Interview with Margaret Atwood in the Times

Hadley Freeman interviewed her when Hadley was at the Guardian, so it would have been good to give her another go. But she’s the film critic now, and Decca A is the chief interviewer, so I guess it had to be her. I thought she did a good job on the whole, but she should have dug deeper on this. It would have been simple enough to ask; “What about the rights of women to a single sex changing room? Or prison?”

"I’m not interested in people calling other people names. I’m interested in what people are allowed to do legally."

I agree with this. However, the part Margaret Atwood is determined to ignore is that there are a lot of men who are perfectly happy to do various things illegally, and a lot of men who are perfectly happy to enable and allow them to do these illegal things, including in our governments and law courts. And that Canada has even made some things legal that are only one step removed from her famous book.

She's 86, wealthy, and probably completely shielded from any adverse effects of the "culture wars" and can therefore afford to blithely offer to give away other women's fights. She won't be the one in a changing room, prison cell, care home, rape crisis center, with an unhinged, deluded man. She will be able to pay for private, home healthcare and intimate care, whereby she can hire or fire whoever she wants, of whichever sex she wants (and sue the care company if they dare to object). She's able to ignore the fact that her country enables, by law, men to take women's places, opportunities, and prizes in sport and business. She doesn't have to care that all those "idiosyncrasies" of the 1950s that she had to deal with (and that feminism has battled and continues to battle) are coming back around for younger women.

The blissful, arrogant bubble of an 86- year old, wealthy woman on a pedestal of fame and security... wouldn't it be amazing to have that kind of confidence? I'd like to be able to ignore the "culture wars" too.

Margaret Atwood is contemptible.

And shame on the interviewer for not asking the questions that matter.

I’ve not read this yet but I do remember Decca Aitkenhead skewering Angela Rayner on gender ideology at the end of a mostly sympathetic interview so I’m surprised and a bit disappointed to hear this. I’ll read it now.

"I'm not interested in people calling other people names. I'm interested in what they can do legally".
Yet the interviewer doesn't mention our SC ruling and the fact that biological men are illegally using women's spaces.
I wonder what Atwood would say if she were appraised of this situation.
Would she be consistent and say women in and men out, or would she revert to the culture war, saying women are unkind and bigoted in not letting female IDing individuals in.
Alas, well never know, she was never asked.
Would have been the <perfect> test for her oh so liberal and reasonable sounding ethos.

Just to add something that occurred to me:

Margaret Atwood is wealthy, protected, ancient, famous, and untouchable. I would hazard a guess that there is nothing TRAs could try to do to her that she couldn't fix rapidly with her fame, money, power, and influence. So it's not fear that prevents her from standing up for women's rights.

She either hasn't given it much thought (possible but unlikely in a writer) or she has thought a lot about it and simply doesn't care enough to do anything about it. Or she actually believes that women don't deserve their own sex-based rights.

Think about what she could be doing for women in Canada with all of her power and wealth. She is choosing not to. She is choosing to ignore it, so women who don't have her wealth and agency have to struggle.

As I said before, contemptible.

She's also inconsistent. Berates the culture war and it's "name-calling", yet calls those who didn't vote for Hilary "nincompoops".
She's another <oh so above the fray/the culture war is so below my intelligence> snob liberal that she doesn't realize her self identified isolation is false/inconsistent.
We're <all> in the culture war...I mean, we all exist in the culture.

She's always had this position.

And I think has resented being categorised as a feminist writer.

As did Doris Lessing, who was openly scathing of the feminism she was aware of (filtered through the media).

So its nothing to do with being wealthy or even old. This is who she is.

And I say this as someone who, if anything in terms of realising I was a feminist, was after reading one of her early novels The Edible Woman.

Radical idea, right?

<sighs a sigh as deep as the Mariana Trench>

Indeed.

How can she miss the elephants crowding around her in the room?

One of those is, of course, that male people with transgender identities have already got equal human rights. They want additional privileges that other people don’t gave. And that those male people and their allies have misdescribed those privileges as ‘rights.’

I believe that is what she is also misdescribing as a ‘culture war’.

I really don't get Atwood. She's spent her whole life writing political fiction, it doesn't get more political than Handmaid's Tale. She's not slow in coming forwards to pin her colors to the mast re party politics. She's condescending about those that vote for the other side. She's already in the culture war.
Yet she tries to pretend she won't get her hands dirty. Tries to play both ends against the middle. Says it's actions not words that interest her.
And comes off as disingenuous at best and frankly cowardly at worst.
Just take a side, state your opinion, fight your corner.
Don't be political all your life, and then pretend the gender wars are beneath you.

Like others, I thought the interview smacked of a rich, cosseted lady refusing to get involved in the grubby realities the rest of us have to face. She refuses to see any correlation between the lies she champions and the risks to women and girls – not even when her own country’s police force are referring to an at-large male school shooter as ‘a woman in a dress’.

And she blames ‘nincompoops’ for voting for Trump, rather than accepting that the lies women like her support and the risks to ordinary people as a consequence might have led to the political circumstances in the US that saw Trump get reeelected. She writes about this stuff – she just can’t see she’s living through it.

So its nothing to do with being wealthy or even old. This is who she is.

It's actually everything to do with her being wealthy, protected, famous, and untouchable. If she weren't wealthy and protected from these "culture wars" she is complaining about, you wouldn't know her true opinions about any of this. She would be an ordinary woman, at risk of threats, doxxing, harm, and losing her job.

Which means we would have no idea if she actually believed what she was saying, or was only saying it to keep her job.

She's only able to say whatever she wants because her wealth and status puts her outside it all.

This is how we know exactly who she is.

The fact that she doesn't seem to think that women's rights matter at all when she doesn't have to say this is why I find her contemptible.

ed. grammar

If I were to be reincarnated (I don't believe in reincarnation) I would like to come back as Margaret Attwood. It must be wonderful to be able to sit in a space with the other bein-pensants (aka demi-gods) and see the struggles of mere human women to define themselves as somehow beneath you.

Actually, Margaret, please just fuck off to the far side of fuck and then fuck off some more.

I'd like to believe in reincarnation...
Anyway, I don't need to come back as Margaret Atwood, but I wouldn't mind coming back as someone as wealthy and privileged as she is. I'd even be prepared to move to Canada. I could really do some damage in Canada! 😄

You could even call me Margaret, if it's required.

That book made such an impression on me too

Oh please - she didn't start life as rich and well known. That is why I mentioned her novel the Edible Woman.

So just to make clear, she has always thought like this.

I suspect like Doris Lessing she sees herself as a social commentator and whilst recognising how women are oppressed she just files it along with the working class being oppressed.

I know. The way it was written. And very funny but underneath really sad.

As an observer she is very accurate. But then so was Freud, who was able to record what women told him, but his male culture then interpreted it in a way that fitted his male view of the world.

You're missing my point: the reason she can say what she actually feels about all of this is because she is wealthy and powerful now.

It doesn't matter where she started out . If she were still an ordinary woman, worried about her old age, and not protected by her wealth, I seriously doubt she'd even get involved in this.

But, then, she wouldn't be famous, so no one would even ask her what she thought!