Are there any bad men in the Handmaid's Tale

OP, I agree. I haven’t watched the second series yet because I was pissed off by the end of the first series.

It felt so NAMALT to me. The whole thing with the commander feeling sorry for his wife because she didn’t get a say anymore. The hapless boyfriend before the regime fell who was totally selfish. The men all seemed to have a excuse round the corner as to why they aren’t really all that bad, it was never meant to go this far....

Whereas the women like aunt Lydia were just simple sadist bitches who just loved a bit of physical punishment, all the better if there’s restraint and heavy panting involved

I agree OP I read the book 30 odd years ago and found it utterly dusturbing. Dh and I binge watched series 1 and I am quite upset that the men's behaviour has been so sanitized. Is the tv series written by a man? That's how it comes across to me.

I agree with the OP actually. She is not saying that the men are good at all. And obviously to a feminist watching the show, they are likely to have read the book and they can see the Commander's true nature. However, the average person watching might well get the impression that actually the men are the goodies in this show. It has nothing to do with how Margaret Atwood wrote the characters, it's the way they have been portrayed on screen. Many people don't understand nuance. There are so many people, including women, who swear blind that there is no inequality between men and women anymore. Including many of my friends. To someone who doesn't have a feminist background watching the TV show, they may well get the wrong impression, and the question is why have the characters been portrayed in this way?

I also think that we hold women to a higher standard in order for them to be thought of as 'good'.

I doubt they’re literary enough to have read THT Toe. More likely they’ve had the YouTube clip of Cathy Newman and Jordan Peterson on such a lengthy loop that it’s affected their ability to dream up pseudonyms convincingly.

I think I’ll take my “team” to “monitor” the kettle now.

Please do all carry on

How ironic that women's behaviour, on a thread about the Handmaid's Tale, on a fucking feminist message board, is now being policed and documented by "Jordan Newman" - self-appointed judge of women's posting of words and opinions. You couldn't make it up.

Please do carry on as you were

We will sonny, don’t you worry.

Run along now.

Please do carry on as you were

Thanks Jordan, we will

@AskAuntLydia nails it ^^

I do see your point OP, and Joseph Fiennes has talked about how uncomfortable he felt filming the rape scenes. Perhaps that came through in his portrayal of Fred and makes him seem more sympathetic? He is a very, very dangerous man though, I find him frightening to watch as a character and actually thought he was more sympathetic in the book to be honest!

I think the reason for the imbalance in how much of the violent behaviour we see is simply that this is a story about women, told from a woman's point of view and describing the behaviour of the women she is surrounded by. There actually aren't many named male characters in the story at all. For that alone, I'm grateful. There are so few programmes that are so female focused, this one passes the Bechdel test with flying colours! Perhaps I'm so starved of drama that centres around women that I've ignored the men as heroes narrative.

AskAuntLydia.

I agree with your analysis but that aspect of it (the reasons the underclass polices itself) is not shown.

I agree OP. I thought that about the 1st series too.

I think this is a really interesting question. One of the ways patriarchy flourishes, is by getting women to do its dirty work for it.

So in China, it was the mother and aunts who broke the feet of the little girls and bound them. In various cultures where FGM is practised, before modern medicine (and still in many places) it was a woman in the village who performed the ritual. The Magdalen houses were run by nuns, not priests.

The men could pretend they had nothing to do with it. The fact that the mothers were mutilating their girls because the only way their girls would find a husband, was if they were mutilated, (because men insisted on broken feet, mutilated clitori etc.) could go unnoticed. It looks like it's women who are responsible for the violence, because they're administering it. The fact that they're administering it on behalf of men, is disguised.

It's how all dictatorships behave. They select individual people from the oppressed class and give them privileges on the proviso that they do their dirty work so that they can remain loftily above it. If they stop doing it, they soon find themselves back in the oppressed class, but marked as traitors so even worse off.

Margaret Atwood was on Book Club on Radio 4 today, might be worth a listen.

The wife being poisoned by Emily - it's a cautionary tale in itself isn't it?

She says 'you held down a handmaid while your husband raped her" - she did, and then fell foul of the system. Justice was harsh, and meted out by someone who had suffered by her (the wife's) collaboration. She paid the price of collaboration, at the hands of someone in the group that had suffered.

It would, pratchet. We had a wife sent to the colonies last week - perhaps we will see more of Aunt Lydia. I hope so, actually.

Reading the book (oh, so many years ago) always left me wanting to know more - deliberately, I've always assumed. It's an incredible, perfect stand alone novel. But I must confess, I've enjoyed a lot of the filling in of the gaps in the TV series.

I liked seeing an econowife this week - they were a mere mention in the book. They, I would think, are in a very precarious position - if they set a foot wrong, it's 'handmaiden' for them. So I guess it's understandable why she was horrible to June.

Plus, perhaps, in order to live, it's easier for her to put some blame on the handmaids themselves, for their own predicament. Victim blaming - hell, doesn't that happen to women in all walks of life now?

The tv series does now seemed geared to get a larger audience with the filming trying to capture more male audience. Most of the women are in self preservation mode but the graphic shots do seem to be woman on woman. They are quick to show the aunt Lydia cruelty without showing the consequences she would face if she didn’t play her role.

I got annoyed when the first series looked unbelievably like the depiction of love triangle.

Also, Serena and the Commander are too young and good looking aren't they. The commander looks too much like a suitable partner for June, in another life. He's not meant to be. He's meant to be much older than her.

Does anyone know what Margaret Atwood's involvement in the HMT season 2 is?

I've expressed my concerns that this series seems to be going down the women-suffering-porn route with DP. He naively IMO reckons it couldn't possibly go that way because MA is an exec producer.

But, how much control over it does she have? Is she involved in the writing? I know she sold the rights ages ago, she doesn't own them does she?

Pratchet yes I totally get what you mean.

I hadn't noticed it as I've read the book and I was bringing my own understanding of the characters to it.

But not you mention it, it's so obvious.