Want to get hot under the collar? Just listen to an episode of The Pocket Podcast. But whatever you do, don’t let those emotions show.
In a now-viral rant, co-host Chris Griffin describes what he expects from a partner: “I want your eyes to light up with excitement… It’s the calm, the harmony, the peace and love that a man chasing his dreams needs when he’s trying to wind down.”
Griffin’s words weren’t a one-off. They echo a wider cultural script where bro-podcasters assign rigid “masculine” and “feminine” energies to relationships, casting men as protectors and providers, and women as calm, agreeable, emotionally available caretakers.
The reality is, when men with microphones say women should only express convenient emotions, they reinforce a deeper narrative that quietly shapes how institutions respond to women in pain, particularly women grieving the loss of a pregnancy.
When grief doesn’t match the gender script
Grief is one of the most profound human experiences, yet women are still expected to move through it expressively, predictably, and on a socially acceptable timeline. Quiet sadness is acceptable. Anger, restlessness, or emotional detachment? Less so. But as psychologists Stroebe and Schut argue in the Dual Process Model of Bereavement, healthy grieving is far more dynamic. It involves oscillation, moving between confronting the loss and temporarily avoiding it through distraction or action. When grief doesn’t fit the socially sanctioned mould, it’s often pathologised or ignored.
I know this disenfranchisement intimately. After losing multiple pregnancies, I didn’t cry publicly or retreat. I took action. I was angry. And because my grief didn’t look like what people expect from a grieving woman, it was minimised. So I built what I needed: Pink Elephants, a national support organisation for those experiencing early pregnancy loss.
Back then, I didn’t know this was called instrumental grief, a form more commonly associated with men. But that distinction reveals a deeper problem: grief is gendered. Women are expected to be soft and sad. Men are expected to be stoic and silent. Step outside those lines, and you risk being labelled cold, hysterical, or unstable.
How we experience emotions, in particular grief, shouldn’t be typecast with lazy gendered stereotypes. It limits our capacity for healing, and leaves us with lasting scars.
One in four pregnancies ends in miscarriage. That’s around 150,000 women every year. Yet nearly 40 per cent experience PTSD symptoms, and two-thirds are not offered referrals or follow-up care after presenting to the hospital.
Many are placed in maternity wards, forced to grieve next to newborns after losing their own. Those in regional and rural areas often face long travel distances and under-trained staff, while First Nations and CALD families are routinely denied culturally safe care. These are not anomalies, they are patterns embedded in a health system that still does not see early pregnancy loss as grief worth validating.
The silence after loss isn’t accidental
This isn’t just a failure of compassion, it’s medical misogyny. When you leave a hospital with a baby, you’re surrounded by support, midwives, resources, referrals, and even gift bags. But when you leave without a baby after experiencing a loss, it’s like a deafening silence slams shut behind you. No one calls. No one checks in. The system offers no recognition that you were ever pregnant, let alone that you’ve lost something profound.
We see this in the so-called 12-week rule, the idea that pregnancies should be kept secret until the second trimester, “just in case.” In reality, it’s a cultural gag order. If something goes wrong before then, women are left grieving in isolation because no one even knew they were expecting.
Meanwhile, those who do speak out, who rage, sob, or struggle months later, are often told they’re being irrational. I’ve been called hormonal, dramatic, and hysterical. So have countless women we support. And it’s not just women. Men grieving miscarriage are also routinely ignored. They’re expected to “be strong” and supportive, despite often mourning their own private loss. Their pain is unacknowledged, their grief unspoken.
Systems change starts with empathy and action
If hospitals continue to treat miscarriage like a clerical issue, if GPs continue to brush off grief, and if media platforms keep normalising the idea that women exist to regulate male emotion, then the cycle will continue unchecked.
We need to do better. That means training emergency and GP staff in trauma-informed miscarriage care, embedding grief recognition and referral pathways in all hospitals, and ending the outdated 12-week silence rule by reframing miscarriage as the loss that it is. It also means validating the full emotional spectrum of grief and giving men permission to do the same, so they don’t become silent casualties of a system that ignores their pain.
When bro-podcast logic meets medical patriarchy, the result is institutionalised grief illiteracy. Women deserve more than cheerfulness and composure. They deserve to be met with respect, validation, and care, not suspicion or silence.
Now is the time for a national reckoning on grief. One that is trauma-informed, culturally safe, and emotionally honest.
Because when we finally listen to women, we don’t just make them feel seen, we help them heal.
Feature image: Sam Payne, founder of Pink Elephants.