Of all people....Margaret Atwood ‘we’re all part of a flowing bellcurve’

Caffeined.

On reflection, I was insufficiently caffeine and it should have been this:
Offred: 'I'm a man!'
Commander: 'Oh OK.... Let him go.'
The End.

Weirdly, Im not that surprised.
I liked some of her work a lot, but it has always struck me from her work that she seems quite synical,
mix this with ambition and you end up with someone prity ruthless.

Gotta keep that woke praise going, attention is currency in a crowded marketplace.

She did reply to JCJ to the effect that if what JCJ was saying was true, it needed looking into.

& a lot of her references to slugs etc sounded like a pisstake. I don't know. I suspect she's just not given it much thought. Maybe now she will?

Also, I teach THMT. Always generates a good discussion about the role of the Aunts - I point out that I'm an educated older woman, & so it would be massively in my interests to sign on with the Aunts rather than be shipped off to the colonies - I'd probably be quite good at it with all those years of teaching experience.

Then we talk about totalitarian regimes generally, & how they rely on a cadre of relatively privileged people who are technically members of the oppressed group, but who are able to opt in to collaboration as a survival mechanism. & how if that's you, it becomes easier to live with yourself if you can convince yourself you are somehow being altruistic & the values of the regime are honourable.

I reckon it's depressingly easy for anyone to turn into Aunt Lydia, however much we kid ourselves that of course we would be a Moira.

& I suspect that might be where Atwood is right now.

She's a shape-shifter. I remember an old interview from the 80s where she spoke of the influence of her visit to Afghanistan under Taliban rule around 1980 on The Handmaid's Tale. The revolution had just happened in Iran too and suddenly millions of women were forced to cover themselves and had their most fundamental rights stripped away. She spoke of trying on a burka in the marketplace and how it made her feel.

Fast forward a few decades and her emphasis has shifted to women under Bush and Trump and right wing Republicans and sorry but the scale of it is just not comparable. World politics had moved on and I could see she didn't want to be accused of Islamophobia or racism, the usual things you get hit with if you criticise non western cultures. So it seemed like a kind of cowardice to me, and this does too.

Great point.

remember that a lot of twitter is bots, paid-for meddlers and daft kids with too much time on their hands,

JKR's reach extends far beyond Twitter. Her tweets have been all over the news. Is "Margaret Atwood thinks sex is on a bell curve" going to be? I doubt it.

Canada is highly woke, as is the canadian literature scene. So I'm disappointed in MA, but not surprised.

Chin up

she is tyng to sell more books and avoid being attacked

She's a shape-shifter. I remember an old interview from the 80s where she spoke of the influence of her visit to Afghanistan under Taliban rule around 1980 on The Handmaid's Tale. The revolution had just happened in Iran too and suddenly millions of women were forced to cover themselves and had their most fundamental rights stripped away. She spoke of trying on a burka in the marketplace and how it made her feel.

Fast forward a few decades and her emphasis has shifted to women under Bush and Trump and right wing Republicans and sorry but the scale of it is just not comparable. World politics had moved on and I could see she didn't want to be accused of Islamophobia or racism, the usual things you get hit with if you criticise non western cultures. So it seemed like a kind of cowardice to me, and this does too.

She is throwing young girls and vulnerable women under the bus.

Aunt-like.

The Handmaid's Tale 2020 Offred: 'I'm a man!', Commander: 'Oh OK.... Let her go.' The End.

This. I was going to say how on earth did they tell who could be a Handmaid in Gilead but this is better.

The cynical part of me wonders if she sees that transactivism is clearly heading in the direction of Gilead and she's positioning herself to be an Aunt rather than anything else, since they're the only ones allowed to read and write IIRC.

This has made me despair afresh this morning. I can see a lot of 'right thinking' people breathing a sigh of relief that they can now discount everything jkr has said because the higher power of Margaret Atwood has reassured them they were right all along.

OJ tried fawning and was dismissed for his silly comments. Whatever her stance, I doubt MA has any desire to be the leader of tedious SJWs who she's probably never heard of.

i didn't see it like that. shes being foolish- makes me sad to see.

Maybe I am misreading but I thought her replies to OJ are holding him very much at arm's length and not wanting to get pulled in to that role either?

I'm still just so surprised how barramundi entered the convo.

She replied to Jane Clare Jones with an arch musing on fish.

Sorry, rubbish at doing twitter screen grabs, but here is JCJ's reply

mobile.twitter.com/janeclarejones/status/1280387608640716800

I really, really. want MA to explain the answer, because it does seem to be a bit of a plot hole.

OJ called her Queen.

Urgh.

I think Atwood believes the only type of patriarchal threat comes in the form of the religious right wing.

It does disappoint me she replied to Talcum X.

That shows lack of judgement in a number of ways.

While ignoring JCJ's eloquent posts.

What if Atwood would have been an Aunt?!

Oh yes. OJ is swooning over her.

And in there news... a theatre adaptation of Mallory Towers seems to have transed Bill...

Barramundi

Wasn’t it slugs? I think she has lost the plot or is having a massive piss take.

She replied to Jane Clare Jones with an arch musing on fish.

I think she's lost the plot.