Handmaids-in-waiting?
I haven’t read it for about ten years, but I have just re-read Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Am I alone in being utterly chilled by how easily this could happen in our society? If I wasn’t perpetually in the red, I’d be tempted to hoard all my savings under the mattress so no bank account freezing could happen! Although, as is still the case for so many women around the world, it’s unlikely there would be anywhere to run to.How long before women are forcibly put under the plastic surgeon’s ‘improving’ knife?
How long before those young women deemed ‘desirable’ are forcibly ‘given’ to high-ranking males as rewards for achievement?
How long before the age of consent for girls is reduced because we have a falling birth-rate and need more fertile women ‘doing their duty to their country’?
How long before women are shunted out of the jobs for which they fight so hard, and are banned from having reproductive choice for the same reason?
Nonsense? Paranoia? Overreaction? Maybe. But until we have true autonomy – that is, not just the right to be equal to men but the right to be as women – our hard-won victories will not be secure.
posted by Growlergirl @ 1:36 pm
3 Comments:
I thought about hiding the money after I read The Handmaid's Tale as well. However if you recall, they changed the type of money used as well, which means all cash would be useless. I was thinking about this book recently, I think the only think that keeps it from becoming a reality is the internet. Now, once that is removed it could happen.
Admittedly, we don't live in a equal world quite yet, and there are battles to be fought for the feminist cause, but to think that the handmaid's tale is anywhere near to being a realistic dystopia is paranoid thinking in the extreme.
Nope, you're not that paranoid - I get frightened sometimes at how woman hating our society is getting - with anti abortion stuff, men complaining that women get all the benefits (yeah right) and men still trying to find ways to control our bodies and freedom.
But then - I think, yay, feminism - there's still some hope :)
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