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.

Why should she have 'curiosity' about the white supremacy of Gilead? She wasn't writing a text book or factual historical thesis on the narrative. BAME women were 'excluded from the narrative' because they were excluded from Gilead. If they didn't exist in Offred's narrow world why would they be written about?

It would be clunky and a disservice to write something like 'I wonder where all the black people went?' thought Offred. 'I haven't seen Mrs since I became a handmaid'.

A theocracy that subjugates women, making them the property of men, forcing them to cover their bodies and prevents them from leaving the house without the permission of the man they belong to?

No, doesn't sound at all likely.

In the final chapter of the book (the Historical Notes) Atwood suggests that Native Americans are leading academic institutions and one of the other speakers is from India. She is imagining in the future a more sophisticated, diverse community than Gilead. But I don't think that's the main point of the novel.

It's a while since I've read it and I haven't bothered with the TV dramatisation, but to me the implication was that anyone non-white had been expelled from Gilead.

It's a misogynist and racist dystopia. If you look at it through the lens of BLM, surely that's the same as the feminist one: is this genuinely a potential future America could face? How do we solve the social issues that could lead to this?

Nah, I'm as disappointed as anyone to see the gender neutral bollocks she put on twitter, but the stuff she put in the HT happened in all sorts of communities and countries. The horrifying thing about them is that they were real. POC were shipped off and othered - that's part of the story.

Besides, she's Canadian. The early European settlers did unspeakable things to the indigenous people, I'm fairly confident she's aware of that and that is why POC are conspicuous by their absence - it's a comment on racism.

Just because she doesn’t tow the GC feminist line, don’t now accuse her of racism or erase her.
I personally do not see the racist line in HT. if anything it is a cautionary tale about racism as well as the patriarchal agenda.

What is the benefit of looking at a 1980s work of speculative fiction by a Canadian author through the lens of a 21st-century primarily-US-based political movement, exactly?

"Atwood makes no comment on this" - you can't even distinguish between the narrator of a novel and its author. Your politics may be well-intentioned, but your literary analysis falls down at this basic hurdle.