Handmaidens

All of the posts justifying the use of the word "handmaiden" as being a useful tool have been used to justify the 4 letter word beginning with T.

The pro- handmaiden lobbyists threw hissy fits at being called that word.

Ironically, it’s not a word I use. But I object very strongly to being told that I have to agree with everything other women say and do

I object to that as well. I also object to being co-opted in the group of "we women all..." / "no women ever...." etc.

Yes yes to Magdalen Berns to making a response video to this!

Women do not "collude" with the patriarchy; women are subjugated by the patriarchy. If a woman goes against it that is commendable, but when she doesn't that is not mean she is traiterous.

I find this language difficult to take seriously.

There are women who happily go along with the continued promotion of sexism despite their having no economic need to do so for example Miley Cyrus, Nicki Minaj, the women in the American Football lingerie league, the happy hooker brigade.

They deserve criticism without the infantilising notion they are victims of patriarchy or the self-rightreous calls of "handmaiden"

They have

I watched the video with the turquoise-haired woman explaining trans exclusionary radical feminism. I was pleased to see two things: first, she knows something about the history of feminism, and second, she's developing her views on the basis of her lived experience.

This suggests two further things to me: she currently has trans friends that she cares about, so she has empathy for people, and also she is motivated to position herself publicly as a feminist.

She reminds me very much of other young women I've known who are idealistic but who keep engaging with complex questions. I fully expect that further life experience will lead to more nuance in her approach. Five or ten years from now I think she may have quite different things to say - especially if she is a lesbian gay woman, as she hints she might be. (That was the part of the video where she was noticeably at odds with herself and much less confident, so it seemed important.)

I'm aware that I sound monstrously condescending so I'll try to stop. But I definitely got the impression that her thoughts about sex and gender are still developing.

I imagine when you are attempting to suppress any gut reactions to choking and anal whilst identifying as queer, then you are in fact not waving, you are drowning.

Picasso and Fermats, have either of you read The Righteous Mind by Johnathon Haidt? If not I would recommend it. Haidt has carried out various experiments which look at the differences in the way progressives think, and the way conservatives think. It's fascinating and along the lines of the conversation you were having with each other regarding po-mo thinking.

None of the blue haired woke young feminists seem to have any notion of the strongly sexual motivation of many men fot identifying as women, do they, Picasso?

I just watched the video, she is so terribly naive, she is frowning sweetly at the "ridiculous " notion of autogynaphila.

No doubt the ivory tower she lives in is funded by her gender critical parents.

‘Handmaiden of the patriarchy’ as a term predates the Atwood book, I believe (and certainly predates the TV show although I guess the young ‘uns can be forgiven for assuming that’s the reference).

I’m not in favour of policing other women’s language - i’m well up for debating and critiquing ideas though (especially when they are posting videos full of factual inaccuracies as if they are experts, spreading misinformation far and wide - the video I posted is pretty much TRA propaganda, made by someone who believes she is being a good ally to an oppressed minority. Argh!)

This is why we need debate, If your position is subject to being challenged, you need to ensure you have arrived at your position through critical thinking. Otherwise you can just parrot out any old science denying nonsense.

I rather like this quote from Tom Robbins,

‘Christianity is merely a system for turning priestesses into handmaidens, queens into concubines and goddesses into muses’

If we replace the word ‘Christianity’ with ‘Patriarchy’, we can then think of Feminism as the opposite process.

Feminism transformed me from muse to goddess

I don't intend it as an attempt at shaming, but as a label for a group who use specific behaviours.
We also need to remember that there are women who actively choose that path. They aren't all unconscious or victims.

Interesting how the thread has gone from talking about the post and video into terminology

Collaborator is used in war to indicate someone colluding with the other side.

However unless one understands mind control, in families, society, cults etc I don't find it helpful to condemn people with labels, unless they are undoubtedly conscious collaborators.

Shaming someone who hasn't had the opportunity to free themselves and to see the undue influence at play across society is not helpful. It also is not effective in helping people escape cults and coercion.

It's a shame there aren't more consciousness raising groups as there were in the 60/70s - and I have no doubt the wholesale silencing of women across cyber space is precisely to stop that happening - part of divide and conquer and silencing of consciousness raising - and why this space is so important.

The Handmaiden Book and TV series are helpful in establishing a contemporary reference to illustrate the oppressive systems at play that some can see clearly and others are unwittingly caught up in. And then there are a few, a very few women, who are consciously abusers themselves.

Re the videos I watched - they are both unconscious collaborators IMO i. e. subjected to undue influence - the first one is the uni educated Pomo- addled person, espousing implanted word salad, and is so out of her body and in her head as to be unreal. The incongruences of the second one where she's advertising menstrual products and then labelling herself cis and men women plus wanting to fix terminology for men but slurring women instead - it all stands out red flags - so both have been psychologically interfered with and don't realise it - they are too young and naive to know better unfortunately. I hope they find their way here sometime ...

nauticant appreciate the reference and yes I can see many parallels - there but for the grace of goddess go I -

Stella was tortured mercilessly, "They kicked both of [her] shins to the breaking point and kept beating the same spot on [her] spine. [She] was bleeding from [her] mouth, ears, and nose and couldn’t eat for days… Three times they took the safety off a pistol and put it against [her] temple. Totally shattered, [she] lay unconscious on the floor" (Wyden, 144). Not satisfied with themselves, the Gestapo then kicked her with their boots while she lay on the floor. After being beaten and tortured and stripped of her self esteem Stella had no choice but to give up on her life and just try to save her family.

So she's psychologically hostaged into being a puppet - something she is not to blame for but gets blamed for - the perpetrators long gone and unnamed.

Funnily enough, in my experience, people who are pomo-addled are often porno-addled. (Thinks back with shudder to male colleague who frequently used to offer me, unsolicited, the loan of books of supposed feminists defending porn. Funnily enough, my research specialism had nothing to do with porn, or ethics.)

Pomo? Argh- it looks like porno-addled, which has different connotations, obviously.

Po-mo - post-modernism.

The main part of it is a view that there are no absolute truths, only socially constructed "truths" relative to the society holding them.

Partly it comes out of old-fashioned Enlightment scepticism (there's no independent access to the world of facts, unmediated by our preconceptions about that world, so we as humans can't get at objective truth), and partly it comes out of a political analysis of how those with power manipulate what is allowed to count as facts to suit their own ends.

The kind of "tweet length slogan" I used to give to students when I tried to explain this was "Bacon (16th century philosopher) said posssessing scientific knowledge gave you political power; Foucault (20th century philosopher) says possessing political power enables you to control what counts as scientific knowledge."

Post modernism. Everything is subjective, nothing is real, truth is what anyone says it is. Naval gazing existentialism.

Your analysis is sadly spot on Picasso and I wouldn't be surprised if the same thing happens in Canada at the next election, which will come as a massive surprise to the left in Canada who idolise Trudeau to the extent that they are entirely blind to his shortcomings. And this will be a tragedy for Canada, because bad as the last conservative administration was (Harper - google his attacks on science for instance), everything I read leads me to think the rising right wing in Canada are so far off the scale they make Harper look like a teddy bear, and the damage they could do to Canada's rights for indigenous peoples and for the environment is huge.

If you consistently ignore the majority of everyday people's concerns with your po-mo world view, and dismiss them as stupid and bigoted, you set the scene for a backlash which engulfs both you and them in a whirlwind of destruction which neither of you actually intended.

Man and women that pump out shit tons of this identity psychobabble have bestowed the Trump presidency on us, as the USA attempts to reverse this juggernaut.

Yes but it gives them the righteous indignation fix that was rather thin on the ground over 8 years of Obama. The two sides feed on each other leaving many of us stuck in the middle as all kinds of batshit stuff becomes normalised.

Can someone enlighten me about Pomo please 😀

Hmm. Lots of food for thought here. It's fascinating (to me anyway) that I have had my arse handed to me comprehensively for defending the use of "handmaiden" and for objecting to the use of "cunt". So I obviously have chips on both shoulders.........

In my view, this discussion in general misses the main point. No matter what word is chosen to pithily indicate "women who collude with the patriarchy by undermining fellow women" it will be declared "problematic" as being a "term which is clearly misogynous because it is only applied to women".

In other words, why change the term?* The next one will get the same complaints.

• the one good reason would be if it is off-putting to undecideds who choose to follow the discussion

I assume that the lurkers can see the pattern in how those derails happen and which commenters cause them
Absolutely we can AAK

It's worth remembering that it is the pomo addled identity politics behind much of the "fake news" Republicans refer to (which we are also objecting to when it comes to crime) that led to the election of Trump.

Man and women that pump out shit tons of this identity psychobabble have bestowed the Trump presidency on us, as the USA attempts to reverse this juggernaut.

How about that for a spectacular own goal.

I've also been thinking more about rhetoric. It's a truism in politics that you don't win votes with rational arguments. Politics is primarily about emotions. However, the manipulation has to be subtle. So you "play the ball, not the woman", but throw in a few emotionally loaded phrases too to make sure your argument grabs attention ("YY, I feel like that too"), then resonates ("these are my people"), then sticks and has lasting effects ("I now feel I'm invested in the outcome of this argument, it's not just some sort of clever game, it matters to my life.")

Now it strikes me that some of these subtle emotional manipulations are in play on this thread (undoubtedly on both sides, but I'll concentrate on the opposing side to mine, because I probably spot them more clearly, just in virtue of where I'm coming from).

The parallel word to "handmaiden" might well be "harridan", and very sensibly, no-one who objects to handmaiden has used it.

What they have done, however, is said that people who use the word "handmaiden" are using misogynistic language (thus performing a sleight of hand which distracts from the fact that the term is used to describe women who are displaying much higher degrees of internalised misogyny, as, for instance, when they try to guilt trip lesbians into sleeping with people with pensises). They've appealed to niceness (another gendered aspect of discourse) and held women to higher standards than men (again, gendered) and appealed to fear of being perceived to be angry (again, gendered: men are allowed to express righteous anger, women are not). All of these are emotional manipulation techniquest - not as in-your-face as "you're harridans and harpies", but ultimately conveying the same message.