this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2024
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This person twisted up the authors note. As academics in the Middle East, a person with Atwood made a statement to the effect of: thankfully this could never happen in the United States. Atwood’s response was to dive into the predominant religion: Christianity, and make it so based further on US political culture.
Abrahamic religions, all three, can get pretty fundamentally awful. Have you read the rules and regs in the Old Testament? There’s a reason evangelicals cherry pick things from it and don’t live by it.
I've had people straight up say "Gilead is perfectly reasonable given the declining birthrates". Bro, you can't think of a better way to solve declining birthrates than ritual rape? Gilead doesn't even solve it very well in-universe, it does a bunch of stuff that is actually counter to that goal, and there's no particular reason to think it would do any better in real life.
Actually, you want declining birthrate in a modern country. You don't need 10 kids to work the farm with better technology to plant and harvest and help take care of the animals. You don't need 5 kids to go to the factory to support you because you're legally not allowed to work because you're a woman. You have better food and better medicine so you don't need to hedge your bets on which of your 6 kids is going to live to be an adult.
A friend who recently had a kid said that when she and her husband were building up to having children, she became acutely aware of the government discussing "why are people having fewer kids and how do we ensure that we have a sufficient workforce in the future" and she became increasingly exasperated to hear how out of touch politicians spoke about it, when the actual answer was so simple.
Affordable housing is one of the biggest no-brainers. For example, she is one of only a handful of friends my age (millennial) who owns a home. As someone who has been homeless multiple times due to landlord fuckery, I can't imagine choosing to have kids if renting a home. That seems so obvious, but she said that she never heard them connect the dots in this way — the government would sometimes talk about the need for more affordable housing, but never in the context of "hmm, we don't know why people are having fewer kids and how to encourage people to start families". They literally don't understand how living in precarity gets to you and it's depressing
Even if you have a house and a decent wage it's still fraught, you pay out the nose for childcare to keep the job and then don't get to spend the time you'd love to with the kids. It's fucking horrendous.
Sounds like talk you’d find in the same corners where twisted pedophilic “men” discuss teenagers as the only good females, and that minors absolutely should be married off at that age.
Again, I refer to Granny Weatherwax talking about people treated as objects being the basis of sin. Sans religion, just basic sin in regards to living in a society of human beings.
I wonder whether those people who said that ever expect a spanish inquisition.
No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!
My parents loved to quote the old testament saying they could kill me if I was a disobedient child.
They sound nice.
...?
How could this never happen in the United States?
Have you never been to the south? They have endless churches chanting for stuff not far off from this.
The southern baptist convention literally exists because they wanted to define Christianity with God specifically choosing slavery of the white man over black people as commanded, they used stuff like this as basis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_Ham
I really worry sometimes, I didn't see the book as interesting, because it's not that far-fetched.
https://youtu.be/pA0W0pRqlDI
When I was young we could never imagine a psychotic clown like Trump running for office...
Are you confused that you are saying the same thing?
Just about everything in her books happened somewhere, just not all at the same place and time. Some 80s USA, some communist Romania. Just about everyone has oppressed women at some point or other, and continue to do so.
https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/2019/09/margaret-atwood-handmaids-tale-testaments-real-life-inspiration
I think the only unrealistic part is that she gets away rather than killed... The TV show especially has her in particularly thick plot armour.
The book is a mesmerizing read. I could not put it down. But I cannot watch the TV show. I tried. It’s too much, too drawn out. I’m a woman. I already understand. I do not need a second play through in excruciating length and detail.