# Does Anybody Actually Find "A Handmaid's Tale" Remotely Plausible? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 27, 2017, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-actually-find-a-handmaids-tale-remotely-plausible/785357 "2017-04-27T13:09:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 14
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2017, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-actually-find-a-handmaids-tale-remotely-plausible/785357/261 "2017-11-05T17:58:01Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > The appeal of The Handmaid’s Tale is that some people simply like to fancy that things are much worse, or will be much worse, nationwide, than they really are. They love imagining how awful something will be. They \*like \*bad. > > It reminds me of right-wingers who claimed Obama was a socialist Muslim who’d take everyone’s guns away. I think at some point they were \*disappointed \*that Obama didn’t turn out to be anything like that. Novels (or TV series) like this _exaggerate_; their stories should be interpreted as _allegories_. Consider Orwell’s _1984_. Eaxaggeration? Yes. **But we are already in the era of _doublethink_, with White House aides proudly speaking about “Alternate Facts.”** Real dystopia arises _ **much more insidiously** _ than in _Handmaid’s Tale_. To say “No, our coming dystopia won’t go down exactly like that” is to miss the whole point of the allegory. > [@ZPG\_Zealot](#): > > I think you’re dangerously underestimating how much the anti-abortion has achieved. It’s easier for a pregnant woman to get a handgun and shoot herself in the stomach than get a safe abortion in many parts of the country already. > [@yanceylebeef](#): > > Our Vice President won’t eat dinner with a woman without a chaperone. Won’t be in a room with a woman who is not his wife. He calls his wife Mother. We have elected officials who quote scripture to justify policy. Atheists are slightly better regarded than Muslim’s in this country. > > The Handmaid’s Tale isn’t speculative for them. IMHO it’s how they would like to see this country run. > [@madmonk28](#): > > We just elected a president who has tried to ban Muslims from entering the country and who has a prominent white nationalist on his staff. Our Vice President finds women so wicked he will not be alone in the presence of one who is not his property, I mean wife. Our last president was pilloried for eight years by the right wing for suspicion of not being a Christian, but actually a secret Muslim. Red state America has been rolling back access to abortion, teaching abstinence only sex education that has been proven to not decrease teen pregnancy and rewriting history books to refer to slaves as immigrants. Just this week, New Orleans had to remove a statue dedicated to white supremacy in the dead of night under police protection. You really need to pay more attention. > [@TruCelt](#): > > It’s not so far removed from what happened to the women of Iran when the Shah took over. And there are women and girls on FLDS compounds who are living something very similar right here in the USA. > > When I was a kid, in the '70s,a woman couldn’t get a home loan or car loan without a co-sign from either her father or husband. > [@msmith537](#): > > Pretty much all dystopian futures - A Handmaid’s Tale, 1984, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, Harrison Bergeron, Soylant Green, The Hunger Games are actually pretty silly. They usually take one or a couple of aspects of our culture or modern problems we are concerned about, then extrapolates them to their logical absurdity. Novels (or TV series) like this _exaggerate_; their stories should be interpreted as _allegories_. To call them “silly” is to ignore the value and importance of such allegories. > [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > I don’t think that immunizes you as much as you suggest. The U.S. has ever-present elements of: > > 1. Love for strongmen > 2. Puritanical hatred of perceived sinners and weaklings > 3. Vulnerability to exploitation of patriotism > > A sustained environmental/economic crisis allowing all the above to run unchecked, and we’d see the U.S. unraveling pretty quickly, I expect. The chances of Atwood’s vision coming to pass are indeed remote. I’m cheerfully willing to say _very_ remote. Impossible? No. > [@Muffin](#): > > The purpose of Atwood’s dystopia is not to predict what the USA will become, but rather to point out aspects of culture that, if left to their own devices, will continue harm people – woman in particular. Plausibility isn’t relevant. What is relevant is if the text/vid makes a reader/viewer think about how the inequities of the artistic work present aspects of culture that should be changed. > > For example, The Handmaid’s Tale illustrates, _et alia_, the harm that comes from women not having control over their own bodies, so the person reading or viewing The Handmaid’s Tale will think about that issue and then apply it to contemporary circumstances, such as the religious based push in the USA to restrict women’s control over their own bodies. That the USA will never become a literal Gilead is meaningless. Yes. > [@Lemur866](#): > > … And that smashes the contention that hey, Donald Trump may be a pig, but his Hugh Hefner style male chauvinism is incompatible with the right-wing theocratic version of male chauvinism. And to that I say, who did self-identified Christians vote for overwhelmingly? I forget–was it the guy who bragged about grabbing women by the pussy, or not? Oh, yeah, it was. Christians are very comfortable with the idea that sexual activity is horribly horribly sinful–for women. For men, not so much. Donald Trump has literally discarded his former wives for younger more fertile concubines, and Christian America is completely fine with it. Do they want their daughter or sisters to be one of Trump’s whores? No, but they’re fine with whores being whores. A whore deserves what she gets. If the Trumpistas are taking us to a dystopia, _ **I think it will be very different from the dystopia depicted in this TV series** _ (which I’ve just started watching a few days ago). However, although those _details_ are very different, the show highlights for me the dangers of America’s political degradation. How far are we, really, from lynchings of gays? ---
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2017, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-actually-find-a-handmaids-tale-remotely-plausible/785357/262 "2017-11-05T19:10:27Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > If the Trumpistas are taking us to a dystopia, _ **I think it will be very different from the dystopia depicted in this TV series** _ (which I’ve just started watching a few days ago). However, although those _details_ are very different, the show highlights for me the dangers of America’s political degradation. How far are we, really, from lynchings of gays? Further than we were 20 years ago. Not that that’s really saying _that_ much, but on gay rights we’re not exactly going that far in the wrong direction. ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2017, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-actually-find-a-handmaids-tale-remotely-plausible/785357/263 "2017-11-06T03:50:27Z")
> [@Balthisar](#): > > Not only that, their religion would prohibit it. The Ceremony could easily be skipped, too, but artificial insemination is not in God’s plan. Yep, artificial insemination, IVF, and even any form of prenatal testing (like ultrasounds) are prohibited in Gilead for religious reasons. The regime would won’t even admit to the possibly of male sterility (at least openly, they conveniently allow Handmaids to have unchaperoned appointments with make physicians in rooms with locking doors). Even if the fertility crisis isn’t just confined to North America the rest of the world seems to be doing a lot better than Gilead and I think at least part of that is a lack of ideological prohibitions on technological solutions. At the very least neither Canada or Mexico have stripped women of legal personhood. Yet at the same time Mexico is exploring buying Handmaids from Gilead, and it’s not hard to imagine how life could even worse for Handmaids in a society without Gilead’s borderline schizophrenic desire to put on pedestals while keeping them enslaved. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2017, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-actually-find-a-handmaids-tale-remotely-plausible/785357/264 "2017-11-06T20:41:18Z")
> [@Martini\_Enfield](#): > > That’s true, but still a long way from the religious theocracy police state shown in THT. Everyone has female friends and relatives. It’s pretty hard to “other” an entire half of the population, especially when members of that half are directly responsible for your very existence. America is dominated\* right now\* by a political faction that hates women and elected a known sexual predator. Plenty of people find it very easy; and in a dictatorship those who disagree can just be killed. If anything, such a dystopia could be significantly _worse_ towards women than _The Handmaid’s Tale._ ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2017, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-actually-find-a-handmaids-tale-remotely-plausible/785357/265 "2017-11-07T00:14:58Z")
I agree with the analysis that many people tend toward gloom and doom. The “wrong track” numbers in polls, for instance, are unmoored from realities about standard of living and crime. And how many people understand that we are living in a world with less violence, hunger, and extreme poverty than at any time in recorded history? > [@septimus](#): > > How far are we, really, from lynchings of gays? As \*\*BPC \*\*says, this is a strikingly odd example to offer. We are very far now. Are you quite young? Are you unaware of the huge shifts in polling about homosexuality in the past couple decades? > [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > America is dominated\* right now\* by a political faction that hates women and elected a known sexual predator. Classic “half empty” alarmism. What else is happening “right now”? Scads of prominent men who got away with predatory behavior for years are being outed, and fired. How does that fit into your narrative? ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2018, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-actually-find-a-handmaids-tale-remotely-plausible/785357/266 "2018-02-26T14:33:42Z")
I have watched three episodes now, and I find myself able to suspend disbelief for the so-called present day of the show wherein society has already transformed. Then it’s like “Game of Thrones” in terms of a patriarchal society that operates as an alternate reality version of redeemable Europe. Not actually our world, but with some familiar parallels. When they go back and show the coffee shop now has a male barista who calls two women customers sluts and tells them to leave, or when they are dismissed from their jobs, it just doesn’t work. The transition they are portraying does not ring true. ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2018, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-actually-find-a-handmaids-tale-remotely-plausible/785357/267 "2018-03-04T02:39:33Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > I have watched three episodes now, and I find myself able to suspend disbelief for the so-called present day of the show wherein society has already transformed. Then it’s like “Game of Thrones” in terms of a patriarchal society that operates as an alternate reality version of redeemable Europe. Not actually our world, but with some familiar parallels. > > When they go back and show the coffee shop now has a male barista who calls two women customers sluts and tells them to leave, or when they are dismissed from their jobs, it just doesn’t work. The transition they are portraying does not ring true. That was my point earlier in the thread - it just didn’t work because it went from “Life right now” to “American Taliban” far too quickly and unbelievably. ---
**Author:** ![j666](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9de0a6/32.png) [@j666](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/j666)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2018, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-actually-find-a-handmaids-tale-remotely-plausible/785357/268 "2018-03-04T03:12:35Z")
> [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](#): > > Further than we were 20 years ago. Not that that’s really saying _that_ much, but on gay rights we’re not exactly going that far in the wrong direction. Marriage is a conservative value and gay rights benefit men, though of course not exclusively. > [@Martini\_Enfield](#): > > That was my point earlier in the thread - it just didn’t work because it went from “Life right now” to “American Taliban” far too quickly and unbelievably. I think we descended into this quagmire of hatred and prejudice pretty quickly. People chanted “Jew get out” at campaign rallies for the man who elected, openly, on the news; people knew this. You do grasp that there are women in the US now with no real access to reproductive control? Actually, or to reproductive health care. Today. Here, a supposed “first world” country. Yes, people can turn toward hatred pretty quickly. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2018, 4:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-actually-find-a-handmaids-tale-remotely-plausible/785357/269 "2018-03-04T04:11:40Z")
> [@Martini\_Enfield](#): > > That was my point earlier in the thread - it just didn’t work because it went from “Life right now” to “American Taliban” far too quickly and unbelievably. Totally. (BTW, I see from your quote that I was using voice to text and didn’t catch that it mistook “medieval” for “redeemable”.) Chicken Littles like the one right between your post and mine look at Republican success in more thinly populated areas and translate that in their minds to a much more extreme ideology, and also imagine that it could take root in big cities like the one we saw the main character worked in. This kind of hysterical paranoia is equivalent to the people on the right who were willing to believe that Obama was preparing to round people up and make prison camps out of Walmarts so he could take away everyone’s guns and make them all gay or something. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2018, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-actually-find-a-handmaids-tale-remotely-plausible/785357/270 "2018-03-04T04:13:42Z")
Sorry for the double post but I don’t see any way to edit in this Tapatalk app. I wanted to mention that I’ve heard quite a number of critics say that the flashback scenes were the most powerful to them, and I just cannot relate to that at all. These must be people psychologically prone to catastrophizinh about political events. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2018, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-actually-find-a-handmaids-tale-remotely-plausible/785357/271 "2018-09-25T18:07:15Z")
I’m very late to the thread — I just watched Season 1 and started Season 2. I have a question: The TV show seemingly depicts one “side” in America’s culture war in a very bad light. _Has there been much backlash against the show from the religious right?_ ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Borgia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_borgia/32/156_2.png) [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2018, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-actually-find-a-handmaids-tale-remotely-plausible/785357/272 "2018-09-25T19:38:10Z")
I haven’t seen the show, but in the book there was a terrible ecological catastrophe which caused, among other things, most women to become infertile. (Hence the handmaidens.) This created the atmosphere which allowed Gilead to seize power. Is this in the series? Because it isn’t like the relatively prosperous US suddenly changed. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2018, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-actually-find-a-handmaids-tale-remotely-plausible/785357/273 "2018-09-25T22:21:34Z")
There was no sign of that aspect in the series where I left off. Maybe they got to it later? All they established in the flashbacks I saw was that the Capitol got bombed by “terrorists” (it was implied that there was a false flag operation involved, like the German Reichstag in the 1930s), and the government was given broader powers…or maybe there was a coup? But the upshot seemed to be simply that the Christian Right took over the federal government, in conjunction with their misogynistic patriarchal ideology taking root among a seemingly larger portion of the population (especially the urban population) than holds those beliefs now. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2018, 2:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-actually-find-a-handmaids-tale-remotely-plausible/785357/274 "2018-09-26T02:36:37Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Classic “half empty” alarmism. What else is happening “right now”? A rapist is probably about to be put onto the supreme Court, for one. We’ve passed the peak of civil rights, and are headed straight down into the abyss. \*The Handmaid’s Tale \*will likely to prove to be overly optimistic about the future, not pessimistic. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2018, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-actually-find-a-handmaids-tale-remotely-plausible/785357/275 "2018-09-26T03:27:34Z")
> [@JRDelirious](#): > > The phrase that totalitarianism in the US would arrive clutching a bible and wrapped in the flag dates from the 30s. > **[Did Sinclair Lewis Say This About Fascism in America?](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/sinclair-lewis-on-fascism/)** > > Nobel Prize-winning author Sinclair Lewis allegedly warned that when fascism comes to America it will be "wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." Yes and no. No, in exact text. Yes, in sentiment. ETA: Forgot I was reading the first page of a six page thread. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2018, 4:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-actually-find-a-handmaids-tale-remotely-plausible/785357/276 "2018-09-26T04:47:52Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > The TV show seemingly depicts one “side” in America’s culture war in a very bad light. _Has there been much backlash against the show from the religious right?_ One presumes that the religious right has gotten used to being almost unanimously depicted in a negative way on television over the past several generations, and would have no reason to create a backlash against this show rather than countless other shows. ---
**Author:** ![madmonk28](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madmonk28/32/20811_2.png) [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2018, 10:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-actually-find-a-handmaids-tale-remotely-plausible/785357/277 "2018-09-26T10:40:29Z")
Actually, they probably thinks it’s a family sitcom. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2018, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-actually-find-a-handmaids-tale-remotely-plausible/785357/278 "2018-09-26T12:28:27Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > We’ve passed the peak of civil rights, and are headed straight down into the abyss. \*The Handmaid’s Tale \*will likely to prove to be overly optimistic about the future, not pessimistic. More Chicken Little talk. One of the most powerful media executives, Les Moonves, just got ousted for decades-old allegations from women. Within the past decade, gay marriage was legalized nationwide, as was openly serving while gay in the military. Trump tried to ban transgendered people from serving in the military, and his own generals refused to obey their commander-in-chief’s order. Hardly anyone under 50 opposes gay rights, young urban women are out-earning their male peers, and older women marvel at how their coworkers who are under 35 or 40 simply refuse to take the harassment they considered par for the course in their own early careers. Meanwhile, the percentage of people who go to church regularly is dwindling with each passing year. Yet in the face of all this, extreme conservative religiosity is poised to make a roaring comeback and get women banned from working outside the home or even from having bank accounts? Or actually some unnamed scenario that’s much worse? Please. :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![JB99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/439d5e/32.png) [@JB99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JB99)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2018, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-actually-find-a-handmaids-tale-remotely-plausible/785357/279 "2018-09-26T13:23:32Z")
> [@Dangerosa](#): > > And yet, the Taliban managed to do it - quite successfully - in Afghanistan. > > Now, women in Afghanistan were never equal at the level of women in the West, but they were not required to be veiled, they held professional jobs. And then, they were stripped of rights. If their husband’s died, they starved because they couldn’t hold jobs. They were required to be completely covered. > > Its also been done very successfully in FDLS communities. Having actually been to Afghanistan, I find “The Handsmaid’s Tale” extremely plausible. ---
**Author:** ![madmonk28](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madmonk28/32/20811_2.png) [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2018, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-actually-find-a-handmaids-tale-remotely-plausible/785357/280 "2018-09-26T13:50:44Z")
Yeah, me too. Having worked in Afghanistan, including living there for several years and having in-laws in Arkansas, I think that the Handmaid’s Tale is woefully naïve and Pollyannaish in what religious fanatics are capable of doing to women in the name of family values. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-actually-find-a-handmaids-tale-remotely-plausible/785357.md?page=13) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-actually-find-a-handmaids-tale-remotely-plausible/785357.md?page=15)