Margaret Atwood

Absolutely, Esma. Eurasia has always been at war with Eastasia.

I'm just placemarking out of curiosity to see her recant. I wonder what it feels like to have the internet turn on you like that, I imagine that it's quite terrifying.

I wonder if she has reflected on the similarities between her and JKR now.

A lot of the commentary is how Atwood has always been trash/racist/bigoted/a rubbish author. It's very Orwellian; X has always been an enemy of the people. I'm simultaneously fascinated and horrified at how totalitarian this movement is. It's like we're getting to see how all those regimes happened.

Newsweek: www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/handmaids-tale-author-margaret-atwood-faces-backlash-for-gender-neutrality-tweet/ar-AAPIuMo

In the Mail article "echoes of JK Rowling".

I'm happy that the tweet hasn't been deleted, no-one wants to walk into that kind of abusive storm.

In the Mail:

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10110001/Handmaids-Tale-author-Margaret-Atwood-branded-transphobic-row-gender-neutral-language.html

Funny how a lot of the replies are saying that "people" is "more precise language".

precise
adjective
marked by exactness and accuracy of expression or detail.

I wouldn't therefore call "people" (and other "inclusive" words) precise. I'd call them vague. If you said that London is a city in Europe, you aren't being precise. It's not untrue, London is indeed a city in Europe but the statement doesn't give you any idea of where it might be on a map. Identifying it precisely would be to say that it is in the South West of England.

TRAs do love mangling language, don't they?

I am not in Atwood's head, so I vote for a golden bridge. I was a literature major, not a women's studies major. Coming from a conservative community, I would never have come to feminism if it weren't for literary writers like Doris Lessing, Adrienne Rich and Margaret Atwood. These women shaped my entire life and subsequently the lives of my daughters and I will forever be indebted to them to opening my mind to how women are uniquely oppressed by reason of our sex. While Atwood's writing is heroic, Atwood is a human like the rest of us and there are probably a complex set of reasons why she's reacted to gender activism in the way she has.

Also, mainstream US news just picked up the story. www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/handmaids-tale-author-margaret-atwood-faces-backlash-for-gender-neutrality-tweet/ar-AAPIuMo

And, as for Thing is I don’t think she gets it because she says - read it she is not a terf. She doesn’t get it does she?

I wonder if MA's experience of seeing how quickly she has been denounced as The Thing Called Terf That She Knows Herself Not to Be will cause her to reflect on whether the words terf and transphobic have any meaning if they are applied to something of which she approves (as well as herself).

It would be astonishing if she did, but it's not even that important that MA gets it now or if it's the equivalent of a voyage to Ithaca for her as long as it makes her pause, reflect, and decline any future invitations to undermine/blame/attack other women.

Blimey, talk about excessive moderation. in case anyone's wondering there was nothing remarkable in my deleted post.

I would forgive Atwood because I think looking more reasonable than, well, no, I won't say any more in case I get deleted again for saying something innocuous.

I don't care if she wants to be forgiven, I just care that she will speak truth and refrain from attacking other women. That's all.

I haven’t seen the link posted yet for the archived version of the article.

archive.md/zzN8I

Apologies if it has been posted already.

Someone posted Sarah Ditum in The Times on another thread. For me, this is about the power of lobby groups, whatever the subject and how they have so poisoned the public debate that so many people have been mislead as to what is at stake. They've been ensorcelled by the #BeKind #NoDebate thought-terminating clichés into not understanding the consequences or that women's rights and the hard won safeguarding protections are being dismantled in plain sight.

Let’s say there’s a contentious social issue. It doesn’t matter what the issue is. Assisted dying, drug reform, abortion rights — pick your poisonous divide. Legal changes are mooted. Lobby groups campaign for and against the proposals, and in an ideal world this would be the point at which we got a fair and frank exchange of views on the public stage.

But now let’s say that one (and only one) of the lobby groups is also providing training to public bodies on the issue at hand. It runs schemes through which organisations can be accredited as “champions” or ranked in a league table for their performance, too: a cannabis liberalisation campaign might mark down employers who banned staff from having a spliff on the job…

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/bec8f37c-3111-11ec-afd6-aa3ee2eb8a34?shareToken=b9f03dca73809fa4993bbd16c6acc001

she can signal that she is undergoing a shift of some sort.

I believe her further 'response' to the outcry, of posting two tweets from a feminist organisation, are a signal.

What a golden bridge looks like in this case is sticking up for her. Providing a calm, supportive voice that acknowledges the bravery it takes to admit one was wrong, to stand up for what one believes in even if (especially) when one knows it will bring opprobrium. And ESPECIALLY when that involves a change of belief/thinking.

It is like watching a fly caught in a spiders web trying to escape. And keep getting poisoned.

I know I said it upthread but I cannot help thinking of the analogy now.

Oh what a tangled web we we weave, when first we practice to deceive.

Thing is I don’t think she gets it because she says - read it she is not a terf. She doesn’t get it does she?

" Sorry, I was blinded by kindness" seems like it will be the excuse all right.

Still considerably more compassionate than you !

Earlier thread on how we might help people to save their face:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4339762-How-do-we-provide-a-face-saving-way-back-to-reality-for-the-politicians-public-figures-who-are-currently-transactivisms-minions?pg=1

The golden bridge is for people like Atwood who stop the TWAW mantra and realise that the women they have previously denounced as Terven actually have a point that reasonable people share. Maybe they do start to understand the wider social and political consequences for women. Right now, hey might not come out as GC but perhaps they don't join in the ritual denunciations of people like JKR? And over time this shifts - and people see what does/not happen to them.

At present, she can keep mumbling TWAW and keep the sign on her fruit and vegetable stall*, or she can signal that she is undergoing a shift of some sort.

Vaclav Havel: The slogan is really a sign, and as such it contains a subliminal but very definite message. Verbally, it might be expressed this way: "I, the greengrocer XY, live here and I know what I must do. I behave in the manner expected of me. I can be depended upon and am beyond reproach. I am obedient and therefore I have the right to be left in peace." This message, of course, has an addressee: it is directed above, to the greengrocer's superior, and at the same time it is a shield that protects the greengrocer from potential informers. The slogan's real meaning, therefore, is rooted firmly in the greengrocer's existence. It reflects his vital interests. But what are those vital interests?*

Let us take note: if the greengrocer had been instructed to display the slogan "I am afraid and therefore unquestioningly obedient;' he would not be nearly as indifferent to its semantics, even though the statement would reflect the truth. The greengrocer would be embarrassed and ashamed to put such an unequivocal statement of his own degradation in the shop window, and quite naturally so, for he is a human being and thus has a sense of his own dignity. To overcome this complication, his expression of loyalty must take the form of a sign which, at least on its textual surface, indicates a level of disinterested conviction. It must allow the greengrocer to say, "What's wrong with the workers of the world uniting?" Thus the sign helps the greengrocer to conceal from himself the low foundations of his obedience, at the same time concealing the low foundations of power. It hides them behind the facade of something high. And that something is ideology.

hac.bard.edu/amor-mundi/the-power-of-the-powerless-vaclav-havel-2011-12-23

Everyone can change their mind about things though - your beliefs should be iteratively re-examined and re-shaped over time.

Yes. Healthy and sensible. Panta rhei and all that.

@Gastonia

And most of us were unthinking #BeKinders once, right? So true

I just think, as I above, it is exceedingly nice in the autumn of your years, to be the revered grande dame at the court.

That said, the truth isn't ours and if she wishes to stand up for it, I'll be happy. Better late than never.

I still struggle with the cognitive dissonance of having read the Handmaid's tale, then hearing some of Margaret Atwood's views.

Everyone can change their mind about things though - your beliefs should be iteratively re-examined and re-shaped over time.