Handmaidens

[Terfulike]

I seem to be coming across these people more and more in the last week or so. Admittedly the video I describe below is 8 months old.

However, there are definitely more numerous postings/videos from young females (of the traditional type) who are trying to educate us GC Radfems about being too exclusionary, if you catch my drift, as such types as us may be physically threatening... no examples given.

My reason for posting is that one just got my goat quite big time (clip clip clopping across the bridge of reason).

This young person of the type traditionally (although admittedly not currently) referred to as female, or even young woman, (though obviously not these days - I acknowledge that these are considered by most Britons to be archaic terms - please forgive my usage mn) was describing people of the type who post on this particular site who are a bit exclusionary wink wink catch my drift with great disdain.

Anyway said person said that the word "lesbian" is basically an "uncomfortable" word with "*exclusionary connotations" and is "just wierd". Hmmmmm what did someone say about erasure?

Moreover GC Radfems are said by said vlogerette to be in positions of great power and influence these days ready to turn the heads of gullible young feminists in completely inappropriate directions.

Further, said person claims any discussions of paralegal philandering (quick crossword clue) are utterly ridiculous!

This highly commended video ends with scoffing at ideas of the f body being at all relevant to feminism.

Apologies if this has been discused before.

I do agree with you Milly, I don't really like using it for some of those reasons, even if I do agree that it can sometimes be a useful term. It polarises discourse and seems unlikely to help us in consciousness raising either with the "handmaids" themselves or the lurkers.

I wouldn't want to stop others using it if they find it helpful though. Just not for me.

It depends, I suppose, on what you're trying to do (rhetorically speaking).

If you want to convince and sway opinion, then it's a poor choice. "Play the ball and not the woman" is always a far more effective strategy. Explain what is wrong with the view expressed, and why it is offensive and demeaning to women. If you do this well enough, your audience will be supplying their own epithets for your opponents by the time you've finished.

If, on the other hand, you want to express outrage and fury and write a polemic to gee up your own followers, it may be the right word to choose.

So pick your words according to what you want to achieve. But note that rage and the expression of rage is not always bad. And also that women are much more often told to swallow their rage than men are. They are held to much higher standards when it comes to pejorative language. Gordon Brown was largely untouched by his "bigot" outburst. Hillary Clinton's attempt on the presidency failed in no small measure due to her snide "basket of deplorables" comment.

Ironically, it’s not a word I use. But I object very strongly to being told that I have to agree with everything other women say and do. There are plenty of women who do well out of the patriarchy. Many of them don’t realize it. But there are those who do, and use their position to make life worse for other women. And those are the ones, the Ann Coulters, the Katie Hopkins, the Melanie Phillips who need calling out.

Totally agree with Fermats. I rarely use the term, for me it does not arise from Atwood's coinage but from centuries old connotations of women in willing servitude, aware or not, and it is highly applicable in certain circumstances.

It's not very 'nice' and if your focus is on people thinking what a jolly good egg you are all round, then using will probably mark you as one of the 'not very nice' women. But we all take risks with our reputation, be they because we are fighting for women's right or because we want to be seen as one of the nicer women.

According to OED, archaic handmaiden:
"A female servant.
.... A subservient partner or element."
Says it all really.

Sad that yet again we have got diverted into linguistic angels on a pinhead, rather than the massive lesbophobia and getting females to do the dirty work, stand at the front at demos (although they don't seem to be quite up to thumping older women, odd that...........).

And the lesbophobia and focusing on GC feminists -- because they are all female people with a long history of saying NO to males and knowing what that gets you....................

I assume that the lurkers can see the pattern in how those derails happen and which commenters cause them.

Interestingly (for me!), the first time I saw someone call someone else a handmaiden on this board I reported it as I genuinely thought it offensive (despite being strongly GC). It wasn't an insult I'd heard used before and didn't realise it was relatively commonly used on this board (and possibly generally in feminist debate?).

I still wouldn't use it because I think it's dismissive and patronising and as PP have said, it's incorrect, given handmaidens in the Bible were slaves and in The Handmaid's Tale they were not much more than slaves. I think Aunt is more accurate or traitor, Quisling etc. But actually I don't think it's necessary to use such vicious terms - I'd be inclined to use "woke" or "Pomo addled" as a PP suggested. I agree there's an element of "woman, be nice" to my thinking but then why not want to be nice. Frankly I'd rather encourage everyone (men and women) to be nice than encourage women to reject their socialised niceness and sink down to the men's level. But I guess that's a whole other debate.

In other news, I womansplained Male privilege to my boss in my performance review today.

Hmm. There’s also ‘quisling’ and ‘turncoat’, to describe these behaviours I guess, but I don’t know if those two may be too historical and not as easily understood as ‘handmaiden’.

I like the biblical-era associations of ‘handmaiden’. It shows the time-worn patriarchal values that underpin the behaviour. also makes an Atwood-esque reference that’s quite current.

I very much enjoyed:

Oh, now you're insisting that words have proper meanings, and that we stick to tried and tested definitions

The discussion in general reminded me of the "catchers" who worked for the Gestapo:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stella_K%C3%BCbler

I've wandered off point a bit here but I guess I think of them as our prodigal daughters, they have taken every advantage we have made for them and squandered it but when they have learnt what the world is really like and come back to us starving and broken we will welcome them with open arms.

My view also.

It's suddenly struck me. Why are people saying that "handmaiden" is vicious and vitriolic? I can see why people object, but on a website where "cunt" is regularly used and defended (not by me, incidentally) it does seem strange to be so outraged by "handmaiden". Particularly if you agree that the behaviours that it describes exist.....

I don't think it's vicious really. Having reflected a bit this morning I think my problem with it is that the current usage is that it jars a bit with my concept of a handmaid. I think my definition of the word means "women who collides with the patriarchy by not actively resisting"

So the women who bound their daughters feet in China, or who consent to marrying off their 12 year old daughters, or a wife who bullies her husbands concubines. All reprehensible behaviours but carried out by women who are making decisions between two really shitty patriarchy defined choices and choose the path of least resistance, the society sanctioned option or the thing that will make their lives a little bit easier. It's a bit like how many of my friends have changed their names when married without even reflecting on it or thinking about it.

It's different in my head from women who actively promote the patriarchy (aunts) and I feel a lot of empathy for the handmaids. They need support and consciousness raising.

In contrast I do feel angry with the blue haired girls and I do think they deserve some scorn sometimes. I don't think they fit with my concept of handmaids though in some ways it's worse than that. They are not muddling through without thinking. They are actively trying to dismantle the patriarchy but they can't see how they are being duped and are really smug and irritating about how they are right and we are wrong. It's intensely irritating.

Words change and evolve though so there is no reason why my definition is right and other uses wrong. In the end language policing gets us nowhere.

I've also been thinking more about rhetoric. It's a truism in politics that you don't win votes with rational arguments. Politics is primarily about emotions. However, the manipulation has to be subtle. So you "play the ball, not the woman", but throw in a few emotionally loaded phrases too to make sure your argument grabs attention ("YY, I feel like that too"), then resonates ("these are my people"), then sticks and has lasting effects ("I now feel I'm invested in the outcome of this argument, it's not just some sort of clever game, it matters to my life.")

Now it strikes me that some of these subtle emotional manipulations are in play on this thread (undoubtedly on both sides, but I'll concentrate on the opposing side to mine, because I probably spot them more clearly, just in virtue of where I'm coming from).

The parallel word to "handmaiden" might well be "harridan", and very sensibly, no-one who objects to handmaiden has used it.

What they have done, however, is said that people who use the word "handmaiden" are using misogynistic language (thus performing a sleight of hand which distracts from the fact that the term is used to describe women who are displaying much higher degrees of internalised misogyny, as, for instance, when they try to guilt trip lesbians into sleeping with people with pensises). They've appealed to niceness (another gendered aspect of discourse) and held women to higher standards than men (again, gendered) and appealed to fear of being perceived to be angry (again, gendered: men are allowed to express righteous anger, women are not). All of these are emotional manipulation techniquest - not as in-your-face as "you're harridans and harpies", but ultimately conveying the same message.

It's worth remembering that it is the pomo addled identity politics behind much of the "fake news" Republicans refer to (which we are also objecting to when it comes to crime) that led to the election of Trump.

Man and women that pump out shit tons of this identity psychobabble have bestowed the Trump presidency on us, as the USA attempts to reverse this juggernaut.

How about that for a spectacular own goal.

I assume that the lurkers can see the pattern in how those derails happen and which commenters cause them
Absolutely we can AAK

In my view, this discussion in general misses the main point. No matter what word is chosen to pithily indicate "women who collude with the patriarchy by undermining fellow women" it will be declared "problematic" as being a "term which is clearly misogynous because it is only applied to women".

In other words, why change the term?* The next one will get the same complaints.

• the one good reason would be if it is off-putting to undecideds who choose to follow the discussion

Hmm. Lots of food for thought here. It's fascinating (to me anyway) that I have had my arse handed to me comprehensively for defending the use of "handmaiden" and for objecting to the use of "cunt". So I obviously have chips on both shoulders.........

Can someone enlighten me about Pomo please 😀

Man and women that pump out shit tons of this identity psychobabble have bestowed the Trump presidency on us, as the USA attempts to reverse this juggernaut.

Yes but it gives them the righteous indignation fix that was rather thin on the ground over 8 years of Obama. The two sides feed on each other leaving many of us stuck in the middle as all kinds of batshit stuff becomes normalised.

Your analysis is sadly spot on Picasso and I wouldn't be surprised if the same thing happens in Canada at the next election, which will come as a massive surprise to the left in Canada who idolise Trudeau to the extent that they are entirely blind to his shortcomings. And this will be a tragedy for Canada, because bad as the last conservative administration was (Harper - google his attacks on science for instance), everything I read leads me to think the rising right wing in Canada are so far off the scale they make Harper look like a teddy bear, and the damage they could do to Canada's rights for indigenous peoples and for the environment is huge.

If you consistently ignore the majority of everyday people's concerns with your po-mo world view, and dismiss them as stupid and bigoted, you set the scene for a backlash which engulfs both you and them in a whirlwind of destruction which neither of you actually intended.

Post modernism. Everything is subjective, nothing is real, truth is what anyone says it is. Naval gazing existentialism.

Po-mo - post-modernism.

The main part of it is a view that there are no absolute truths, only socially constructed "truths" relative to the society holding them.

Partly it comes out of old-fashioned Enlightment scepticism (there's no independent access to the world of facts, unmediated by our preconceptions about that world, so we as humans can't get at objective truth), and partly it comes out of a political analysis of how those with power manipulate what is allowed to count as facts to suit their own ends.

The kind of "tweet length slogan" I used to give to students when I tried to explain this was "Bacon (16th century philosopher) said posssessing scientific knowledge gave you political power; Foucault (20th century philosopher) says possessing political power enables you to control what counts as scientific knowledge."

Pomo? Argh- it looks like porno-addled, which has different connotations, obviously.

Funnily enough, in my experience, people who are pomo-addled are often porno-addled. (Thinks back with shudder to male colleague who frequently used to offer me, unsolicited, the loan of books of supposed feminists defending porn. Funnily enough, my research specialism had nothing to do with porn, or ethics.)