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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Handmaids Tale Is a Warning to Conservative Women
Hulus adaptation of Margaret Atwoods novel lays bare the horrors of collusion with the patriarchy.
Most contradictory and recognizable of all these female collaborators is Serena Joy (Yvonne Strahovski), the wife of Offreds commander. Before Gilead, she graced American television screens as a preternaturally blond evangelist. (Serena Joy was her stage name, a nom de guerre for the culture wars.) Even though she occupies the highest rank for a woman in this new world, she is now legally inferior to her sad-sack husband and, finding herself childless, has to employ Offred as a surrogate. Rage roils the edges of her ice-princess restraint. She doesnt make speeches anymore, Offred notes in the book. She stays in her home, but it doesnt seem to agree with her. How furious she must be, now that shes been taken at her word.
America is rich in Serena Joys. One need look no further for her contemporary counterparts than Michelle Duggar and her daughters; or Paula White, the televangelist who allegedly led Donald Trump to Christ; or his aide Kellyanne Conway, who defends him as a great boss to women. The character Atwood invented is an amalgam of Phyllis Schlafly and Tammy Faye Bakker with a dash of Aimee Semple McPherson. The spectacle of the female fundamentalist celebrity is not recent, and she is not an anomaly. Her existence is proof of American fundamentalisms durability, and a reminder that it could not thrive without the enthusiastic backing of women.
I think that there are women all over the political spectrum who draw their identity and power from the men they align with, particularly when they are young, and more susceptible to the cultural messages that their power lies in their desirability and utility to men.
https://newrepublic.com/article/141674/handmaids-tale-hulu-warning-conservative-women
BainsBane
(53,035 posts)all of us. We're under attack from all sides.
ehrnst
(32,640 posts)Religious zealots, political zealots...
Any movement that demands absolute lockstep with dogma has no use for the "needs" of a woman facing childbearing decisions.
Childbearing and childrearing issues distract from the goals of movements led by men, in the service of men.
Kath2
(3,074 posts)I think "conservative" women are insane.
Takket
(21,577 posts)but after the election there was an article about the surprising number of women who voted for 45 because, just like any misogynistic male 45 voter, they felt a woman was simply not capable of running the country.
athena
(4,187 posts)(Emphasis mine.)
In the original, the words "Allow an antichoice woman to call herself a feminist" contain a link to a recent NYT opinion piece in which an anti-choicer called herself a "feminist" and demanded that the feminist movement accept anti-choicers.
meow2u3
(24,764 posts)The religious far right thinks "The Handmaid's Tale" is an instruction manual.
Woodstock66
(8 posts)I was in high school when this book came out and every girl in my English class read it. We were all horrified, but thought, "No way that could happen here."
How wrong we were.
I don't understand how any self-respecting woman could be a conservative. How do they justify to themselves that they follow an ideology in which men truly believe they're nothing more than incubators?