Racism rather the sexism in The Handmaid's Tale

[RedDeerRunning]

Long time lurker on these boards and NC for this post.

Margaret Atwood is trending on twitter because of her nonsensical conflation of sex and gender and her invocation of fish science to prove humans can change sex.

I am pretty surprised at the outrage tbh. From the feminist response on Twitter, it would appear that few have actually read The Handmaid’s Tale. Whilst the recent dramatisation has entered into the public consciousness, and ensure ‘Gilead’,’ Handmaid’, ‘Aunt Lydia’ have all become common terms, the original book is underpinned by unconscious racism.

At the heart of the book is the issue that falling fertility rates affect white women only. Black and Native women are not affected by this fictional disease and the policing of white women’s fertility is in order to ensure the continuation of the white race. Atwood makes no comment on this, nor offers any scientific/ medical theory as to why only white women are affected. This would suggest to me a grotesque dehumanisation of Black women as ‘other’.

In fact, the story is so inherently racist that the producers of the TV adaptation had to enage in ‘colourblind casting’ to prevent the show being blindsided by the racist ideology.

It would seem that Atwood is no friend of women, and is particularly dismissive of the lived experiences of Black and Indigenous women. The very notion of a disease that only affects white women, whilst scientifically nonsensical, is also racist AF.

I wouldn’t say it’s unconscious racism so much as overt racism on the part of the FICTIONAL right wing society that Atwood created.

Authors making their fictional characters/societies racist doesn’t mean the author is racist, especially in a book like The Handmaid’s Tale where Atwood is clearly portraying Gilead as an awful, dehumanising society and not the blueprint for a future utopia.

It’s quite obvious why the TV adaptation ignored the race aspect if you consider the visual impact of an all white cast where black people’s lives and suffering are happening off stage unseen. It would appear very racist.

It's been a few years since I read it and I haven't seen the TV series, but isn't there a bit where a tour bus of Asian tourists come to stare and take pictures of the handmaid's? I enjoyed the book and found it very powerful, but I have to say that I didn't 100% understand the context of the world Gilead was situated in. I had the impression that it was a dystopia that existed in a bubble while the rest of the world was still normal, but I think I'll need to read it again to get a better picture of it. I was so overwhelmed by the descriptions in the pregnancy and childbirth scenes that I think I missed lots of the subtler points.

Anyway, back on topic it's very very clearly not an endorsement of racism. I disagree 100% with atwood on the gender issue and also on some other issues, but she is an extremely important voice in feminist literature and I see no evidence whatsoever that she's a racist. As a pp said I also hate this trend of trying to dig up evidence of racism to smear ideological oponants. No one should be weaponising racial tensions to further their own agendas.

Gilead was most of the United States, but I seem to remember some states retained their independence. Atwood wrote a tepid follow-up called The Testaments that shows more of the outside world.

I’ve read the book. The racism Of the new society is overt. Non-whites are not considered worthy of the new society and are simply removed. No, the book doesn’t rehash that over and over, but it in no way condones it.

There are many ways the book doesn’t state it’s points explicitly, that doesn’t mean they aren’t there.

They had to ignore the removal of non-whites from society in the show because otherwise they would have had an all-white cast or at least, a cast where non-whites were allowed to play victims. That isn’t culturally acceptable at this point, even if it would have made a stark statement about the flaws in religious extremist movements.

It's a while since I read it too.
As pp says the Children of Ham were 'resettled' in the revolution.

From then on in a closed narrow world for the narrator.
She doesnt know what's going on beyond her closed household, and the tiny conscribed and silent circles she moves in.
That's a major theme.

Every story leaves out multitudes- specially this one has to to show the isolation- I dont think that is evidence of racism.

Where do you see it beyond that?

Were black and Asian people not included in the different roles (handmaids, Martha's, commanders etc)? I have read the handmaids tale but quite a few years ago and I can't remember skin colour being mentioned - though if it wasn't clearly spelled out I would not have got it tbf.

@Blackcurrant66

It’s quite obvious why the TV adaptation ignored the race aspect if you consider the visual impact of an all white cast where black people’s lives and suffering are happening off stage unseen. It would appear very racist.

I agree, but my point is that MA didn't have such qualms about writing an entirely white cast. I reread the book after watching the first series of the TV adaptation and having read some criticisms of the colourblind casting. Through this prism, I felt very uncomfortable when acknowledging her lack of curiosity about the white supremacy aspect of Gilead, and the implication that experience of white women was the universal female experience, whilst Black women were ignored and excluded from the narrative.

I have read lots of Atwood and like some of her books. IME this book does not stand up to scrutiny through the lens of BLM, and MA herself is certainly failing to stand up for women atm.

I think it's ok for a writer to take one theme and run with it.
The narrator was speaking about her situation.
I think that's ok.

Atwood clearly doesnt condone racism, or the environmental damage that led to this. Just that they are taking place off the page.

Its Offreds story.

@Blackcurrant66

It’s quite obvious why the TV adaptation ignored the race aspect if you consider the visual impact of an all white cast where black people’s lives and suffering are happening off stage unseen. It would appear very racist.

They probably also has a very business-like reason. If they didn't include non-white actors they'd have been accused of lacking diversity in the cast.

I don’t think the all white cast in the book means the book is racist. The narrator lives in a narrow, racially segregated world. We can hold on mind the circumstances and Atwood maybe is correct in not speaking for black women.

Race is a problem for many literary adaptations as books by white authors rarely feature non white characters and so we often see a few black people hanging around in the background or cast in minor roles where their ethnicity never needs to be addressed.

I agree, but my point is that MA didn't have such qualms about writing an entirely white cast. I reread the book after watching the first series of the TV adaptation and having read some criticisms of the colourblind casting. Through this prism, I felt very uncomfortable when acknowledging her lack of curiosity about the white supremacy aspect of Gilead, and the implication that experience of white women was the universal female experience, whilst Black women were ignored and excluded from the narrative.

I think you are talking about some book that MA hasn't written.

There is nothing inherently wrong with a book where all or most characters are of one ethnicity.

IME this book does not stand up to scrutiny through the lens of BLM
I find that such a sad and terrifying statement. Are BLM starting a list of prohibited books on the lines of the Vatican's Index of forbidden books?

I always think that book characters could be any colour except when something is described that makes their skin colour obvious. But I don't have an imagination (I mean I don't imagine things in my head) so maybe that's why I don't see it. In the handmaids tale I really don't remember that everyone was white but it seems like it was mentioned and I've missed or forgotten it.

Through this prism, I felt very uncomfortable when acknowledging her lack of curiosity about the white supremacy aspect of Gilead, and the implication that experience of white women was the universal female experience, whilst Black women were ignored and excluded from the narrative.

She has never claimed that the Handmaid's Tale is the definitive book on women in a dystopian future.

I guess most black authors imagine most of their characters as black when they write them, and most Asian writers probably imagine most of their characters as Asian?

You know what gets me? The millions of daft women in the world who behave as if this fictitious story is actually real. It is FICTION. You might as well watch Twilight.

But vampires arent real- but misogyny really is a monster which needs to clubbed down continuously.

@Bluebooby

I guess most black authors imagine most of their characters as black when they write them, and most Asian writers probably imagine most of their characters as Asian?

Yeah. If you look at art from different cultures, people tend to make people who look like themselves.

In older Chrsitian art, for example, before people became less parochial and historically aware, you tended to see Jesus depicted as black in African art, Asian in Asian art, and European in European art.

Margaret Atwood wrote a book in which Black people are not seen because they’d been victims of a nameless atrocity by an unspeakable regime. No Black people were deprived of a job by that artistic choice.

Once you decide to dramatise the novel in a huge big budget TV series then sticking to that aspect of the plot means saying “no BAME actors need apply”, so it becomes a choice which financially disadvantages actual human POC in a tangible way. If Atwood had insisted as the creator that they stuck to an all white cast to preserve a fairly minor aspect of her novel at the expense of giving non-white actors a fair share of the jobs then I’d have been prepared to have a go at her, but she did no such thing.

I don’t think black authors often, if ever, create characters where race is not explicit. Black and ethnic minority writers are well aware that the race of a person is fundamental to their experiences and the way other people respond to them. If white writers do this then it probably shows their naivety.

I don't remember anything about only white women being effected by the infertility plague

I think in the (fictional) historical note at the end it's stated that more modern science suggests the falling fertility rates were in the men all along.
So no women - of any colour - were actually affected. But the men decided who to ship off and who to keep enslaved based on their own bad science and prejudices.
The children of Ham thing is just another layer of exposing these men's fear and inadequacy - blaming everyone but themselves, getting rid of anyone not like them, scrabbling to stay at the top no matter what the cost. It isn't Offred's overriding concern, she has pretty serious shit to deal with of her own - the fact that her mother has been sent to work in the radioactive zone only gets a glancing mention, but it is another layer the author adds which the reader can pick up on to flesh out the hypocrisy and paranoia of Gilead. More is going on than what we see - but this is Offred's story (literally the title of the book) so we only get her narrow POV in any detail.

IME this book does not stand up to scrutiny through the lens of BLM

That's probably the stupidest criteria I've ever seen applied to a novel that's not about race.

@7Days

But vampires arent real- but misogyny really is a monster which needs to clubbed down continuously.

So we established that vampires aren’t real. And Gilead is?

Atwood put nothing into the book that hasn't happened somewhere iirc.

So it's a kind of plaiting of threads that have already existed and extrapolating from that. She calls herself a speculative fiction writer iirc.

I dont really think we need to get bogged down with vampires!