Shifting the balance of power. (Mainstream media stinks.)

Thanks for your willingness to discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly of women’s lives, including how personal problems affect our work lives. I have little doubt that your fearlessness will make my life better down the road, when I may be pregnant (or not), miscarrying (or not) and feeling about it however I feel without fear of repercussion.

To me, the most important issue here is not your personal life, or an abortion, or a miscarriage, or how you felt about it or even Wisconsin laws (though, yes, they seem to have placed you in a shitty situation), but rather the fact that women are virtually forbidden from discussing these commonplace occurrences at work.

I’m not saying I want to get into the nitty-gritty of my menstrual cycle on the job, but to force women to clam up 100% of the time about issues that clearly influence a majority of us doesn’t help anyone–male or female.

I subscribe to your blog not because I always agree one hundred percent (though this is a case where I do) but because I respect what you write and therefore you. I am grateful for what you share with me your reader.

Thank you.

Last year my 28 yr old daughter had an ectopic pregnancy. I rescheduled a business trip so I could be with her and take her to several dr appts. This year she was due to deliver my first grandchild. I told work associates out-of-state that I would not be there to do a training class and why. They applauded my choice and said they were glad to handle it for me. We are making some progress in the workplace. And it’s with the help of writers like you.

Penelope, I thought your piece for the Guardian was very good. However, you say this:

“Others say I should not have discussed my experience on Twitter, but Twitter is not a public forum. Those who want to read my tweets have to sign up to receive my updates.”

That isn’t the case. Your Tweets are not protected, which means that people do not even need to be logged in to Twitter to read them.

I’m sorry to hear about the death threats. That’s reprehensible of everyone who has issued one.

Nicely said, and nicely played. I thoroughly enjoy your blog and the way you think through life decisions. Good luck and keep on truckin’ :-)

Kind of baffled by the media furore that followed your Twitter. Have to say, I’m not a twitterer (impossible to say anything in 140 characters and enough Crackberry issues already) but that such a small message could cause such a hoo-haa (sp?) says a lot about how little progress women have actually made.

I’m recently pregnant, well nearly 4 months in, and I’m constantly amazed at how I’ve become public property and that people who really have no business telling me how I should be doing this or questioning my approach to child rearing (most often, women who have no children…). Since when did a pregnant woman become public property? Since when did we lose all the hard-fought rights to manage our own bodies and childbearing decisions?

To read your responses to the frankly none-of-their-business commentators and fuss has given me hope – hope that we can stand up and say we do or don’t want to be parents, we might have a glass of wine or cigarette whilst carrying, and that frankly it’s no-ones business whether I give my child pre-packaged food.

But I’m ranting at http://waitingforbeta.blogspot.com – hey, it beats knitting.

The point of your blog was that mainstream media is stupid, misses the point, abuses people, demands too much, and comes onto a story long after it’s over.

It wasn’t about miscarriages.

I couldn’t agree with you more. Mainstream media is reactive. It doesn’t create the stories, it just massages them into info-tainment. And it believes it is more important than you.

Ditto for mainstream publishing, mainstream marketing, etc. They’re followers and bottom-feeders, not heralds and leaders.

Here’s a topic for another blog: “The internet changes everything.”

I’ve been using that “View a Random Post” button lately like it’s some sort of lottery quick pick. A random post that came up was titled ‘Job hunt tips I’ve collected’ dated 4/9/07.
The first item on the list is “Don’t answer the phone when it wakes you up.” Reading further on yields the following – “Time magazine reports that “the morning haze you experience when the alarm clock goes off is known as sleep inertia, and it clouds your brain more than sleep deprivation. The impairment is most severe in the first ten minutes but can linger for up to two hours.” Bottom line: Let the call go to voicemail and go get some coffee.”
Now I do think The Guardian was unprofessional and inconsiderate when they called at 4 AM but that call should have definitely gone to voicemail.
Also it looks to me that Now magazine is a cheap imitation of People.
Your mainstream media rant regarding your experience with both The Today Show and The Early Show is understandable. I know the double whammy close together would leave me bitter. Do you need them? Do they need you? Probably no on both counts but as you well know both of you can use each other to the benefit of each other. Hopefully this experience with mainstream media is not typical in the future. I think there’s more people like Max Chafkin out there in mainstream media.

Medawar found this via “Kat in New York”.

There are, occasionally, moments when looking after yourself must take precedence over communication.

Miscarriages can be life-threatening, proceeding towards medical help at flank speed should be the normal response of the moment and sharing the experience can always be done later.

Interface addiction can be as dangerous as smoking and for much the same reason: people find themselves doing it in situations where the slightest distraction could do them harm.

Medawar’s Mum saw, through a safety window, when a researcher at Porton Down fished in his lab coat for fags, took his mask off and lit one up. He was in the plague lab and the only appropriate comment she could think of was “goodbye”. (1952 or thereabouts. He died. These days it would probably be a Blackberry: at least you don’t put them in your mouth.)

I do feel that until the government deals with the basic structural problems in our financial system of too much debt, we will not have a sustainable recovery. So even though the stock market can stay irrational in the shorter term, in the long run I believe it will go back to reflecting the fundamentals of our boom and bust economy. And that’s why I continue to feel that for long term investors a better portfolio allocation is in cash and gold. I think the gold price will continue to rise due to a lack of faith in central banks’ policies and in fiat currencies. I recently saw a very interesting articles called What Gold Bubble? Setting the Record Straight which I think is particularly useful for investors to read to get a better sense of what’s going on in the economy and the govt’s role in influencing it.
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Well, I came here due to your story being covered in the Irish Independent today, then reading the Daily Hatred(sorry, Mail) rant about TMI, and I’d just like to add my voice to the hundreds saying you go and write whatever you want. F*ck the death threat loonies, the time dumb jobbing journos and anyone, who tries to put you in a neat box and say “don’t say that”.

Here’s hoping some journos take your side and write about how you’ve been treated, and how *they* are going to have to change.

“I feel an urgent need to separate a sane online conversation about women at work from an insane media that is doing exactly what destroys women at work.”

Maybe is should be re-written in its true context. Replace the “women” with “people.”

“I feel an urgent need to separate a sane online conversation about “people” at work from an insane media that is doing exactly what destroys “people” at work.

A true and fair context, as it applies to everyone, is both “men and women” at work, not limited to the “women at work.”

Lets be equal and fair, but honest.

Respectifully,

Beth V.

As the recently managed-out single mother of three children age 9 and under, can I just say, you are my new heroine. I spent 8 years at one of the top 50 companies to work for (according to Fortune). But I just couldn’t give them everything they wanted even working 60 hours a week. Thank you for a dose of reality.

This is an excellent site. I found it very informative and helpful.

Hopefully the CEO has chilled out now because he’s wrong. He should just let you do what you do best. But he did help make the story better we all need a vilain to boo at:)

Nice information,thanks for sharing.Now the all media use the networking sites for circulate the news through online.