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'TERF' is the new 'unfuckable'. Credit: Steve Russell/Toronto Star via Getty Images
Margaret Atwood never fancied herself a discourse power broker, but we thrust the role on her anyway. The year was 2016; the election of Donald Trump had sparked a brief, blazing feminist backlash that now feels like something out of a fever dream. Self-described “nasty women” in pink knitted hats snarled in furious unison at the neanderthals who put someone like that in office. “Pussy grabs back” became a religion, Margaret Atwood its patron saint: the scribe whose dystopian tale of women subjugated, domesticated and downtrodden now seemed poised to become a reality.
The Handmaid’s Tale describes a futuristic puritan patriarchy in which women have been stripped of their liberties and forced into service as child-bearers for the ruling class. A television adaptation was already in development when Trump was elected, but its arrival in the spring of 2017 felt tailor-made for the moment — and its imagery, especially those blood-red robes with their creepy, face-obscuring bonnets, was too instagrammable to resist. In June that year, the New York Times noted that Handmaid costumes had become de rigueur at protests against everything from Planned Parenthood funding cuts in Washington, D.C. to abortion restrictions in Ohio.
Meanwhile, Atwood was newly hailed as a modern-day Cassandra, one whose warnings we could no longer afford to ignore. As one Guardian columnist wrote, “The world of Offred, though still notionally a fiction, has migrated from creative construct to the realm of the thinkable.”
Atwood, it should be said, never quite bought into the vision of herself as the oracle of the Trump resistance. When pressed, her responses were invariably judicious — “We’re not living in Gilead yet, but there are Gilead-like symptoms going on”, she told one interviewer — though media coverage framed them as anything but. The most striking example of this is her New York Times retrospective on The Handmaid’s Tale, written in March 2017: the headline reads, “Margaret Atwood on What The Handmaid’s Tale Means in the Age of Trump”. The essay doesn’t mention him.
And there were hints, always, that Atwood wasn’t quite as gung-ho for the new feminism as some pretended. In 2016, she was a signatory on a letter demanding accountability in the case of Stephen Galloway, a professor who was accused of sexual assault and fired without due process by the University of British Columbia. (A defamation suit by Galloway is ongoing in the Canadian courts.) Atwood’s 2018 essay about the matter became Twitter’s outrage du jour and caused the website Vox to downgrade Atwood’s status from “feminist icon” to “problematic fave”. Atwood’s response was a bone-dry tweet:
Taking a break from being Supreme Being Goddess, omniscient, omnipotent, and responsible for all ills. Sorry I have failed the world so far on gender equality. Maybe stop trying? Will be back later. (Next incarnation maybe.)
— Margaret E Atwood (@MargaretAtwood) January 14, 2018
Yet any qualms about Atwood’s ideological purity were eclipsed at the time by her usefulness to the movement. Simply put, people wanted to wear Handmaid’s Tale outfits in front of the Supreme Court more than they wanted to purge the author for being a little too agnostic on #MeToo.
But fast-forward to our present day: The Handmaid’s Tale has long since finished its four-season run on Hulu. The #MeToo movement is yesterday’s news. And that fervour for protecting women’s bodies — from government overreach and groping hands alike — has been increasingly replaced by a base-level discomfort with women’s bodies, not just as a discussion topic, but as a concept. By the time Atwood came under fire again, this time for retweeting an article observing the bizarre retreat of the word “woman” from the public sphere, the cultural tides had turned. The enemy in the Oval Office was gone; the feminist eye of Sauron turned inward.
And for the same movement that once hailed Atwood as a prophet because she wrote so searingly about how women’s bodies and biology become the subject of oppression, now she was vaguely suspicious — for the exact same reason.
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SubscribeI always found it strange that the kind of people who would bewail the Trump Presidency as the appearance of Gilead were often the same folks who would find no problem with the islamification of the west and the truly horrific treatment of women under that particular death cult. Odd.
And that’s because they’ll find any reason to hate the values of the liberal west regardless of logic.
Bunch of upper class women pretending they are living the handmaiden’s tale, while being callous and indifferent towards other women who actually are living the handmaiden’s tale.
So envy my younger, more naive and innocently idealistic self, before you found out what people truly are like.
They are now called “pearl clutchers”.
The feminist movement was from the beginning an ‘upper-class white woman’s movement’ and rather is that today as well. Perhaps if ‘Bunny’ Steinem had agreed to let Betty Friedan insert language about the ‘importance of the family’ and ‘women’s responsibilities to the family’ in the never-passed ERA (Equal Rights Amendment) the movement would have had a real raison d’etre?!
Thank goodness for them then for giving women (and you) the vote. For enabling many to be educated. For allowing women to be independent. For shining the light on female circumcision. On the list goes.
I found out tonight that Vietnamese women in certain areas have absolutely no standing without a man. Even when their husbands die, they cannot resume a normal life. These things are real while women sit in their Western bubbles and take potshots at ‘feminists’.
Can you give an example of someone who would both ‘bewail the Trump Presidency as the appearance of Gilead‘ and ‘find no problem with the islamification of the west‘?
I’ve never met such a person. Perhaps we move in different circles.
Nearly everyone in the Women’s March organised by Linda Sarsour.
Any Guardian reader.
“A war among women, as opposed to a war on women, is always pleasing to those who do not wish women well.”
Genius comment.
And utterly ignorant of the realities of real life.
My small team hired a few young female grads, all part of the brave new world of diversity (which somehow doesn’t matter when it’s teaching, HR or media)
The way they were targeted for obliteration by the senior female managers (all of whom habitually spouted familiar feminist lines otherwise) was mind boggling. And in stark contrast to how those young ladies were treated by the supposedly patriarchal males in the same team.
I know, anecdotal and all that,but the sisterhood is not all that it’s cracked up to be. One main conclusion was, If I had to guide my daughter, would always want her to go into a profession like IT or Engineering.
Those fields certainly pay better.
I think telling women they should go into engineering because it pays better or to win some kind of war on behalf of all women, is a bit counterproductive.
Girls should join engineering because it’s interesting, hands on work and the vast majority of guys really welcome having female faces.
I believe you and I are in the same profession – software development.
I’m with you on the wish that more women would choose it as a career.
I can count the number of female developers I’ve worked with using the fingers of one hand 🙁
The vast majority of guys really welcome having females anywhere!
Heh. Working in said industry, I’ve always found the allegation that men in IT don’t want women involved utterly mind boggling.
Although I am reminded of the various women’s movement marches with placards proclaiming “I need gender studies because there aren’t enough women in engineering,” to oddly contain the actual solution to their problem. Study engineering instead; better pay, more productive, and just maybe you’ll at least contribute to solving a real-world problem or two.
Feminism is no match for evolutionary biology, that’s why.
Remember when we were schooled by feminists that more women in the work place would make it ‘friendlier’, ‘more collegial’ etc? That turned out to be a crock. No matter, liberal-wokedom & their gender-floggers today continues to deny many aspects of ‘human nature’. Clearly, they adore pushing boulders uphill.
My wife is a teacher and works around mostly women. She can’t stand most of them, says the few men there are a breath of fresh air.
If it’s an article on woman’s rights, enter Samir Iker on cue. He does not like to disappoint. Let me let you into a secret…. It is not all about the ‘sisterhood’ in the workplace… we don’t give preference to women if they don’t perform. It is called professionalism.
“My small team hired a few young female grads, all part of the brave new world of diversity (which somehow doesn’t matter when it’s teaching, HR or media)
The way they were targeted for obliteration by the senior female managers (all of whom habitually spouted familiar feminist lines otherwise) was mind boggling.”
For those of us who have worked in offices during their lives, this comes as no surprise at all. I have witnessed the same behaviour more than once.
I often come back to something I wrote and put away for a couple of days, months, or years. I then drop parts of it or change sentences and paragraphs because they do not say what I thought, intended, or had in mind. And sometimes I toss it—like a couple of my undergrad essays.
Writing is always fluid that way. As a fellow grad student once put it—perhaps quoting or paraphrasing: how do I know what I think until I read what I say?
Read that sentence to yourself over and over again—as any good self-editing writer would do—and you will hear and see it is internally inconsistent and incoherent. Although there is certainly a spark of intriguing “truthiness” to it, isn’t there?
I believe that is why she dropped it. It probably does not express what she has in mind or is in the process of formulating. Maybe she dropped it with the view of expressing that particular idea elsewhere. Only she knows. Or perhaps The Shadow.
No more, no less.
For those of us who wish human beings well, I can’t escape from the fact that the author, Atwood and her pronoun-obsessed critics all share one thing in common: they eschew basic principles of liberalism in pursuit of identity politics.
This, more than the baseless attacks on Atwood, is the truly depressing feature of the current debate. There are simply not enough second wave feminists willing to look at the monster they have created, to step back, and to realise they should have embraced for more universal principles to begin with.
And that is where the author has it wrong: This is not a battle of Sauron versus the Free Peoples of Middle Earth. This is a squabble between two rival tribes of orcs.
Your last sentence sums it up. Get more than two women together (without men) and there’s going to be a a war of the behind the back, smiling through acid comments, exchanged eye roll variety. Mixed company tempers the worst in both sexes, I find.
Agree – last sentence – ace.
Love that last sentence.
Since we all now have more serious things to worry about, dare we hope these irrelevant people, with their silly obsessions, will fade into the background?
Happy for them to continue their infantile arguments, but wish they’d stop bothering the rest of us.
Atwood isn’t a coward. She’s lived long enough to recognize a minefield when she sees one.
Meaning she’s a coward.
She is wise and not a coward. The importance is in what she doesn’t say, not in what she says.
She is an old woman and a public figure…. I’m sure she has no appetite in her final years to engage in an exhausting, vicious culture war.
The minefield was always there. Its just a part of the progressive’s goal to divide and conquer.
Men and women don’t actually work without each other. You wouldn’t know that listening to some people.
Nah, she’s done her bit. Why bother anymore to confront the stupid when it’s the next generation’s turn?
I agree. There comes a point when you probably feel that. Germaine Greer was one of her generation who said some years ago that she was too old get further involved in the tedious but vicious trans debate.
I wish Biden had that wisdom.
Not a coward, just careful with words (she earns a living by writing after all) and definitions in debates, in particular.
From GoodReads Popular Answered Questions :
Do you consider yourself a feminist? How much do you think society would change if everyone believed in gender equality?
“Margaret Atwood Hello: I never say I’m an “ist” of any kind unless I know how the other person is defining it (Am I against lipstick, etc.) but in general: I believe women are full human beings (radical, I realize). And that laws should reflect this. However, men and women are not “equal” if “equal” means “exactly the same.” Our many puzzlements and indeed unhappinesses come from trying to figure out what the differences really mean, or should mean, or should not mean. Last I looked, people were still trying. And yes, it has something to do with standard of living and available food supply. When times are better and women have jobs, their status goes up.”
As far as the gender debate is concerned it seems to me that at least half the confusion and muddle resides in the absence of any generally agreed definitions or understanding of the differences between sex, gender, sexual orientation and gender identity and how this 4 item cocktail is mixed in any one individual.
Atwood will take on “the patriarchy”, but she won’t take on the Church of Woke.” That speaks volumes On so many levels.
Thank You!
I was kicked out of the Texas Handmaids for refusing to subscribe to gender ideology (it didn’t matter that I have a son who’s a trans man). This brilliant group of activists managed to keep Texas safe from the phrase “pregnant women” while overseeing the de facto repeal of Roe v Wade in their state.
There is no “feminist” movement anymore, and there hasn’t been since the 1970’s/80’s.
Only Second Wave feminists made any tangible improvements in women’s lives (yes, Black women’s lives, too!) but after the amazing Second Wave, new “waves” of “feminism” have been coopted by opportunistic little girls.
Academics and journalists have made careers for themselves by claiming to be “feminist” while actively undermining the gains made by the actual feminist movement (domestic violence shelters, rape crisis shelters, tougher laws against domestic and sexual violence, Roe v Wade, Title IX, Title X, to name only a few).
The new woman-hating “feminism” despises older women, because older women are and always have been, infinitely braver when it comes to challenging male authority and shrugging off male approval.
Compared to women over 40, young women are simpering cowards (I have been a young woman, and I know this to be true). The true test of a “feminist” movement is how it treats older women, and the current “feminist” movement fails spectacularly.
I don’t think Margaret Atwood is a coward, I just think she can’t be bothered with younger women and what they think of her. Atwood does not like or respect young women (read her books – it’s very clear) probably because she has seen the way they tend to side with men against women like herself.
The current “feminist” movement is a joke, and few people outside of media and academia take any of its premises seriously.
I can promise you that most older women don’t.
Interesting points. With so many divergent “movements” out there, I wonder what actual movement will take place?
When things move apart rapdily in so many directions, it could be called an explosion. That might be an accurate description of where things are moving here.
Excellently put.
A son who’s a tr@ns-man? Genuine question- how does that work?
Edit: I have just read your explanation on the other thread (the Andrew Doyle one) – thank you.
I’m no expert, by any stretch, but my understanding is that using the prefix ”trans” means that one’s sex at birth was the opposite. So, her son the trans man was her daughter at birth, no?
I won’t call anyone “cowardly” for deciding not to incur the wrath of “the feminist eye of Sauron” (I love that phrase.) Being countercultural is hard. Standing up to a mob is dangerous and hard. Most of us eschew doing either.
‘And while feminism has long pushed back against the patriarchy that pushes older women into obscurity..’
A: there is no ‘Patriarchy’
B: it’s worse than that – men don’t care. In fact it’s worse than THAT: we don’t even think about you most of the time
‘who benefits from this moment of intra-feminist conflict? Who is watching, hungrily, as we tear each other apart?
No one is watching anywhere, ever.
Conservatives, male and female, are watching and laughing.
Yes I confess as a recovering feminist I am watching and laughing…
I’ll always give anything a go culturally partly out of curiosity and partly to challenge myself. But I couldn’t go beyond a single episode of Handmaids Tale.
I did read the book when it came out, as part of the sci-fi thought-exercise dystopia genre, so I agree with Mary McCarthy’s review. Never expected the crazies to run with it as a measure of reality though…..
I read her book in the school library and thought it was mediocre. I was in my obsessed with dystopian fiction phase at 12 of so and there was dozens of better books in that genre in that library alone, particularly from Britain and Russia. People will latch on to anything these days.
“My body, my choice” covers every human predicament and every stage of feminism and so precludes quarrels between generations which naturally have their own immediate concerns. My own is that this principle, absolute as all principles should ultimately be, did not make feminists as a group sympathetic to the unvaccinated. An important alliance was lost there.
It was quiet disconcerting to witness that deplorable hypocrisy.
It was indeed.
My body my choice, but not for vaccines.
Although I’m not privy to Margaret Atwood’s most private thoughts, I believe that her reluctance to take on the role of leader of the vanguard of feminism is a result of so many reading her work far too narrowly. So narrowly, in fact, that for much of the public, “A Handmaid’s Tale” was her most important achievement. Though sexual politics and female identity are themes that she touches on throughout her work, they are only a small part of her literary legacy. It goes so much further than this one admittedly popular and influential book. It’s certainly not her best work. Not even close. Her career has been so varied, her output so prodigious and brilliant, and yet so much attention is lavished on a single work. Her novels spanning 2000-2010 ( The Blind Assasin, Oryx and Crake, Year of the Flood and MaddAdam) are alone worthy of a Nobel Prize. Yet feminists who disapprove of some of her pronouncements and her percieved lack of fervor for The Cause have campaigned AGAINST her candidacy for the Prize. What an injustice.
I’m getting sick of seeing the word, Trump, used by so many “journalists” in order get eyeballs. How quickly we forget that, against apoplectic claims, Trump did NOT usher in a new era of woman-hating culture, an economic collapse NOR WWIII, which might now be happening under the current peacemaker-in-chief. Perhaps the Nobelistas should start engraving the trophy in anticipation?
The answer is yes. There’s a reason why there are stories about genies and bottles.
You have to be very brave nowadays to challenge activist monomania. But if you believe that the Empress has no clothes you may decide that you can sit out the latest fashion.
Is that brave in the same sense that it is brave to sit waiting for the arrival of Russian heavy artillery under orders to blow your city to bits? Just asking.
“ the men’s rights activists who deem us “unpluckable””
Which men’s rights activists? The only notable use of that term that I can recall is attributed to Berlusconi. Hardly a men’s rights activist; but you could say that his life at least appears to be fun, I suppose.
There is no such thing as principle. All the things the other guys do that you find horrific, you would condone, explain away, or ignore if your guys did it.
“My body my choice”, but not for vaccines is a pretty stark example.
This is a lesson I learned late in life, but I’ve seen it demonstrated over and over again. The only principle that matters is your agenda.
The feminist movement lost the plot in the late 1970’s when it became professionalized and corporatized…..
Atwood will take on with a fury “the Patriarchy”. But she will not even look sideways at the Church of Woke for fear of what they would do to her. That speaks volumes on so many levels.
I prefer straight aggression but sure, every society that exists implies aggression.
Well, that rebuttal didn’t fare well.
I remember during the first year of Trump presidency hysterical, comfortable, probably making some good money, all white by the way, women parading in those idiotic coffee filters on their heads pretending to be the characters from the Attwood’s book and of course the victims of gross oppression. And they were taking themselves very seriously, it would be hilarious except it was just demonstrating complete decline of their cognitive capacity. .
Off-topic is the way that HT seems like it might become a thing in PRC. The rhetoric regarding childbearing and obligation is eyebrow-raising.
I can’t believe that Atwood’s or Rowling’s opinions on any issue are even a topic of discussion. Do you care what athletes or models think? You don’t right? Is Charles Barkley a role model?
It’s not so much their opinions, but the reactions to their opinions.
The vaccination response to the pandemic, as in, it may be your body, but this is good for society, certainly points to such an eventuality.
Depends on the question, the context and the level of knowledge the individual has. I’m willing to listen to the opinions of female athletes who lose out to trans competitors, for example.