Brilliant Margaret Atwood memoir review

[hholiday]

By Kathleen Stock https://archive.is/v2z51 and https://unherd.com/2025/11/what-margaret-atwood-got-wrong/

Just wonderful, humane writing that goes closer than anything else I have read to exploring the blind spots in Atwood’s views on gender, as well as expressing delight in her fiction writing. I particularly love these killer closing lines:

But honestly, the idea that, in the near future, Western governments will need to use direct force to make women do market-friendly things against their own interests is now surely, definitively preposterous. The case of genderism — and surrogacy, and “sex work”, for that matter — shows that authorities only need to persuade enough women that certain activities are kind, or glamorous, or nobly self-improving; at which point, tender-hearted armies will rise up to ruthlessly punish dissenters themselves.

"We don't distinguish sex, even in social situations, by how suggestible someone is, how 'kind' they feel they have to be, or in fact any personality traits."

Presentation is downstream from personality inclinations so we do in a sense rely on personality traits.

'personality trait inclinations'?

Like Myers-Briggs you mean?

At least that gives us 16 boxes.

on her facebook page Atwood posted that she was in Chicago. She says and I quote “I don’t have a pic of me in the Harry Potter store however”
Whatever could she mean.
The woman who wrote the Handmaids Tale. Unbelievable.

You might be better looking at horoscopes, lots of variables there.

It is.

No, which is why creepy men in dresses want to get into women’s loos, prisons, fitting rooms and changing rooms.

Walking around in a frock in public just isn’t enough…

Stable characteristics that describe a person's patterns of thought, feeling, and behaviour aren't remotely controversial in psychology. That you equate psychology with horoscopes only betrays scientific illiteracy.

Ask your AI to stop emphasising key phrases. It's a dead giveaway.

Safer in the short term?

What about long term? The restriction it places on women post the prostitution? Absolute horseshit.

By this el bizarro logic we all need to pathologically obsess over Fred & Rose West being our neighbours…..🤪

This is a couple of years old but address most of the safety lies about prostitution https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/nov/21/selling-sex-is-highly-dangerous-treating-it-like-a-regular-job-only-makes-it-worse

Lol, If only I could write like AI….😂

What's with the AI obsession with GC's I wonder? Another avenue to express their penchant for conspiratorialism?

Presentation is in my view extremely culture-dependent. I’m amazed that anyone considers the act of wearing a skirt anything but culturally defined. Being in a culture which now insists wanting to wear a skirt is an actual sign of being a woman does make me understand more about the history of fashion, but it is CRAZY that modern humans are back to linking an item of clothing to something called womanhood which is supposed to be biologically linked. Paging Queen Victoria.

Oh dear, I’m a phrase emphasiser. I assure you it’s not AI.

Yes, because extreme cases like that of the Wests is the only deviant behaviour women have to worry about.

I’m out. You’re like a clockwork monkey, banging the same old drum in the same old rhythm, regardless of the tune that’s playing, Howse.

I might as well go to an underpass and argue with the graffiti.

To engage with Hows is to play chess with a pigeon. The pigeon will knock over all the pieces, shit on the board and declare itself winner 🙄

Also it's not just about the women engaging in prostitution. It harms other women and girls both in those areas and in society as a whole.

Oh dear seems Sonia got caught out making unsubstantiated claims:

"The Observer recently published an opinion piece by Sonia Sodha on the challenge of preventing violence against women who sell sex. The author argued for the criminalisation of the purchase of sex, often known as the Nordic model.
This article contained a number of unsubstantiated claims regarding the decriminalisation of sex work, in particular that decriminalisation increases the overall extent of prostitution in a country without decreasing its harms. In reality, evidence from New Zealand, where prostitution was decriminalised in 2003, shows that sex workers are now more able to address violence and are better able to protect their health; the New Zealand government concluded that decriminalisation had not increased the size of the industry. These are some of the reasons why international organisations like the World Health Organisation and UNAIDS advocate for the full decriminalisation of sex work, not the Nordic model."

https://newsocialist.org.uk/transmissions/letter-response-sonia-sodhas-observer-article/

Please don't feed the troll. It's insatiable.

How does one measure cultural pressures? Sociologists like to use the most egalitarian countries as a comparator & it appears from their observations that sex differences are even larger in Nordic countries who are amongst the most egalitarian in the world. And last I heard, the women's fashion industry is still thriving there.

"The more gender equal a society is, the more similar men and women will be, adopting more similar interests, personality traits and behavioural patterns. Or so many people seem to believe.
Statements like this might sound like truisms, but science shows reality may be more complicated.
Several studies have found that some psychological sex differences, such as those in personality, are larger in more gender-equal countries. The same goes for countries that are more educated, prosperous and otherwise have better living conditions. This has become known as the gender-equality paradox."

https://theconversation.com/sex-differences-dont-disappear-as-a-countrys-equality-develops-sometimes-they-become-stronger-222932

Translation:

These facts are hurting my feelings…

God reading through that New Socialist letter arguing against Sodha’s article is a litany of lightly evidenced ‘associations’ and distortions.

How's (ha!) this for facts - no one can change sex, so men will always remain men no matter what, and the law says they should stay out of women's single sex spaces etc.

Gender, presentation etc? It's all bullshit. Sex matters, get over it!

Gender characteristics in socially equal countries are even wider apart eh? To (mis)quote Harry Enfield, “Sophistication? I’ve BEEN to Sweden,”

I got one paragraph into a long early post on this thread, clocked some sexist patronising shite and scrolled back up to the username. Yep, that tracks.

I've now got through this thread in record time because a significant proportion of the posts can be ignored, but it's a shame to miss a discussion on an interesting topic so I'd add my pleas to everyone suggesting letting the sealion continue clapping and arfing in his own wee corner.

I love HMT and the Testaments was excellent on Aunt Lydia's backstory. Which surprised me, because Atwood herself is a bit of a literary Aunt Lydia these days (ref the dig about the Harry Potter store).

I guess if I'd had half a century of people hailing me as a visionary and genius I'd have got pretty smug, too. But it's a real shame.