The Sunday Times - StrawMaid's Tale

[Melroses]

www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/culture/margaret-atwood-the-handmaids-tale-author-on-her-new-poems-qqpc9xmf5?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1604837071

twitter.com/thesundaytimes/status/1325411735226945541
"There’s a difference between belief and fact...You can believe all you like that trans people aren’t people, but it happens not to be a fact. It's not true that there are only two boxes."
@MargaretAtwood speaks to @ST_Culture

Has anyone a spare share token? I have run out of my week's free articles already.

@Delphinium20

Agreements on certain factual matters is what you'd expect, unless you are totally ideologically blinkered. Yes. I agree with that and I appreciate *@ErrolTheDragon*'s Venn Diagram.

The deals that worry me is when we let some org like Concerned Women for a Conservative America claim the message (which they recently did w/ women's sports) because then this is framed as only a very conservative women's issue, which it is not. The first order of business, IMO, is to convince liberal women that sex-based rights for women and girls should be US law (very few are). You will not convince left-leaning legislators that conservatives have a trustworthy plan for women.

Sorry, we "let" Conservative Woman make a statement? We are the public. We don't "let" organisations do things, the people leading them do.

There is a concentrated Conservative effort right now to frame radical Wokeness as being the same as mainstream, totally bog-standard center-leftness, no doubt. I spent an evening earlier this week reading through my (entirely sane, moral) family members' right wing social media and reading their friends' utter bullshit hysteria over Biden ushering in some sort of QAnon Hieronymus Bosh-type future, and it's pretty clear that they're so shit scared of even moderate leftness that the tactic is working for a portion of Republican voters. (Hell, look at them now - happy to trash their own electoral process and hint at civil war just to avoid Biden for a wee bit longer.)

So trying to seize a "moderate" voice on a social issue with a demographic that traditionally doesn't like them (women) is not unexpected. They are looking for credibility with us, and to try to undermine even moderate Dems and Labour as that's where a chunk of our votes often go. The task for us, as women, is to keep pushing into what they DO actually believe about gender and sex, not just blindly accept their stand against trans overreach.

I do not think American conservatism is centred around women's liberation, put it that way. So they recognise we are oppressed for our sex - fine. But how many of them regard that as just part of God's plan for us?

My 25 year old is currently reading the Handmaid's Tale, for the first time.
I showed him this and he just couldn't get over the irony of Margaret Atwood being a TRA handmaiden.

I do not think American conservatism is centred around women's liberation, put it that way. So they recognise we are oppressed for our sex - fine. But how many of them regard that as just part of God's plan for us?

And yet transgenderism is offering the same with the 'twist' that men can self id 'into' our oppression and then speak for us and destroy those rights that do exist.

Bloody hell this is so disappointing.

I want to put it down to age but in retrospect I think her work has always been on the thin side. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan but The Handmaid's Tale isn't even her best work.

Cats Eye, The Edible Woman and Surfacing are far more indicative of her wishywashiness on feminism.

I showed him this and he just couldn't get over the irony of Margaret Atwood being a TRA handmaiden

I'm not sure that it is ironic. MA was always against embodied interpretations of womanhood, which she saw as conservative and essentialising. So were a lot of other feminists at the time. THT explores what she saw as the logical consequence of this when combined with Christian fundamentalism and new-right thinking.

I want to put it down to age but in retrospect I think her work has always been on the thin side. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan but The Handmaid's Tale isn't even her best work

I can't stand any of it. I always get the impression she hates her female characters for some foible or weakness and enjoys watching them suffer. I don't think she identified with Offred at all. To me the novel is written from the perspective of a male-gaze - I wonder how many men are not shocked by it, but instead quite like the idea of the set-up?

I've mentioned Marge Piercy before. I still think that 'Woman on the Edge of Time' is one of the best feminist novels out there. It is brutal, hard and challenging, but also demonstrates a real feeling and rapport with women.

Piercy also makes the case for gender-neutrality and the use of neutral pronouns and I suspect that some here will not like it - but it raises some really salient issues for women, women's solidarity, activism and so-on and men won't jerk off to it.

Margaret Atwood will be a guest editor of the Today programme on Radio 4 over the Christmas period. Her theme will be "change".

I can't stand any of it. I always get the impression she hates her female characters for some foible or weakness and enjoys watching them suffer

I completely agree.

I don't like Atwood; the blurbs on the back of her books always sound better than the books actually are.
Whilst I would never read or not read a writer because she is or isn't a feminist I have always been a bit sceptical about Atwood's feminist credentials.
The Handmaid's Tale is such a misogynistic, miserable concept. I am sceptical about her claim that everything in it has happened somewhere. It strikes me that to write it requires a degree of not really liking women that much to inflict such misery on her characters.
I wonder if her reputation as a feminist is built on little more than her being a succesful woman; being a woman who doesn't seem bothered about conforming to feminine beauty standards; and being a woman who writes books about awful things happening to women. She is far more feted than Edna O'Brien, who, for me writes far more sympathetically about women. O'Brien however is a very beautiful woman who has always conformed to standards of beauty and seems to enjoy doing so.
Atwood recently was wittering on about stripping being "empowering". I don't need to say more about that.

I would like to echo those words about Edna O'Brien. And yeah, I'm going right off MA these days.

I wonder if her reputation as a feminist is built on little more than her being a successful woman; being a woman who doesn't seem bothered about conforming to feminine beauty standards, and being a woman who writes books about awful things happening to women

I think this is chicken and egg. When THT was released there was no internet and reception was largely in B&W printed newspapers and in printed journals. No glossies. I had no real idea what MA looked like. The book 'took off' and it made MA what she is (I am pretty sure that until then she was only known in Canadian circles). Thus, her success is built on that book.

I doubt she is a male mastuabatory fantasy either, which is usually crucial to popular success for women.

Having said that I'm a fat, hairy, scruffy-haired middle-aged feminist who hasn't shaved for 30 years, dyes her hair outrageous colours and dresses for comfort not style (and spends her spare cash on good whisky) - so what would I know.

I have no idea what Marge Piercy looks like BTW.

I think being the Grand Doyenne of Letters has gone to her head a bit.
She is constantly courting publicity and acclaim.
She doesn't need to, she is not trying to establish a career, she just enjoys the adulation I think and is terrified of losing it.

(Which is understandable - I'm a sucker for flattery myself, but my flatterers have to work rather harder than hers, poor dears)

Having just looked her up on an image search I'm also not sure that she eschews 'feminine beauty standards'.

Atwood recently was wittering on about stripping being "empowering". I don't need to say more about that.

Is that from personal experience? If not... yeah, you're right, don't really need to say more.

@Aesopfable

I do not think American conservatism is centred around women's liberation, put it that way. So they recognise we are oppressed for our sex - fine. But how many of them regard that as just part of God's plan for us?

And yet transgenderism is offering the same with the 'twist' that men can self id 'into' our oppression and then speak for us and destroy those rights that do exist.

Precisely. Same shit, different packaging.

I wonder on what basis Margaret Attwood chose which characters in her books were handmaids and which were generals? Do you think that it was on Gender or Sex?

I also saw her tweets on slugs, she is definitely the one doing the dehumanising. How disappointing.

I've never understood why it THT was taken as a feminist book. I read it when it was published and just thought it was a horrible fantasy meant to scare people for pleasure in the way Stephen King novels do. I thought it was a bit too silly in places, especially the bit with the handmaids being impregnated with the wife. There's worse shit in real life going on, I can't get worked up about fictional characters and couldn't when I read it years ago. I don't get worked up about vampires and zombies either. And the rest of her books have been limp. She gets far too much feminist thought for a mediocre novelist who wrote a b movie type schlock buster 30 odd years ago.

I love Atwood's novels, particularly The Blind Assassin, and I disagree that she hasn't been a force for women and literature.

However, I do think she's weighing in while on the edge of understanding this issue and likely was spoon fed crap from her publisher. Which is sad because she sounds ridiculous.

@ErrolTheDragon

Atwood recently was wittering on about stripping being "empowering". I don't need to say more about that.

Is that from personal experience? If not... yeah, you're right, don't really need to say more.

Mine or hers? I'm sure Atwood's actual experience of stripping is the same as mine- non-existent.

I meant that I assumed I need hardly explain on here what an idiotic proposition it is.

Those who know more about Canadian academia than I do, is this because she's Canadian and their institutions went full woo woo a long time ago? Is it likely that her circles are entirely populated by woo woo proponents? Is there an element of that with the Fawcett Soc and WEP possibly! Peer pressure of sorts, but more in the sense that all right thinking people she knows might be absolutely convinced of this stuff and it's easier to buy into it as a result and after a while convince yourself it's true. Sorry, not explaining myself very well.

I doubt she is a male mastuabatory fantasy either, which is usually crucial to popular success for women

What tosh. Why do "feminists" need to put down women in this way?

I hate making up this list as it's commenting on their appearance but off the top of my head without Googling, P.D James, Hilary Mantel, Val McDermid, Jeanette Winterston Sarah Waters , Joanna Trollope, Joanne Harris, Ruth Rendell even J.K Rowling-

implies that gender critical feminism is saying trans people aren't "human"

I think what is meant here is that they're not saying trans people aren't human, it's COMPLETELY missing the point to say of course they're human!
Well, yes, of course they are, has anyone ever said otherwise?!
It happens on here - kind of like a dehumanisation, like trans people are big bad bogey people out to get you.
(NOT by everyone before anyone starts)
To try and argue "yes, we know trans people are human, what are you talking about?" is either deliberately missing the point or flat out refusing to see it.

Honestly Quaagers, I don't take a lot of notice of your posts because of their uselessness. You have confirmed that is the right approach.

@HecatesCats

Those who know more about Canadian academia than I do, is this because she's Canadian and their institutions went full woo woo a long time ago? Is it likely that her circles are entirely populated by woo woo proponents? Is there an element of that with the Fawcett Soc and WEP possibly! Peer pressure of sorts, but more in the sense that all right thinking people she knows might be absolutely convinced of this stuff and it's easier to buy into it as a result and after a while convince yourself it's true. Sorry, not explaining myself very well.

That's my feeling.

It's hard to over-emphasis the extent to which mainstream, centrist, liberal Canadians, have never been exposed to any depth on this issue.

It rarely appears in the media, certainly not on the Cbc or ctv, the largest broadcasters. Our media is quite small compared to yours - there are only two national newspapers. People do not know who Meghan Murphy is (and FC is light on Canadian material, anyway.) Probably one of the few places they have seen it might be Jordan Peterson making the presentation to Parliament, and they think he is a crazy fascist - they'll not have listened to what he said.

Many Canadians are still assuming most trans people have sex change operations, are seriously affected by dysphoria, and that the science and doctors are quite unifies in their views about gender dysphoria. Also, they tend to think there is objective medical evidence that trans people are more lie the other sex and this affects them in some fundamental way.

I doubt Atwood has ever had a conversation with anyone who really thought differently about it.

Atwood is:

1. An academic, living in a cosy ivory tower of academia where people hang on her every word
2. Canadian, where liberalism is celebrated and people like Atwood pretend they've never heard of yaniv and his persecution of poor Asian women
3. Wealthy and white. Self ID will never affect her. She can afford to give away women's rights for men's plaudits because she will never be adversely affected by her decision.

I think this interview is very revealing: www.independent.ie/woman/celeb-news/brittle-but-brilliant-26413526.html

I don't think it shows her to be eccentric but sharp, I think she comes across as spiteful and sneering.

Probably one of the few places they have seen it might be Jordan Peterson making the presentation to Parliament, and they think he is a crazy fascist - they'll not have listened to what he said

If they saw that they will probably have seen Theryn Meyer , who is trans but also opposed C-16. Meyer is right wing so her right wing views will have cancelled out the fact she is trans so she won't have been listened to either.