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.

Utter idiots 🤪

Most of them are just abusive misogynists, but I genuinely worry that some of them really are just that stupid.

Yes, your ideas are unpleasant too.

I ❤️ Doc Stock.

Material girls was an excellent read.

I saw her recently speaking about assisted dying. She is a brilliant thinker and speaker.

I will read the review of Atwood's book in full because I love her writing.

I thought Dickens wrote with an eye to being read out loud, back in the days of illiteracy, so the commas and semi colons are to be read as pauses or slightly longer pauses, and the long sentences are like a flowing speech.

I found Handmaids tale so affecting, it literally changed my view of men/society/cash, I shyed away from any more of her books. What would any of you recommend for a second read?

It's not true that Dickens was paid by the word for his novels, only the early journalism. Most of his novels were published in his own journals (Master Humphrey's Clock, then Household Words). He wasn't paying himself by the word for these! We need to understand that they were published in weekly instalments, so each week's portion would be relatively small. And novels were longer: Dickens is not unrepresentative. But our tolerance for length and complexity has sadly diminished.

I stand corrected! I have no problem with long novels (in general or of that era and earlier) but have never been much of a Dickens reader and was being flip; forgive me!

"Three possible positions:
i) sex-based terminology and views are banned, subject to professional censure, account deletion, penalized by judges with the full power of the state, and re-often rewritten even in direct speech.
ii) both permitted as a matter of free speech, and it’s openly contested
iii) gender-based terminology and views are banned [… as above].
Two of those positions are censorship. i and iii. i is what we had/have. We had/have censorship. ii is what we need."

I think you're confusing no-debate with meaning of language. Both are at issue in the gender debate and that makes debate harder when one side wants to adopt a generally well understood term to mean something else. In relation to judges, clearly the law must define its terms. "The full power of the state" is just hyperbole

I think there are two related issues:

1. In individuals' expression, we need both versions (i and iii) to be fully permissible not suppressed. Both in seemingly trivial cases like individual pronoun choice, and more importantly in discussing policy, news, etc.
2. In how institutions themselves use words, I think that's a different question and can't really be answered separately from the question of "which institutions" and "for what purpose". I think that for clarity and in order to protect important rights, there should be a strong presumption for using words with their sex-based meanings, and a strong presumption for words to retain stable meaning. But I'm wary of saying "only the way I think words should be used is valid for institutions".

Judges and the law must definitely define terms for use in formal settings including courts, though that shouldn't override witnesses ability to chose their own terms in their own evidence. Agree that 'full power of the state' is a bit hyperbolic (but the point I was making was that under anyone's definition that is censorship not just 'suppression' because of the involvement of the state. Judges have been requiring witnesses/victims to use preferred pronouns in court, rather than their own choice of terms. iirc, one woman had an award reduced because she did not respect the preferred pronouns of her attacker. That to me is obviously very wrong).

The Blind Assassin is a long-standing favourite. And some of her short stories are excellent too.

It would be highly entertaining to see any of the planks who trot out the "sex work is work" chant attempt to specify exactly how prostitution could be brought into conformity with Health & Safety at Work legislation.
The tldr is that it can't but those who support it see prostituted women as unworthy of the protections afforded to workers.

I'd like to see them spend a week doing 'sex work', and see how they feel then. Because of course if it's just work, they should be prepared to try it for a short time to see what it's really like.

I know gonorrhea infection in your eye is a relatively known risk of various unprotected sex acts (i leave it to your imagination), I imagine Occy Health would recommend a full face shield like in Covid, or goggles to be put on.

Put it this way, only a tiny fraction of the tiny (relative to the overall trade) dom/sub market & a very, very small percentage of latex fetishists might be in with a shout.
I stress "might".

Another consideration that is overlooked is whether people would volunteer to do the job for charity or out of kindness.

Many jobs, subject to skill required, see people willing to put in a shift for free when it’s for a good cause. This might be cleaning for a friend who’s injured, or a litter picking drive in the local park. People might agree to cook, or serve drinks at a club or school fund raiser. They might drive elderly people to a hospital appointment etc. How many people would be willing to volunteer to have sex with someone ‘in need’.

Of course he is a bloke. He admitted it months ago. He also claims to live in Australia although I have my doubts as he types so much American English.