Of all people....Margaret Atwood ‘we’re all part of a flowing bellcurve’

[BubblegumFactory]

Can’t link to Twitter so I took a screenshot.
I’m kind of in shock.
Anyone else seen this?

@SerenityNowwwww

I’ve met men I’ve met women

That it all.

Same here.

Strange bellcurve. Does it go like this? 49.3% are men, 49.3% are women.

@Kantastic

Has anyone linked her that video (which I confess I could not watch all the way through) with the Canadian woman talking about her experience in prisons full of transwomen?

If she doesn't get it then, she is a lost cause.

Yes, if the person wrote the handmaid's tale is a handmaid then that is shocking.

I’m going to have to reread the Handmaid’s Tale but I remember a discussion about it at university where we talked about whether she was implying that the feminist movement that included Offred’s mother was indirectly responsible for the pushback from society resulting in the rise of Gilead. I think even then she said it wasn’t a feminist novel, it was once that about women.
It has been a while so I might be misquoting.

Imagine if you felt you were ‘somewhere on the bell curve’ then you got genetic testing and you were plain old xx or xy. How does ‘being on the bell curve’ express itself in your gender presentation anyway?

She is confused about sex and DSDs and bell curves.

DSDs are distinct conditions affecting development of reproductive organs. They can’t be easily represented on a bell curve, all merging neatly into each one another.

Like a lot of people who comment on this debate she seems to be confusing human value (which we all have regardless of sex or gender identity or political views or anything else) with the need for clear language and legislation to protect a group of people (in this case half the population) who share a particular characteristic.

If this characteristic weren’t obvious The Handmaid’s Tale wouldn’t make sense.

Have the TRAs directly attacked her for THT being "trans-exclusionary" yet?

Now she's Tweeting about this subject and appears to have sworn her oath of subservience it is only a matter of time before they start upbraiding her I reckon.

she see to read a thread I saw on another forum.

its paints the bigger picture beautifully and you can not read it without total shock at the TRAs have done to women and their rights.

I've been GC for the 5 years or so, I also already know how the TRA movement have manipulated politics and organisations. But reading it all set out in black and white still made me hold my breath and want to cry.

*she needs to see

The Handmaid's Tale 2020

Offred: 'I'm a man!'
Commander: 'Oh OK.... Let her go.'
The End.

I’m so gutted! I love her. She is conflating intersex people with trans. They aren’t the same thing at all.

How does ‘being on the bell curve’ express itself in your gender presentation anyway?

They modify their physical sex characteristics deliberately with surgery and/ or hormones deliberately?

Ugh 2 deliberatelys

I detected an anti-feminist streak in THT when the book described, disapprovingly, the regime's destruction of porn (the puritans in the book encouraged ritualistically burning piles of porn). It was as if she seemed to think that porn was 'liberating' and good for women, and she equated criticism of it as 'puritanism'. It stood out as 'off' for me when I read it, and I detected that MA does not have a good grasp of feminist theory and especially the role of porn as a form of violence against women

Oops, didn’t see this thread before I posted mine. Will ask for it to be deleted.

I think the THT is brilliant but yes as PP said I read it as quite anti feminist too in its explanations as to how Gilead came about
‘ look where your demands fir equality led you uppity women! Now you know what inequality is really like! Maybe if you get your freedom back you’ll be nicer’

The thing with DSDs us that although the group has been expanded to over 40 different medical conditions (inc things like PCOS), the actual of number babies born who it is impossible to distinguish their sex after testing is vanishingly rare - less than 10 births per year in the UK.

fieldofgreycorn Your genetic code already largely dictates what you look like though, so why would you change it? Which bit doesn’t ‘match’?

And who decides which bit of the bell curve relates to which bit of (entirely constructed) gender presentation? What is the default for those in the middle? The more you look the flimsier it gets.

whether she was implying that the feminist movement that included Offred’s mother was indirectly responsible for the pushback from society resulting in the rise of Gilead.

Yes, there's definitely a lot of 'see what you did with your demands' there - I remember thinking that too.

She replied to Jane Clare Jones with an arch musing on fish.

I think she's lost the plot.

Wasn’t it slugs? I think she has lost the plot or is having a massive piss take.

Barramundi

Oh yes. OJ is swooning over her.

And in there news... a theatre adaptation of Mallory Towers seems to have transed Bill...

It does disappoint me she replied to Talcum X.

That shows lack of judgement in a number of ways.

While ignoring JCJ's eloquent posts.

What if Atwood would have been an Aunt?!

@Kit19

I think the THT is brilliant but yes as PP said I read it as quite anti feminist too in its explanations as to how Gilead came about ‘ look where your demands fir equality led you uppity women! Now you know what inequality is really like! Maybe if you get your freedom back you’ll be nicer’

Yes I picked up on some of that.

I think Atwood believes the only type of patriarchal threat comes in the form of the religious right wing.

OJ called her Queen.

Urgh.