Handmaid, Handmaiden.

Young women can be feminists but they can’t just handwave away feminist history because someone called them a handmaiden and it made them feel bad.

My understanding is it comes from the Margaret Atwood novels

But you've failed to establish that it does.

'Handmaid/Handmaiden of the ...' was a common term long before the Atwood book. And the way it was most commonly used in the first half of the 20th century - the usage that both Atwood and the 2nd wave feminists would have grown up with - was entirely un gendered. Indeed, it was mostly used for concepts rather than people. It described concepts that were deployed in service and support of other concepts - philosophy, statistics, public health. So applying it to those upholding and reinforcing the patriarchy would have been a natural extension.

I don't agree that there are victim blaming connotations to 'handmaiden'. I think what you understand as victim blaming I understand as an acknowledgment of their knowing and deliberate complicity.

It's a pretty heartwrenching book..its fucked up.... It played on my mind for a long time, I imagined being in the position of the main character.... And for some time I was actually worried that's where all this madness could have gone... that women are nothing but a costume and some of us are reduced to reproductive machines...

So I do understand the OP's reluctance to use the word (when taken in this context)

If we think of the handmaids tale, in some ways this TRA females are more like the wives of the men in the Handmaid's Tale...

YES i understand it was a feminist term previous to this, but culture shifts happen and words change, and certain meaninga become widespread (Not the word woman though ;) )

I like dick- panderer

Fair point @ShireWifeofNigelFarage

I worked on the launch of THT TV show in the UK and the idea that it has wide cultural currency in the UK outside feminists of both lib and rad variety is laughable. It's a niche arthouse drama.

When people outside the bubble hear 'handmaiden' they mean you know, someone who's a maid of the intimate variety.

It might have negative connotations, but there are no victim blaming connotations.

You keep ignoring the point about the dictionary definition of handmaiden: a person or thing that serves a useful but subordinate purpose - logic is the handmaid of philosophy

Lots of words change in usage and have a root in some kind of problematic human behaviour. Why is this one more of an issue?

I suppose (without knowing what you said) if you don't want to be called a handmaid, don't say handmaid-y things.

like the verb form of ‘Sturgeoning’ but I suspect that describes inventing a new sex class called ‘Rapists’ rather than more general handmaidening?

I’ll say what I like.

Nikklasturgeons

Have you been part of feminist subculture for a while?

Love it
Although a bit insulting to the original fish sturgeons

I am 32, i have never seen the show, i read the book a long time ago. I associate the word with Atwood.

So it is nothing to do with being an adult before that show..I just think Atwoods book (as well as the show) has had far more of a cultural impact and wide reach than the feminist version...

You could call such women Sturgeons?

Also bluntly why should we not call out women who are blatantly chucking women under the bus in their rush to support men however they present - looking at you sturgeon!

Deputy Assistant to the Dick-Holders?

I’ve just checked, it was serialised on TV in 2017. Six years ago, so I imagine it would be only pretty young people who wouldn’t have heard the usage before.

Or, they are more aware of Atwoods book than of a feminist term?

But yea, it is far more likely that the majority of people associate this term with Atwood than with it's previous feminist usage.

In which case it is fair point to say thay its a bit pf a confusing term...

TERF might be used as an insult to women, but there it's not a term that has victim blaming connotations. There's no word in there that means something else, there's no literary background to it which would give a misogynistic context to the term.
Hmm. Disagree. TERF aligns "radical feminist" with a distorted shorthand of what feminists think, that on the surface makes them sound unreasonable to most people. "Trans exclusionary" doesn't actually mean what it says on the tin. It means "doesn't believe trans women are women" not "excludes trans people and believes they shouldn't exist".
And of course being labelled a "feminist" has a long history of being used as an insult, connotations of being angry, unreasonable, man hating etc. Lots of women actively avoid the label despite believing women should be treated equally to men.

You know this. So don't pretend handmaid is worse somehow because it isn't.

It's mysterious. It's like bursting into a local bar and declaring your total opposition and that you must not be called anything you don't like