The Handmaids Tale is a handbook for surviving oppressive systems

[AuntPatsy]

http://www.vox.com/culture/2017/1/20/14316066/handmaids-tale-margaret-atwood-handbook-oppressive-systems



When Margaret Atwood published The Handmaid’s Tale in 1985, she created one of America’s most enduring dystopian myths. The book, which will be adapted into a TV series on Hulu this April, takes place in a late-20th-century America — now called Gilead — governed by a far-right religious group.

In Gilead, a small group of straight, wealthy white men hold all the power. People of color have been relocated to internment camps or deported. Gay people are executed. Religious heretics are tortured into conversion or executed.

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Oppression disguises itself as natural essentialism

It’s outrageous, one woman said, but without belief. What was it about this that made us feel we deserved it?

The Gileadean leaders present their new system as a restoration of the natural, scriptural order of things: People of color are the Children of Ham, so they are forced into servitude as the Bible says they should be. Women naturally exist to run the household, and so that becomes women’s sole purpose.

Men are weak and easily led by the powers of sexual attraction, so of course women, who are stronger and more naturally chaste, must be punished for leading them astray. And men are naturally inclined to want variety, so if a man is rich enough and white enough, he gets multiple women to see to his various needs.

Once the Gileadean belief system has been enshrined in law, it sounds and feels natural, like common sense. Which brings us to our next lesson.

Over time, oppression comes to feel normal