Just wondered if anyone else heard this being discussed on Radio 4 this afternoon? Basically, 2 guests choose a favourite book, read each other's before the show, and then discuss them( along with the presenter) on air.
Today there were 2 women (the presenter and the guest who chose The Handmaid's Tale) and one man (Sean Lock? An actor apparently) discussing this novel. What I found fascinating was that the male guest kept saying "I didn't get it" and seemed to consider the book as just another dystopian novel which he criticised as "more slow-moving" than Orwell's Nineteen-Eighty-Four. The two female guests discussed the novel from a feminist point of view and how the novel made them realise the precarious nature of equality, how women are oppressed by men in society now and how easily what rights we do have could be taken away from us (as they already have been in other parts of the world.) In response, the male guest said that he thought it was very unrealistic and that most people would not go along with such a scenario and so it couldn't really happen.
It made me realise how the male guest is probably very representative of many men who really "don't get" the big deal about women's oppression, they can't see it all, and it all must seem rather dull when women go on about it.
Did anyone else hear it?