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.

Oh please. The Right & its litany of media outlets has been smashing everyone over the head with this irrelevance relentlessly for years. That there were a few instances of some outlets being supportive when the majority of the media class couldn't lionise JKR & her fellow travellers enough doesn't qualify as censorship. 'What is a woman' positively mainstream.

In any case, regardless of media, if women's private spaces were a major problem for women in general you would have heard about it via grass roots mass protests like all the other women's movements that had no media cheering them on.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_led_uprisings#20th_century

Exactly. Here's Tory Maria Miller in January 2016 complaining that feminists were the only people standing in the way of the new trans utopia. The right wingers in her party stayed silent.

Maria Miller says only hostility to transgender report came from women 'purporting to be feminists' | The Independent | The Independent

Germaine Greer, mentioned in that article, had already been vocal about this for some time.

But that's just it. It's complicity in oppression by men.

It does not seem to be part of the picture that women are actually oppressing others, including other women, entirely for their own ends, that they are the originators, the leaders, that it isn't some kind of function of "the patriarchy".

It's a massive oversight in terms of seeing women as fully human and it's never going to produce a really accurate understanding of society.

I think she needs an editor with a lot of backbone. That's not a criticism at all, I think many (most) great writers probably need someone like this, it is too difficult to see, from inside the book, what needs to be pared away. (Although the ones who practice their craft as journalists first I think may have an advantage to some extent.)

But she's so big as a writer, I think it makes is harder for an editor to be firm.

This has been a grassroots movement...maybe not so much a mass movement for the reason that the whole business had been flown in under the radar of public consciousness and debate. It has taken for those who have a nose for the scent and a political instinct to ferret it out.

Before JK Rowling wrote her 'piece' and before The Times starting reporting on the issue ( mainly via Janice Turner), the Labour party was literally chanting " No Debate", and the Guardian and the BBC were silencing and blacklisting their own journalists.

Are you in the UK?

If so, I’d expect a fairly well-informed MNer to know:

Timelines don’t support you:
i) that MN has been all over this issue for way longer than ‘years’
ii) ‘years’ is about right for when this became a mainstream UK media issue

Politics not so simple:
iii) moves to legislate for self-ID begun and promoted under the May government (that’s our right-wing party)
iv) opposition primarily from grass-roots feminists (a typically left-leaning group)

Top-down suppression:
v) “no debate”, professional sanction, IPSO reporting rules, BBC nixing of stories, Stonewall employer strong-arming.

I think this issue deserved bigger public pushback than it got for many years, but your claim that it’s a nothing issue becuase we didn’t have street protests is silly. If it’s a nothing issue, why did it need v) to suppress?

(Barracking and death threats from balaclava'd men when women did gather to protest, or just to meet, may have depressed turnout somewhat too).

We know; he keeps banging on his misogynist drum and gets embarrassed and cross when we point out the logical fallacies he so proudly displays but that only encourages him, so we ask Aunt Bunbury for help. She suggests prioritising your energies.

Indeed. Men who've been able to decriminalise sex offences like voyeurism and indecent exposure are currently running amok with their seething fury at being told no. Being compelled by the law to respect that women and girls have rights.
That's why so many threads like this, where women are discussing fascinating insights into the writings of gifted women's writing are repeatedly derailed.
It's an example of emotional incontinence and and an inability to recognise women as sentient beings by men who only see women as support humans for their disordered sexual fantasies.

It won't stop. Many women are wise to this and try to get derailed threads back on track but sadly the inflammatory nonsense from creepy men is hard to ignore

"For everyone given there was nary a whisper till the last few years when it became politically convenient."

It must be so difficult to hear when you've got your fingers plugged tight in your ears singing "Nyer nyer! Can't hear you! Ha ha!" like a 5 year old 🙄

He's in New Zealand apparently, but he knows he's telling lies anyway. All this has been discussed with him before and he just ignores it all because it doesn't fit into his TRA agenda.

Also laughing at him because of his whole "if an attempt to censor women fails, it doesn't count as censorship" 😂What a numpty! 😂

I have noticed that @Howseitgoin is very keen to wade in on threads that are tangentially related to TiM rights but has no engagement with the threads where the rubber is actually hitting the road. The main one today is https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5350068-good-law-practice-launch-a-ehcrsupreme-court-challenge-over-toilets?page=28&reply=148560885 where are your posts?

'No debate'? Seriously? How much 'debate' did the Suffragettes get? The facts of the matter are when an issue seriously affects women at scale, they will come out at scale. The Climate Change, Metoo & Palestine protests were spear headed by millions of women globally.

Hiding behind 'censorship' is a joke given the reach of the internet & major right wing media outlets with millions of followers that have been pushing this issue relentlessly. JK Rowling alone has 14 million followers on X not to mention Right wing Political parties have been weaponising this issue globally.

Not only is there no widespread public outrage, its now reaching its past use by date as a political cudgel being replaced by immigration…..which was always the plan. Gender ideology was merely used as a gate way to the right to funnel women so they could get more on board with white nationalism. Now they don't need it anymore you won't be hearing about from them who in essence were the engine behind its ascendance not a few useful idiots on X & MN.

Darls, If it's any comfortI, I follow the thread with great amusement at the wacky legal 'interpretations'. That I don't comment there is a function of my self awareness that I don't have the legal expertise required to speak with confidence. From my very limited knowledge as I have alluded to upthread, I can perceive compelling arguments but that's about it.

Yes, I’ve lost count the number of times I’ve got to the end of an award winning contemporary novel and thought, ‘That book really needed a good editor’. Are there any left in publishing?

But to be fair, I’ve thought the same about Dickens - great stories and characters but my god, he was verbose. And because his novels are so tightly plotted, you can’t skip a few pages in case you miss something crucial.

Agree about Dickens. Sometimes I think, he should read Raymond Chandler!

Total side issue (apologies) but, @Floisme, how on earth can a novel be both long-winded and very tightly plotted? I do think I know what you mean; I confess to skimming paragraphs and pages of Dickens. It's surely to do with the language conventions of the time, though, isn't it? Victorians just used more words - as most other languages still do, English having become verbally economical to the point of meanness.

I occasionally wonder why this is, but only when I'm reminding myself to be more verbose in some other language. It's almost like "using extra words" has become a social crime. I regularly commit this crime while drinking, of course!

It's surely to do with the language conventions of the time, though, isn't it?

Yes, but compounded by the fact that Dickens novels were written and published as serials.

And "you can’t skip a few pages in case you miss something crucial" would have been a desirable feature - if you're a magazine publisher confident enough that there's enough reader interest to merit a long-running serial, you're going to want to lean into that to make sure readers feel compelled to buy every single issue during its run.

Quite different commercial environment to Chandler.

On another website I was once told that there was no problem at all with discrimination against gender critical feminists, because Maya Forstater won her tribunal, which proved that there wasn’t anything to worry about 🤪

Firstly, let’s make sure we are both talking about the same thing: what do you think I’m referring to by ‘no debate’?

Secondly, the suffragists and suffragettes: in Britain there was extensive coverage in the media and petitions and debates in parliament from
1860s onwards from both sides.

You seem to want to argue one topic you are ill-informed on by reference to another one you are ill-informed on.

If I’m wrong, please point me to the media-wide moratorium on presenting those women’s case in their own terms. Because I can point you to IPSO, the BBC, Twitter policy and others.

Thirdly, timelines again. You keep talking about quite recent reference points: JKR on X was five years ago. How long would
you say this has been an issue on MN? And again, you seem totally unaware that Twitter heavily suppressed this issue so that grassroots accounts couldn’t talk freely on it until post 2022. Using sex-based terminology was a bannable offence.

You are the one using the word censorship not me. I’ve talked about suppression. But OK, let’s talk about censorship: are you saving that Twitter policies on that point are not a form of censorship? Or the BBC’s style guide and actions? Or the (old) Equal Treatment Bench Book rules?

Fourthly, I think this issue is one that deserved much more public pushback than it got. I reject however your idea that the importance or justice of a cause is measured by the size of street protests. Especially with the constraints described earlier.

Fifthly, this being a ‘right wing plan’ all along to funnel women to white nationalism? Engage with the evidence please. Who has planned this ‘all along’ and since when? Not the UK media as we’ve covered above. The conservative government that sought to introduce self-ID? The following one that hugely increased non-white immigration? Or the one after that (did Rishi Sunak really lead a white nationalist government)?

You are painting with very broad brush strokes in ways that just don’t match the fact pattern at least for the UK. That’s a polite way for saying you keep getting it wrong in aspect after aspect.

Your go-to ‘are you serious???’ in place of engaging with contrary facts is letting you down. Start with the facts and let that inform your views, not the other way round.

What the fuck would some bloke in New Zealand know about what’s going on with women, on the other side of the world?
Stop feeding the skank. It’s tiresome and makes the thread unreadable, which is his sole aim.

That I don't comment there is a function of my self awareness that I don't have the legal expertise required to speak with confidence.

Shame your ‘self awareness’ doesn’t expand to accepting that, as a man, you have no idea of the impact of your ideology on the physical and mental wellbeing of women.

I say that because I find that, if I try and skim his wordier passages, I inevitably miss an important plot point and 50 pages on, I’m lost and have to go back and read properly. I see it as a failing on my part and I imagine it’s due to the faster pace of life now and also TV, where you expect something to happen every few minutes and where it’s easy to switch off if it doesn’t. We’ve got used to instant gratification - we don’t even have to wait a week between episodes any more. I couldn’t be bothered with Dickens at all when I was young but now I’ve learned that, if I slow down and ‘get in the zone’ , I can find them really absorbing and satisfying.

Likewise with JK Rowling, my concentration will wander and I’ve often lost the thriller aspect of the plot by the halfway stage, but I still read on because I want to know how the relationships pan out. I find it with a lot of crime fiction (Chandler aside!) so it’s not just JK, although the Strike books seem to be getting longer and longer!

"Firstly, let’s make sure we are both talking about the same thing: what do you think I’m referring to by ‘no debate’?"

Depends on who is saying it. Trans activists use it to correctly to make the point human right's shouldn't up for 'debate'. Bad faith interlocutors like JK Rowling cynically misrepresent this concept as censorship.

"Secondly, the suffragists and suffragettes: in Britain there was extensive coverage in the media and petitions and debates in parliament from
1860s onwards from both sides."

False.

"In 1912 Emmeline Pankhurst addressed the difficult relationship women in the suffrage campaign experienced with the press. She approached the stand at the Old Bailey and explained that, ‘..then in 1905 we faced the hard facts. We realised that there was a press boycott against women’s suffrage. Our speeches at public meetings were not reported, our letters to the editors were not published, even if we implored the editors; even the things relating to Women’s Suffrage in Parliament were not recorded. They said the subject was not of sufficient public interest to be reported in the press, and they were not prepared to report it’. This speech confirms categorically the existence of a press war between suffrage and anti-suffrage advocates.
Vital to spreading information about their cause, print press media became an invaluable source for those fighting for and against the progression of women’s emancipation. Nevertheless, historical intervention concerning the women’s suffrage movement has traditionally focused on books and biographies written by leaders of the movement rather than the multitude of texts in the print press media. Many of these books, although considered primary sources, were often written up to ten years after the suffrage movement. As it was only the higher classes that had the money and influence to take a book to publication, our understanding has become dictated by the voices of the middle and upper-classes resulting in the opinions of many lower-classes being disregarded. Consequently, it is inevitable that opinions and information will be missed, whether accidentally or on purpose.

The suffrage movement seemed to act as a catalyst for newspapers to represent women negatively. It received a tirade of negative press from the most widely read newspapers such as The Times, The Pall Mall Gazette, and The Telegraph. Suffragist women were ‘masculine’, the men were ‘effeminate’, and suffragettes were ‘feral’, ‘aggressive’, and ‘irrational’.
https://aspectsofhistory.com/iwd-the-press-and-womens-suffrage/

And again, you seem totally unaware that Twitter heavily suppressed this issue so that grassroots accounts couldn’t talk freely on it until post 2022. Using sex-based terminology was a bannable offence.

JKR has been at it for 5 years now so that's pre Elon:

In a tweet in 2019, Rowling stood with Forstater: "Dress however you please," she said on X. "Live your best life in peace and security. But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real?"

"And again, you seem totally unaware that Twitter heavily suppressed this issue so that grassroots accounts couldn’t talk freely on it until post 2022. Using sex-based terminology was a bannable offence.

Given all of JKR's pre Elon tweets passed muster because she implicitly dehumanised & demonised transpeople via dog whistles rather than explicitly as is the case now, its fair to say it was overt hate speech that was censored.

"You are the one using the word censorship not me. I’ve talked about suppression. But OK, let’s talk about censorship: are you saving that Twitter policies on that point are not a form of censorship? Or the BBC’s style guide and actions? Or the (old) Equal Treatment Bench Book rules?"

Sure, hate speech was suppressed. But yeah, I get how that may appear as censorship for the unconscionable….

"Fifthly, this being a ‘right wing plan’ all along to funnel women to white nationalism? Engage with the evidence please. Who has planned this ‘all along’ and since when? Not the UK media as we’ve covered above. The conservative government that sought to introduce self-ID? The following one that hugely increased non-white immigration? Or the one after that (did Rishi Sunak really lead a white nationalist government)?"

Right wing parties seeking election trot out the trans bogeyman like clock work as do all their many powerful media operatives. That you think there's no such thing as the right wing propaganda complex with their usual suspects of LGBTQ 'degenerate' fear mongering is cute & maybe a function of being a hapless/willing victim of it.