first question is: in our brave (or perhaps I should say, narcissistic) world of full and immediate disclosure, is anything off-limits?
I've always said that if content disturbs you, you are free to ignore it. In the good old days of print journalism, the "naughty" magazines came in brown wrappers and movies were (and still are, sort of) rated so you knew what you were getting into - or not.
But tweets go to the followers, who send them to others, who dissect and analyze them and then forward them to all sorts of outlets. How could I - or my nine-year-old niece - have avoided this tweet? Do I want her thinking everyone is (or should be) this seemingly easy-going about a miscarriage or an abortion? Will she be fooled into thinking these issues come with no more emotional complications than perhaps irritation or relief?
Trunk argues that miscarriage is a fact of life and life intrudes on work, and you can't manage the balance if you can't talk about it. I agree. Lots of things are facts of life: the messiness of grief, the reality of resenting one's offspring, the gracelessness of aging, or petty pleasure one occasionally takes from seeing someone else fail. Maybe these things do need to come out in the open. Besides, tweeting about the taboo is a great career-booster.
But to my second question: can you really describe anything important in 140 characters?
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So, perhaps in her mind, this was the best way to deal with it.
Has no one ever tweeted before about all of the messy, physical things that go along with menstruation and pregnancy? I would put this in the same category.
and then in response?:
"perhaps this is how she expresses her grief"
do women HAVE to grieve?
I have kids. I've also had abortions. I did not grieve.. I do now. but then, all I could feel was relief and gratitude.
this is what one issue that disturbs me in this debate, that we, the carriers of are expected to have enormous residual feelings towards these tiny fetuses, when it truth, when it is we do NOT want to carry them. So for whatever our reason for our choice, we shut DOWN those feelings if we even have them.
are we supposed to drag our sad moiurning uteruses around, weeping inconsolably for babies we cannot or will not carry, self flagellating publicly? do men weep for their semen or women for their eggs that are shed every month?
I'm so sick of this ridiculous debate because we all know the truth: if it were men carrying babies, abortion clinics would be as popular as mcdonalds and as readily available.
I agree with Jeanette; I don't think it's an important event to her.
Although I'm not a big fan of "twitter culture", I think there needs to a conversation about this, and if this is what it takes to get that conservation going, then that's a good thing.
I follow my favorites for personal or global updates and send out the same, sometimes even Tweeting ::gasp:: just for fun. I also know there will come a time I'll use Twitter and Facebook and OS to share news that takes less than 140 characters. Not looking forward to that.
Technology is not always a good thing. :-D
Thumbed. And no, you cannot possibly describe anything important in 140 characters unless you are Hemingway.
Of course, as a political statement, it seems to have backfired and been interpreted as a cavalier attitude towards pregnancy. It is, and it isn't. It's a big deal to have to wait three weeks for an abortion. A very big deal, in which an unhappy situation is made substantially worse.
I think people should be taking that part of the tweet a little more seriously.
I think I get what she was trying to say and what she meant - or at least I know what I take from her Tweet - but I think she probably could have been better served by a couple more sentences.
But a miscarriage or an abortion? Regardless of how you feel about it, speaking of it in public is charged, and to not take that into account is to be far too self-absorbed as a writer. Or maybe you just need to be a poet.
To your second question, yes.
How would you or your 9-year-old niece avoid the tweet?
Don't follow Penelope Trunk.
there are various women on here that go into really excruciating personal detail [eg on here, open salon]. affairs, sexless marriages, abortions, miscarriages, etcetera. then there are others that are more "normal".
it would seem that we have a cyberpersonality. some women tend to be oversharers with TMI. thankfully they are in the minority. I suggest they make it clear in their profiles & early posts if they're going to go into the dirty details. and I also recommend they NOT get uptight about critical comments from strangers. [what did you expect?!?!] if you dont want any critical comments from strangers, try signing up & blogging on facebook instead, which is more restrictive. this place is called A SALON. also, obviously, dont get upset if you're obviously one of those oversharers, and then someone asks you for even more details.... Ive seen women freak out about that on here, and I really HAVE TO LAUGH about that one. HAHAHAHA.. I guess even the oversharers have some sort of weird/warped sense of boundaries. its just not rational or anywhere you or I would guess.
Anyone who has a young person participating in twitter needs to monitor that young persons online time. I am not going to stop myself from speaking about "uncomfortable" topics because there's a "danger" that a nine year old might read it.
I'm not talking about abortions over at the kids network tweetie blog, if there is such a thing. I'm really sick of the premise that kids need to be protected from the facts of life when, like most of us were, they are going to be curious in a healthy way about these things.
Sex will result in many responsibilities, including pregnancy. Intimacy is a responsibility.
Miscarriage - and abortion - are not dirty words.
I think this is a case where the medium is a good bit of the message. It's inherently contradictory to assert that we need to talk about Serious Stuff like this and then offer Twitter as our vehicle. I mean, what's your response? "Good for you!" Wow, that was really deep. To me, anything that shows up on my cell phone is pretty much 'Whatever.' You're in a meeting? Whatever. You're having a miscarriage? Whatever. You're annoyed at your state's laws? Whatever. If you want me to react seriously, use a medium that isn't confined to 140 characters.
I tend to agree with Martha, Kathy, Cartouche. That is, I don't think women's issues are shameful in the least, and they do deserve wider and more honest discussion, but this Tweet smacks of self-absorption. That may be the fault of the 140-character limit; if you are a poet, you may be able to convey an experience in few words but Trunk is not a poet and her few words created an impression, deliberately provocative. Provocation is part of free speech of course but if, as Lynne says, you want to have a serious discussion, you might use a less "announcement-oriented" medium.
Personally, I don't participate in Twitter because (1) I don't think that most of my life is worth broadcasting for entertainment purposes, and (2) because I really don't care about the minutae of other peoples' lives. I have enough friends, family, and coworkers to keep track of - I don't need to adopt the issues of strangers too.