Yet Another Right Wing Site Does its Bit to Win Over the Gals
“Well, some of them are real pros. Working girls” - he laughs - “from the time before. They couldn’t be assimilated; anyway, most of them prefer it here.”
“And the others?”
“The others?” he says. “Well, we have quite a collection. That one there, the one in green, she’s a sociologist. Or was. That one was a lawyer, that one was in business, an executive position; some sort of fast-food chain or maybe it was hotels…
From The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood
One of the more insightful scenes in Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, is the moment when the protagonist, Offred, is taken by her master to a brothel. In the Christian Dominionist society envisioned by Atwood, the brothel is a secret perk enjoyed by men of especially high rank. It is staffed by women who, before the revolution, were either prostitutes or high achievers. The Commander, Offred’s master, points the latter out to Offred in the manner of someone identifying trophy heads on a wall.
Has a woman defied sexist assumptions about female intelligence and accomplishment? Has she, (God forbid) argued with you? Said things you don’t like? How better to put her in her place than by stripping her of her dignity? Take off her clothes and put her in a thong. Force her to fake sexual excitement, an orgasm, to at last say the kind of things you want to hear instead of the uppity, wrong things she was saying before.
We don’t live, thank goodness, in the Republic of Gilead, so forcing uppity, high achieving women to do these things isn’t a real option. Not without risking a long prison term. What’s left is photoshop.
Forget all that crap about graphics like the one of Nancy Pelosi recently posted to Breitbart being “satire.” It’s not about making some sort of amusing, succinct political point. It’s about degrading a disliked woman, forcing her into an image the sexist finds comforting.
Any woman of sense and experience recognizes it for what it is -- a scream of pure fear.
*
“And the others?”
“The others?” he says. “Well, we have quite a collection. That one there, the one in green, she’s a sociologist. Or was. That one was a lawyer, that one was in business, an executive position; some sort of fast-food chain or maybe it was hotels…
From The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood
One of the more insightful scenes in Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, is the moment when the protagonist, Offred, is taken by her master to a brothel. In the Christian Dominionist society envisioned by Atwood, the brothel is a secret perk enjoyed by men of especially high rank. It is staffed by women who, before the revolution, were either prostitutes or high achievers. The Commander, Offred’s master, points the latter out to Offred in the manner of someone identifying trophy heads on a wall.
Has a woman defied sexist assumptions about female intelligence and accomplishment? Has she, (God forbid) argued with you? Said things you don’t like? How better to put her in her place than by stripping her of her dignity? Take off her clothes and put her in a thong. Force her to fake sexual excitement, an orgasm, to at last say the kind of things you want to hear instead of the uppity, wrong things she was saying before.
We don’t live, thank goodness, in the Republic of Gilead, so forcing uppity, high achieving women to do these things isn’t a real option. Not without risking a long prison term. What’s left is photoshop.
Forget all that crap about graphics like the one of Nancy Pelosi recently posted to Breitbart being “satire.” It’s not about making some sort of amusing, succinct political point. It’s about degrading a disliked woman, forcing her into an image the sexist finds comforting.
Any woman of sense and experience recognizes it for what it is -- a scream of pure fear.
*