Handmaidens

I don't think it's vicious really. Having reflected a bit this morning I think my problem with it is that the current usage is that it jars a bit with my concept of a handmaid. I think my definition of the word means "women who collides with the patriarchy by not actively resisting"

So the women who bound their daughters feet in China, or who consent to marrying off their 12 year old daughters, or a wife who bullies her husbands concubines. All reprehensible behaviours but carried out by women who are making decisions between two really shitty patriarchy defined choices and choose the path of least resistance, the society sanctioned option or the thing that will make their lives a little bit easier. It's a bit like how many of my friends have changed their names when married without even reflecting on it or thinking about it.

It's different in my head from women who actively promote the patriarchy (aunts) and I feel a lot of empathy for the handmaids. They need support and consciousness raising.

In contrast I do feel angry with the blue haired girls and I do think they deserve some scorn sometimes. I don't think they fit with my concept of handmaids though in some ways it's worse than that. They are not muddling through without thinking. They are actively trying to dismantle the patriarchy but they can't see how they are being duped and are really smug and irritating about how they are right and we are wrong. It's intensely irritating.

Words change and evolve though so there is no reason why my definition is right and other uses wrong. In the end language policing gets us nowhere.

It's suddenly struck me. Why are people saying that "handmaiden" is vicious and vitriolic? I can see why people object, but on a website where "cunt" is regularly used and defended (not by me, incidentally) it does seem strange to be so outraged by "handmaiden". Particularly if you agree that the behaviours that it describes exist.....

I've wandered off point a bit here but I guess I think of them as our prodigal daughters, they have taken every advantage we have made for them and squandered it but when they have learnt what the world is really like and come back to us starving and broken we will welcome them with open arms.

My view also.

I very much enjoyed:

Oh, now you're insisting that words have proper meanings, and that we stick to tried and tested definitions

The discussion in general reminded me of the "catchers" who worked for the Gestapo:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stella_K%C3%BCbler

Hmm. There’s also ‘quisling’ and ‘turncoat’, to describe these behaviours I guess, but I don’t know if those two may be too historical and not as easily understood as ‘handmaiden’.

I like the biblical-era associations of ‘handmaiden’. It shows the time-worn patriarchal values that underpin the behaviour. also makes an Atwood-esque reference that’s quite current.

Interestingly (for me!), the first time I saw someone call someone else a handmaiden on this board I reported it as I genuinely thought it offensive (despite being strongly GC). It wasn't an insult I'd heard used before and didn't realise it was relatively commonly used on this board (and possibly generally in feminist debate?).

I still wouldn't use it because I think it's dismissive and patronising and as PP have said, it's incorrect, given handmaidens in the Bible were slaves and in The Handmaid's Tale they were not much more than slaves. I think Aunt is more accurate or traitor, Quisling etc. But actually I don't think it's necessary to use such vicious terms - I'd be inclined to use "woke" or "Pomo addled" as a PP suggested. I agree there's an element of "woman, be nice" to my thinking but then why not want to be nice. Frankly I'd rather encourage everyone (men and women) to be nice than encourage women to reject their socialised niceness and sink down to the men's level. But I guess that's a whole other debate.

In other news, I womansplained Male privilege to my boss in my performance review today.

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

According to OED, archaic handmaiden:
"A female servant.
.... A subservient partner or element."
Says it all really.

Sad that yet again we have got diverted into linguistic angels on a pinhead, rather than the massive lesbophobia and getting females to do the dirty work, stand at the front at demos (although they don't seem to be quite up to thumping older women, odd that...........).

And the lesbophobia and focusing on GC feminists -- because they are all female people with a long history of saying NO to males and knowing what that gets you....................

Totally agree with Fermats. I rarely use the term, for me it does not arise from Atwood's coinage but from centuries old connotations of women in willing servitude, aware or not, and it is highly applicable in certain circumstances.

It's not very 'nice' and if your focus is on people thinking what a jolly good egg you are all round, then using will probably mark you as one of the 'not very nice' women. But we all take risks with our reputation, be they because we are fighting for women's right or because we want to be seen as one of the nicer women.

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. There are plenty of women who do well out of the patriarchy. Many of them don’t realize it. But there are those who do, and use their position to make life worse for other women. And those are the ones, the Ann Coulters, the Katie Hopkins, the Melanie Phillips who need calling out.

It depends, I suppose, on what you're trying to do (rhetorically speaking).

If you want to convince and sway opinion, then it's a poor choice. "Play the ball and not the woman" is always a far more effective strategy. Explain what is wrong with the view expressed, and why it is offensive and demeaning to women. If you do this well enough, your audience will be supplying their own epithets for your opponents by the time you've finished.

If, on the other hand, you want to express outrage and fury and write a polemic to gee up your own followers, it may be the right word to choose.

So pick your words according to what you want to achieve. But note that rage and the expression of rage is not always bad. And also that women are much more often told to swallow their rage than men are. They are held to much higher standards when it comes to pejorative language. Gordon Brown was largely untouched by his "bigot" outburst. Hillary Clinton's attempt on the presidency failed in no small measure due to her snide "basket of deplorables" comment.

I wouldn't want to stop others using it if they find it helpful though. Just not for me.

I do agree with you Milly, I don't really like using it for some of those reasons, even if I do agree that it can sometimes be a useful term. It polarises discourse and seems unlikely to help us in consciousness raising either with the "handmaids" themselves or the lurkers.

I don't engage or take seriously anyone who uses the term. It is just a cheap shot to try to belittle some one who doesn't agree with you.

For all the explanations on this thread, that's generally how it is used. It's become a very lazy term that you see all over social media. 'She doesn't agree with me.... Handmaiden!'

Like Cardsfor, I see the word handmaiden as from ancient history - the Bible, ancient Egypt. When I use it I'm referring to women who actively and eagerly promote patriarchal values and/or SJW clueless attacks on women's rights and feminism.

They are traitors the same way French collaborators were, or Uncle Tom is, so a sex specific insult is appropriate.

Calling them scabs involves knowing the trade union background and most young people won't have a clue.

You've got to stop making people laugh like this, I don't think a mouthful of tea would be good for my keyboard.

Not at all, I was specifically asking why people thought it meant what they were using it to mean. I wasn't telling anyone what it had to mean. Read the words that are there, perhaps.

Welcome to our world.

I think of them as our prodigal daughters, they have taken every advantage we have made for them and squandered it but when they have learnt what the world is really like and come back to us starving and broken we will welcome them with open arms.

prosperous your poor friend. That’s horrible.

(Thanks AAK for snacks; offers to put kettle on; wades in deeper.)

Not sure I believe in agency. The fact is, women are very severely oppressed by patriarchy and choices are almost never free choices.

So I would say that is the difference between the handmaidens and the aunts for me in the book and that plays into how I view the use of the word (although i think use of the term actually stemmed from the common biblical source?)

The handmaidens were colluding by not resisting, as Offred says at one point there is nothing happening that she hasn't signed up for. However the risk they are facing in resisting are huge and their collusion doesn't actually get them privileges or power, not really, it's just better than the alternatives.

The Aunts are really the ones throwing other women under the bus for their own gain and they are doing it in a calculated way, although the alternatives for them are also perhaps not much better. Still they are the ones that really deserve the ire and insults.

If you look at the biblical handmaidens as well they clearly had no choice in the matter, they were slaves.

So I do agree that neither term is totally accurate for the young woman in the video and her blue haired friends. They are not women with few choices struggling to make their way through a society where they have no rights or options. And I don't think they are making an active decision to collude with their oppressors for material gain. Instead they are, in the main, young women who have been lied to about the source of their oppression and not given the critical thinking to work it out for themselves yet. (What do they teach them at these schools?) but who have the brains, tools and resources to work it out if they wanted to and would listen and engage critically with older, more experienced women.

Choice feminism is attractive, it's easy, it allows you to validate all your choices even if they don't really fit your ideology. It's easy to see why heterosexual young women who want to attract male partners can be conned into believing it. Many of them will grow out of it. Probably when they start having kids.

I've wandered off point a bit here but I guess I think of them as our prodigal daughters, they have taken every advantage we have made for them and squandered it but when they have learnt what the world is really like and come back to us starving and broken we will welcome them with open arms.

Words have meaning. Oh yes indeedy.

Oh, now you're insisting that words have proper meanings, and that we stick to tried and tested definitions

It's a bit early for , but I'm not sure is going to help much...

Oh, now you're insisting that words have proper meanings, and that we stick to tried and tested definitions

Not at all, I was specifically asking why people thought it meant what they were using it to mean. I wasn't telling anyone what it had to mean. Read the words that are there, perhaps.