Story of Handmaid’s Tale becoming ‘more and more plausible’ – Margaret Atwood

Distinction is meaningless, nobody actually ever believed that humans can change sex. She's happy to strip women of their rights in the service of the idea that woman's biological reality is nothing but a figment of the male imagination.

Women like Atwood seem to think the only threat to women comes from the Right. They are deluded in that way when surrogacy, TWAW and ‘sex work’ are all deeply driven by lefty liberal movements. Those are just as dangerous for women as more extreme conservative ideologies. I suspect Atwood doesn’t really care about women all that much. She just enjoys the admiration her writing has earned her and wants to keep selling books. Outside her writing, she doesn’t really seem to stand for anything very interesting.

I’m not going to derail the thread, and that will happen if I answer this question. You’ll have to ask Margaret Atwood.

Why are we not surprised that right wing women are trying to smear Atwood because of their own politics. Nauseating.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/article/c7bbe6fc-f452-4015-acdb-719ff8e5d389

All the awful things that happen in the book were drawn from real life.

TWAW and forced birthing are two sides of the same coin. Both are anti-women ideologies.

The thing about The Handmaid's Tale is that real fundamentalist Christians are, you know, quite keen on monogamy.

The departure from that is well enough justified in the book, but requires a very specific scenario (takeover by minority sect + incredible fertility crisis). It isn't something US society just edges towards over time, and doesn't match real-world conditions in any meaningful way.

Atwood seems - and I have thought this about her for a while - a bit too keen to blow her own trumpet as some sort of prophetic voice, presumably in an attempt to sell more copies. But books of this type don't have to be in danger of literally coming true to have something interesting to say.

Stupid.

I agree surragacy is the real problem and that is part of the missuse of science generally. See also the growth of eugenics. It's not a religious issue it's a scientific one.

I agree with her (on this, not on TWAW). I think surrogacy links into this too, more and more rich and famous women are choosing surrogates rather than ‘ruin’ their body or careers with the inconvenience of bearing children, almost like it’s beneath them. I don’t think we’ll get to a point of forced childbearing like the handmaid’s tale but I think society is creeping towards a kind of social version where poorer women’s bodies are commodified for women (or gay men) who are unwilling or unable to bear children themselves.

That's absolute nonsense however.

What does being 'socially women' mean? There's only one way to be a woman and that's biological.

She’s an intelligent woman, yes? She recognises that transwomen are still biologically male. The definition she is using here is that they are socially women and should be treated as such. (And for the record, I don’t agree with this.)

She wrote the fucking book, signed off on the films. Gave out the ideas. Now surprised some men thought it was a good idea.

She’s not TWAW. But you know this.

Margaret Atwood signed the open letter stating that TWAW.

Quote from the letter:

"We want to do our part to help shape the curve of history toward justice and fairness,” they write. “To that end, we say: non-binary people are non-binary, trans women are women, trans men are men, trans rights are human rights."

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/oct/09/stephen-king-margaret-atwood-roxane-gay-champion-trans-rights-open-letter-jk-rowling

She’s not TWAW. But you know this.

I agree, @IwantToRetire, piecing the current narratives and ideologies together in the US together tells an alarming story.

TWAW aside, yes I agree with her.

We are facing fertility doom. Men’s sperm counts are down what, 70% compared to their grandfathers? I know multiple women doing IVF and out of 120 girls I went to school with, only a quarter are mothers and we are now 33.

It’s not a value judgement on the choices of individuals, but eventually I assume governments will ‘take charge’ and I can see something like this unfolding as it collides with the sudden reprisal of Christianity, right wing politics and drive toward ‘traditional values’,

She's also TWAW so part of the problem really.