The Misdirected Feminist Rage of The Handmaid's Tale

I've just started watching the Hulu series The Handmaids Tale and there are a few things that bother me about it that I thought I'd share with you dear reader. There are spoilers here so bail out now if that bothers you.

It seems regressive leftists and feminists are writing (here and here for example) about how this new adaptation of Margaret Atwood's novel is some prescient commentary on our society under Trump. Apparently, the country has 'swung conservative' and the authoritarian society depicted in the series is just around the corner.

However, nothing could be further from the truth. Every leftist regulation and court ruling is still in place and congress is too busy trying to oust Trump from office to actually implement any of his agenda. Rowe v Wade, that most sacred of feminist ideology, is still firmly entrenched in our legal code. 

But back to the new Hulu 'original' series. I don't know what it is that these feminists have against this fictitious society. It has everything a good regressive feminist could want - they execute rapists by allowing the Handmaids to beat them to death (something all good real life feminists would like to do) and the Handmaids are forced to wear burka/hijab-like outfits, which is all the rage these days with regressives for their 'Womyn empowering' qualities.

(Read Is hijab really a symbol of liberation when millions are oppressed into wearing it? for a Muslim woman's perspective on this phenomenon.)

Then in Ep. 3 they perform Female Genital Mutilation on the Handmaids (another of the now suddenly womyn empowering practices of a certain 'repressed' religious minority ignored by today's regressive feminists) so they 'don't want what they can't have'.

Except for forcing the Handmaids to bear children (that most horrid of concepts to true feminism) this place is a regressive feminist's utopia!














But what is really mistaken about the whole premise of Ms. Atwood's novel and the two movies/series adaptations made from it, is the belief that it's Conservative Christians who are going to be the movement in this country that subjugates them in such an authoritarian way.

The regressive left refuses to acknowledge it but there are real-life examples of this very type of theocratic, authoritarian society already in existence around the globe. Islam and Sharia Law. It objectifies women in the real sense; that of being objects and property of the men and the system that repress them and it is the stated aim of this system to spread and dominate all the nations of the earth.