Just reading this Barbara Kay column when I realized something: where we (pro-lifers) see life and all the positive things that brings, endless opportunity, hope, freedom to be a woman including absolutely everything that implies… some on the other side see forced reproduction and a government mandated breeding program. Lebensborn with fewer options. That kind of thing.
Just posting that random thought at the end of the day.
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Brigitte worries: My goodness me. How tough it must be for Ms. Atwood now that W. is no longer in the White House!
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Patricia adds: I have always loathed The Handmaid’s Tale. Such a hateful distortion of religion would be the object of a human rights complaint (a successful one) if directed at any group other than Christians. Imagine what the reception would have been had Margaret Atwood told a cautionary dystopic tale of an American Caliphate in which women are enslaved as breeders (and only able to buy their underwear from male salespeople – otherwise known as salesmen, but it is so weird to describe any occupation in gender specific language, I’d almost forgotten such a word existed). Actually, such a scenario is unimaginable, because that would mean Margaret Atwood would be a different person, not the darling of the CBC, the companion of the Order of Canada, our “national treasure”, blah, blah, blah.
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Handmaiden’s Tale is an allegory of gay marriage, written before its time. Maybe not Atwood’s intention, but with a writer’s sensibility, she was able to pick it out of the air of the times. The religion resembles that of a secular gay\lesbian activist collective. She simply got the name wrong.
I remember being forced to read that garbage in high school. I also remember (vaguely, we’re talking a long time ago here!) criticizing the hell out of it, much to the shock of my classmates (we had to do presentations, I think I was the only one who criticized it). To my pleasant surprise (I was so nervous about saying a load of “bad things” about the good old curriculum can-con), my teacher talked with me later and said he agreed with me and didn’t like the book much either! Of course, this was a teacher who told us all we had to go to a Grateful Dead show once in our lives (and I did – it was boring, lol). I wish I still had a copy of what I said.