So in a comment thread discussing misogyny in the writing surrounding Gemma Scout (I am not going to go into it because I think everyone said what they needed to say in that thread) someone said that Gemma having a miscarriage was an example of misogyny in the writing. I have been thinking about this comment and I have some thoughts.
While I don't disagree that fertility issues and miscarriages are often used as a cheep way to add drama to a narrative, and often do end up being misogynist in some way or just don't really add anything to the overall plot (not to bring the MCU into this but an example that comes to mind is Natasha equating her being forcibly sterilized with being a monster). However, I don't think that the inclusion of fertility issues or miscarriage is inherently misogynist. It is a thing that happens to people in real life, and I think that it can be explored in interesting and nuanced ways.
In the case of Severance, if they had just had the flashback to Gemma having a miscarriage and done nothing with it, I would agree that it didn't add anything but angst to the narrative. However, this really isn't the case. For one in season 1, Mark tells Alexa that he and Gemma had tried to have kids but it didn't work out. This implied some sort of infertility happening, and with the flashback to Gemma miscarrying, we see that he was downplaying what happened a bit, which says a lot about Mark I think. Also, the miscarriage is not just a one off thing. In the cold harbor room Lumon is using Gemma's trauma over her miscarriage/infertility to test and see if their brain splitting procedure is working.
Also, Severance is a show that has a lot of plots and themes dealing with pregnancy, birth and parenthood so a plot line surrounding infertility and miscarriage isn't really out of left field or anything.














