Margaret Atwood defends women's right to work in strip clubs because she thinks it's 'empowering'

[stumbledin]

Speaking to Emma Barnett on BBC Radio 5 Live's Headliners, the 79-year-old said women who work in strip clubs can 'feel in control of the room' and earn more money than coffee shop staff.

Ms Atwood, whose new book The Testaments was published this week, told BBC Five Live that people protesting against the clubs should 'put their energy somewhere else that's really really important – like with environmental protests.'

The author said it was important to ensure women were not exploited, adding: 'Some of the most empowering women in the American West were the madams who were running the brothels because in that era they were saving up the money up for the girls, they were setting them up after they made that money they were taking care of them and it was much better than having a pimp.'

Ms Atwood also spoke out about different kinds of feminism, adding: 'I don't refuse the label of feminism, I say, 'which kind are you talking about?'

'I am the kind that endorses organisations like Equality Now. I am not the kind that says things like all men should be pushed off a cliff or all that all male babies should be killed at birth.'

(This is the Daily Mail so not sure if accurate transcript. Did anyone listen to the interview?)

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7457063/Margaret-Atwood-defends-womens-right-work-strip-clubs.html

barbara

No...though it looks like a doozie

Have you seen how many honourary degrees she has!!

Unless engaged in a particular kind of literary criticism, I prefer to know as little as possible about my favourite authors' private lives and opinions. Only learnt that lesson after ruining a few of them for myself.

However, Atwood's most recent musings don't change what I think of her because I've never felt like that in the first place. Because she's a bit of a literary snob. I rejected the notion that only Literature with a big L for literary value was worthy of attention. Which is why I did my master's on genre fiction. And Atwood, well, she did not like to be accused of writing genre fiction. Coz genre fiction is for intellectual plebs (or so it seems). There's an interesting aspect to the evaluation of genre fiction btw, a hierarchy of sorts, that very firmly puts women's fiction on the bottom once again.

I remember Surfacing as being far less clever than it thought it was. However, Atwood did do a really good book of short stories, nice and playful. Bluebeard's Egg, I think? She's perhaps good on noticing surface concepts, but perhaps lacks the depth to really cut to the heart of the things she's exploring.

Yes I think that is a good summary. I haven't read anything of hers for years. I sort of gave myself permission to avoid her because her books frustrated the hell out of me. And then every time I thought 'maybe I should give her another chance' I ended up regretting it because she just isn't as good as she or her press think she is. And since THT was filmed everyone seems to think she invented feminism. Which is rage inducing enough without her spouting this old bollocka.

yes rufus i still think about the bank account thing sometimes when I go to the cashpoint. And when women are banned from Twitter for voicing GC opinions. You realise these institutions and platforms aren't neutral or everlasting things. How fragile our freedoms are.

I'm a bit thrown by her recent comments but I enjoyed this interview with Atwood in the Times last weekend - Share token :

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/margaret-atwood-interview-the-handmaid-s-tale-author-talks-love-and-loss-ahead-of-new-book-the-testaments-bdl5k29fc?shareToken=3deaab9b41b254c9b98894519dfa50ac

I'm going to read The Handmaid's tale again before reading the Testaments

I read The Blind Assassin many years ago, and having forgotten the story, tried to reread it but wasn't pulled in. I haven't read tht but always meant to, yet resisted for some reason.
I too can't stand literary snobbism.

yes rufus i still think about the bank account thing sometimes when I go to the cashpoint. And when women are banned from Twitter for voicing GC opinions. You realise these institutions and platforms aren't neutral or everlasting things. How fragile our freedoms are.

Absolutely, and it also makes me think of the pictures of women in Tehran and Kabul when they were happy and carefree and unveiled. And then they weren't.

Unless engaged in a particular kind of literary criticism, I prefer to know as little as possible about my favourite authors' private lives and opinions

I meet authors regularly for work related reasons. Mostly their opinions about matters beyond their own work are no better informed than the average bloke down the pub.

I've not read the Handmaid's Tale. I think I'm with you ShesDressed on just got a bit tired by Atwood's glibness and the overall ... neatness of her books. Overall there was a feeling of being too smug, too intellectually lazy to really examine the issues and take the necessary risks to uncover anything fresh.

Ex-author here (shit fiction, definitely the very bottom of the literary pile), and can confirm I have scant knowledge over a very broad range of topics.

That's interesting Charlie. Was Atwood's work classified as science fiction then but she didn't subscribe to that? She did make the point in her interview that the things she wrote about were based on things which happen to women and girls in the world right now so I did like that about her interview. I agree that there seems to be snobbery about literature v genre fiction. Would romance be at the bottom of the heap for sneering? A bit like 'chick flicks'?

And yes I see what you mean about not wanting to know authors' opinions on other things, probably wise. A bit like the quote about not meeting your heroes.

At the risk of returning to the flagged topic: as one of the "99%... middle aged, middle management, and overweight," uncool gang, I always think perspective trumps everything. I look back on my rather wild youth with a bit of a horrified sigh...
I DID THAT???? Even though it seemed really fun and I thought I was happy at the time. With the wisdom of hindsight, I know now that I was fooling myself.

I believe I've read all her books. With varying degrees of satisfaction, to be honest. But I found them quite readable.

My main issue is that if stripping is empowering, why aren't strippers powerful?

A bit like 'chick flicks'?

Chick lit is the equivalent.

I have huge admiration for many such sneered at authors. Many are prolific story tellers. Nora Roberts (also writes as JD Robb) springs to mind.

This on Atwood, genre fiction and her responses to it: www.theguardian.com/books/2016/aug/10/speculative-or-science-fiction-as-margaret-atwood-shows-there-isnt-much-distinction

' the novel’s concession to pulp conventions undermines Atwood’s larger claim that the genre of speculative fiction is the antithesis of those cheesy, teenage male escapist fantasies about talking squids in outer space that are pulp novels'

Can’t stand the phrase chick lit

Ive a habit now of calling the male equivalent cock lit

Which can make random book conversations a bit difficult

There was a thing on Woman's Hour the other day about women in sci-fi in which the guests were very diplomatically avoiding voicing how pissed off they were with her 'speculative fiction not sci-fi' shtick.

I first read Margaret Atwood at university (back in 1984!) as part of my favourite module, 20th century Canadian Women Novelists, and I've read most of her output since. I enjoy her writing and would especially recommend Cat's Eye and Alias Grace, but I don't really think of her as a feminist writer - some of her female characters are not at all sisterly!

I'm not sure though that it's fair to ask an author's characters pass some sort of test before counting the author as feminist. I dabble a bit in writing myself, and characters, if they're to be successful, come in good, bad and indifferent varieties, with (one hopes) all sorts of nuances, shades of grey, internal tensions and conflicts. Insisting one's female characters display sisterly solidarity would end in writing polemic, and I find polemic is the death of good fiction.

(Or, as I once tried to explain to one of my readers, I'm not writing self-insert fiction here, my protagonists are not mini-me-s, and not all their beliefs are mine.)

Writing as a feminist isn't about imagining the world as a big sorority though is it? It's about accurately reflecting the power balance between men and women and the constraints of that.

I had to read Atwood for a Canadian lit course (also in the 1980's). But I also read Alice Munro (a much more compelling novelist, IMHO), Margaret Laurence, and Gabrielle Roy.

My personal favourite is Robertson Davies, although feminist themes are non existent in his works.

I agree Barbara, I don't think any kind of polemic makes for good fiction, I think it may be one reason Atwood resists attempts to pigeonhole her as a "feminist writer"

Yes but that's not the point of a novel is it?To portray characters you 100% like, or be sisterly ?
Not read a lot of Margaret Atwood but I remember reading the Robber Bride and thinking it was very good.

Someone mentioned Fay Weldon as not being a "good " feminist -well I think Fay Weldon is a fantastic feminist writer if only because she write about the lives of women as they really are. They are not always morally right or supportive of each other but her stories are really about women and you feel like you know the characters already. Asfiac any author who portrays women realistically is a feminist whether they say they are or not.

we saggy titted women are all too stupid to know how concepts such as money laundering work.

I may be a woman hurtling towards the "40-50" age bracket of ancient crone shame, but I am also a finance professional by day, and i'd highly recommend Courtney focuses their CPD this year on anti-money laundering and courtney's responsibilities - nay legal obligations - as a chartered accountant.