It’s relatively easy to find the funny in something that breaks your heart. Frustration and rage are much trickier emotions to find the LOLS in. How do you make something funny that fills you with such anger all arguments are reduced to frustrated, inarticulate noises? And finding the funny is important. From world wars to the horrors of extremism, laughter is a powerful way to reclaim the humanity of a horrible topic.

Irish women tweet their periods to prime minister Enda Kenny #repealthe8th Read more

So I could write about the hundreds of women in Ireland today forced by Ireland’s abortion laws to make the lonely, humiliating trip to a foreign country for a medical procedure illegal in their own. I could rage about the agony of a woman forced to carry her doomed child to full term knowing she will never feel it breathing in her arms. I could rant about a country’s leader casually dismissing any suggestion that a cruel constitutional clause that equates a mother’s life to that of a foetus or embryo should at least be discussed. But no one finds an angry woman funny, or even likable, for that matter, so no one listens.

So instead I thought it would be better to take the Irish state at its word. If they want to control my body, if they feel so comfortable interfering in what happens inside it, they should at least have all the details. So I decided to live-tweet my menstrual cycle to the taoiseach Enda Kenny. Sure, some could argue that it’s none of his business what happens inside my fallopian tubes, but if we took that logic to its conclusion, I wouldn’t need to tweet him in the first place.

If it's none of his business what happens inside my fallopian tubes, I wouldn’t need to tweet him in the first place

No, if there is one thing the Irish state has shown over the years, it is that it does think this is its business. It gets to decide what happens when I’m pregnant, so why shouldn’t it be involved during all the other stages too? What about the daily grind of owning a vagina, or “Ireland’s littlest embassy”, as I affectionately call it? The daily discharges, the cramps, heavy-flow versus light-flow tampons? The itching! Tell me what to do, Enda, tell me. You and all the men in your government feel comfortable controlling so many aspects of my body, at least tell me how to deal with PMT! Maybe they could form a committee to tell me whether I should try primrose oil?

I initially thought live-tweeting Enda my monthly cycle might be a thing I did for a week or so; then one of my friends would quietly take me aside and gently suggest it was getting weird. Then a wonderful thing happened: Irish women all over the country and abroad found out about the idea and, gloriously, got involved. They sent the leader of the country hilarious tweets verging from the mundane to the grotesque, about their monthly visitor. The women tweeting aren’t hysterical humourless harridans; they are funny, clever, articulate women who are tired of men feeling entitled to control their bodies.

‘It was the scariest thing I've ever done’: the Irish women forced to travel for abortions Read more

Women are supposed to be ashamed of their bodies you see: we’re gross when we’re not pregnant, and we’re even ickier when we are. If we can’t even talk openly about our periods it’s no wonder that campaigning for further rights is so difficult. Enda Kenny, of course, ignored the tweets, but then he is used to ignoring women. We are second-class citizens in our own country.

I hope, however, he has got our message, if not our tweets: we are not ashamed, we are not silent, and we are not going away.

And to all the men collapsing like southern belles at our unladylike behaviour: I’m sorry, but your attitude is as pathetic, old and irrelevant as the dusty tampon I keep finding in the bottom of my handbag.

It could take many years for Ireland’s restrictive laws to be repealed. In that time thousands more women face prosecution for making a decision about their own body. Hundreds more Irish doctors will need to check the statute book before checking a pregnant woman’s temperature. Thousands more women will simply not be safe in hospital in their own country. And one thing is certain: women will die because of it – possibly some of the same women who are tweeting Enda Kenny today. If you didn’t laugh, you’d cry.