No longer taboo

In general I couldn't care less about the royal family, but I think it's great that one particular royal has revealed her distress over her miscarriage, and encouraged others to talk about what is still very much a taboo subject.

One big benefit of all the ongoing feminist campaigning is that so many once-forbidden topics are now openly discussed and women can share their experiences and get the support they need.

Things they once struggled with behind closed doors, things that were considered shameful and humiliating, are now out in the open and subjects of concerned public debate.

Miscarriages, still births, post-natal depression, domestic violence, sexual harassment, the glass ceiling, the obsession with women's appearance, women who're not listened to or taken seriously, and many other issues - now we hear about them all the time and it's not so easy to sweep them under the carpet.

This widespread trend for bringing taboo subjects into the daylight has prompted men to be more open as well. They're more likely to talk about erectile dysfunction, impotence, the straitjacket of "masculinity", their parental anxieties, or workplace bullying. They're more likely to share their emotions, be it sadness, grief, disappointment, inadequacy, despair or helplessness. They're less prone to hide everything behind a facade of tough, unflappable maleness.

To my mind, this is all very positive. The more you share, the more useful feedback you will get, and the more your experiences become normal rather than some disgusting secret. I don't think there's any such thing as "over-sharing", except perhaps when what you say might offend or hurt someone. Sharing something must surely be better than it festering away inside and becoming more and more distressing and painful.

The fewer taboo subjects we have, the better.

Just say it

One of the big changes in my lifetime has been the loosening of the old taboos about what can be openly discussed and what can't. There are now so many things that are talked about quite freely which in my younger days weren't talked about at all, or only in private behind closed doors, and even then with huge embarrassment and trepidation.

The list of now permissible subjects is pretty long and getting longer - mental health problems, suicide and death, sexual preferences and difficulties, disabilities, domestic violence, sexual harassment, intimate parts of the body, grisly medical treatments and many others.

When I was young all these topics were considered barely mentionable for one reason or another - too morbid, too personal, too squeamish, too upsetting, too graphic, too horrifying - and lips were sealed for fear of causing visible consternation.

The result was that many people grew up totally ignorant of things that could cause serious problems in their life, and had no idea what to do about them. They would think they were the only person in the world with such problems, and would get more and more upset about them.

Now people grow up much better informed, able to air all manner of personal traumas to other people, blurting out whatever's on their mind without feeling like a freak, and with much greater self-awareness.

We can tell the world about our prostate operations or depressive episodes or erectile dysfunction or bulimia and nobody bats an eyelid. The raised eyebrows, warning looks and frosty responses are in general long gone.

Some people of course have never adapted to the new era of uninhibited frankness and are stuck in the old taboos. I think one reason I found it so hard to talk to my mum in her later years was because there were still so many things she couldn't bring herself to talk about.

Tell it like it is - why not?

Fish out of water

I'm passionate about politics. I want to see a fairer, more humane, more liberating society. I want an end to poverty, squalor, deprivation. I'm not content to shrug my shoulders and say, that's how things are, you just have to adjust and make the most of what you're given. I want changes. Big changes.

But I don't belong to a political party. I was a Labour Party member in the 1980s but since then I've kept out of organised politics. Why? Because whenever I go to a party-political gathering, I never feel comfortable. I feel like a fish out of water.

There's something about being in a political party that makes many people insufferably smug, self-righteous, pretentious, condescending and cliquey. They think their set of beliefs is the only correct one and that people with different beliefs are clearly muddle-headed and ignorant.

I feel I'm expected to be on-message at all times, and if I voice any opinion contrary to the official line, I'll have my head bitten off. Free speech might seem to be welcome, but in practice there are all sorts of unwritten taboos.

So I avoid such gatherings and give my support to specific protests, campaigns and lobbies where the focus is on a single injustice rather than party politicking. Things like marriage equality, a woman's right to choose, preserving the NHS, preserving the welfare state, ending austerity economics. I go to rallies, I sign petitions, I refuse private healthcare.

I can just be one of the crowd, one of the petition signers, or whatever, without having to subscribe to a particular ideology or doctrine, or watch what I'm saying in case I cross some invisible line and ruffle everyone's feathers.

As an ingrained introvert, I'm happy to plough my own furrow.

Pic: woman on an anti-Trump protest in the USA

The curse

I find it extraordinary in this day and age that there are still so many taboos about menstruation. It's just a natural bodily function - so why all the embarrassment and squeamishness?

Women still feel obliged not to mention their periods, in some cases not even to their family or close friends. They have to hide tampons and pant-liners from work colleagues or acquaintances. Any visible sign such as blood on clothing is seen as utterly mortifying. The whole messy business has to be strictly hush-hush, as if it's something to be deeply ashamed of.

Even adverts have to be coy and euphemistic. Blood isn't red, it's blue. Periods are "the time of the month", while menstrual products become "feminine hygiene". In films and books, periods are seldom discussed - people don't want to know about about "that sort of thing".

Religions of course are even more censorious and puritanical. Menstruating women are seen as unclean and impure. They may be forbidden to pray or perform religious rituals. They may be excluded from normal daily life. They may have to refrain from sex. Otherwise they'll contaminate everyone around them.

Sometimes in the supermarket queue, I see women carefully shielding their tampon packets from view. Heaven forbid that a man might be alerted to their disgusting monthly leakage.

And from what I can gather, many men are still too sheepish to buy their girlfriend's tampons. They imagine the cashier will have them down as a screaming weirdo rather than a helpful, considerate bloke.

It's not just painful periods that are "the curse". It's all the prudishness and revulsion that turn them into something hideous.

Feeding time

Why are people still so hung up about breastfeeding? It's a totally natural activity, all the experts recommend it, there's nothing sexual or porny about it, yet any public glimpse of it is still seen by many as shocking or even distasteful. Why such extreme reactions?

One woman suggests it's partly the lack of breastfeeding photos in the media. If you never see pictures of it, it turns into something odd and furtive, something you feel uncomfortable about. If images of breastfeeding were everywhere, that sense of peculiarity would disappear.

It's not only photos we're lacking. It's any mention at all, other than in parenting columns. It seldom comes up in books or plays or movies. Or public health ads. Or people's photo albums. Even in ordinary conversation, it's a bit of a taboo.

Not so long ago pictures of heavily pregnant women were thought outrageous. Now they've become normal and nobody bats an eyelid. Breastfeeding photos need to become equally common. And not just photos in a domestic setting but in those public places we use all the time - restaurants, cafes, shops, cinemas.

Feeding your child with your own milk (or someone else's child for that matter) is one of the most natural and beautiful things in the world. It's far more natural than the sort of images routinely plastered over the media every day - images of death and destruction and disaster.

Newspapers fall over themselves to publish pointless pictures of buxom, scantily-clad women. Yet when breasts are put to their intended use, suddenly mass coyness descends and nobody must see this awful, corrupting sight. It's absurd.

If breastfeeding mums were as visible as page three girls or underwear models, maybe ordinary women with hungry children wouldn't find themselves relegated to a filthy toilet or dingy storeroom as if they were hopeless perverts.