# 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:** 9
**Author:** ![Annoying\_Buzz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/eb8c5e/32.png) [@Annoying\_Buzz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annoying_Buzz)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2017, 8:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-actually-find-a-handmaids-tale-remotely-plausible/785357/161 "2017-04-30T08:34:55Z")
> [@Kimera757](#): > > I was wondering when this one would come up. Also the Taliban swiftly taking over (most of) Afghanistan. > > That kind of thing has happened in real life (Iran and Afghanistan being the most obvious examples). I doubt it could happen in the US. As soon as women could vote, the likelihood of something like that happening went from slim to zero. I suspect there wasn’t any voting after the assassination in the book’s backstory (but in real life, there is an Amendment to quickly select new leaders). I don’t think a theocratic military revolution is plausible in the US. It has literally happened in some countries though. It might not happen quite as swiftly in the US, but I would disagree that it couldn’t happen swiftly. I left the US in '95, and the change I saw from outside in American society after 9/11 was swift and dramatic. The immediate increase in fear. mistrust, and desire for authoritarian protection were shocking. America in 2017 is no longer the country I knew. All you need are enough fearful people, and the ones who thrive on manipulating them will have them begging for Gilead. ---
**Author:** ![Muffin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muffin/32/4341_2.png) [@Muffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muffin)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2017, 11:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-actually-find-a-handmaids-tale-remotely-plausible/785357/162 "2017-04-30T11:41:25Z")
> [@alphaboi867](#): > > One of the most disturbing things about the book was that it implied there volunteer Handmaids (ie fertile women so fanatical they volunteered for Handmaid duty instead of getting married). It disturbed me because it was so believable. To cook up _The Handmaid’s Tale_, Atwood takes a little of this reality and a little of that reality, in just the horrifyingly right proportions, to create a rich speculative feast from so many elements of our real world that, despite her novel as a whole being wildly alien to us, it makes us look at our society and think “What if?” > **[Lebensborn (Spring of Life)](https://spartacus-educational.com/Lebensborn.htm)** > > A detailed account of the SS breeding programme, Lebensborn (Spring of Life). GCSE Modern World History - Nazi Germany. A-level - Life in Nazi Germany, 1933–1945 > [@](#): > > SS Breeding Programme > > Leaders of the German Girls’ League (BDM) were instructed to recruit young women with the potential to become good breeding partners for SS officers. Hildegard Koch was an 18 year-old member of the BDM in Berlin. She later recalled that she always appeared in the front line during BDM parades. “The Gau Leader herself had picked me from amongst hundreds of girls. I was half a head taller than the tallest of them and had wonderful long blonde hair and bright blue eyes… Once I was photographed and my picture appeared on the tide page of the BDM journal Das deutsche Mädel.” (13) > > Hildegard was told by her BDM leader: “What Germany needs more than anything is racially valuable stock”. She said that “Heinrich Himmler had been charged by the Führer with the task of coupling a small elite of German women (who had to be purely Nordic and over five foot tall) with SS men of equally good racial stock in order to lay the foundation of a pure racial breed… We had to sign an undertaking renouncing all claims to the the children we would have there, as they would be needed by the State and would be taken to special houses and settlements for inter-marriage.” > > Hilegard was sent to an old castle near Tegernsee. “There were about 40 girls all about my own age. No one knew anyone else’s name, no one knew where we came from. All you needed to be accepted there was a certificate of Aryan ancestry as far back at least as your great grandparents. This was not difficult for me. I had one that went back to the sixteenth century, nor had there ever been a smell of a Jew in our family.” (14) > > Jean Schlösser, a young woman from Cologne, was also sent to Tegernsee: “At the Tegernsee hostel, I waited until the tenth day after the beginning of my period and was medically examined; then I slept with an SS man who had also to perform his duty with another girl. When pregnancy was diagnosed, I had the choice of returning home or going straight into a maternity home… The birth was not easy, but no good German woman would think of having artificial injections to deaden the pain.” (15) ---
**Author:** ![GrumpyBunny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bc8723/32.png) [@GrumpyBunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrumpyBunny)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2017, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-actually-find-a-handmaids-tale-remotely-plausible/785357/163 "2017-04-30T13:49:24Z")
Can you imagine Facebook and Twitter if this were to happen now? THAT would make for interesting conjecture. I’m watching the first episodes today so no spoilers please if this is addressed in the Hulu show. ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2017, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-actually-find-a-handmaids-tale-remotely-plausible/785357/164 "2017-04-30T14:54:06Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > When was capital punishment ever banned USA-wide? > > Abortion - aren’t there still 1 million legal abortions every year? From 1976 through 1982, there were only seven executions in the USA, three years without any at all. In many states, it is virtually impossible in practice to get a legal abortion, because while they are not banned, they are regulated beyond accessibility. “Banned” by edict is not the same thing as “abolshed” in practice., and I never said executions were banned. The American people discontinued executions, then re-embraced it. Conversely, the American people accepted abortion as a circumstantial alternative, then in many states, obstructed it. ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2017, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-actually-find-a-handmaids-tale-remotely-plausible/785357/165 "2017-04-30T15:04:14Z")
The book is not about feminism, except as a marketing tool. Atwood described it as “a study of power, and how it operates and how it deforms or shapes the people who are living within that kind of regime”. The only reason it is pegged to feminism is because Atwood had the savvy to jump on the feminist bandwagon, which in the 1980s was sprialing up to a shrill crescendo. Exactly at a time when people were re-reading “1984” and discovering that it was about America, not the USSR. Plus she had the cachet of a woman-writer, with a willing and ready readership in place… All the ingredients of literary success. ---
**Author:** ![Muffin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muffin/32/4341_2.png) [@Muffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muffin)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2017, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-actually-find-a-handmaids-tale-remotely-plausible/785357/166 "2017-04-30T15:22:04Z")
All of Atwood’s novels are about feminism, including _The Handmaid’s tale_. She did not jump on a bandwagon. I encourage you to read her works chronologically. [Recognition and Rejection of Victimization in the Novels of Margaret Atwood](http://my.tbaytel.net/culpeper/RecognitionAndRejectionOfVictimizationInTheNovelsOfMargaretAtwood.html) > [@](#): > > Margaret Atwood began to publish her fiction in the late 1960s, when ‘consciousness raising’ was at its height. By the early 1970s, she had published her initial two novels and her critical manifesto, _Survival_. For example, in 1972, when Atwood published Surfacing and Survival, Sheila Rowbotham published Women, Resistance and Revolution, a landmark feminist text. Throughout her oeuvre, Atwood has tried to raise the public’s awareness of women’s position in society. In all her novels, Atwood is concerned with women’s victimization. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2017, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-actually-find-a-handmaids-tale-remotely-plausible/785357/167 "2017-04-30T15:54:26Z")
> [@jtur88](#): > > feminist bandwagon, :dubious: > [@](#): > > which in the 1980s was sprialing up to a shrill crescendo. :dubious: > [@](#): > > Plus she had the cachet of a woman-writer, with a willing and ready readership in place… All the ingredients of literary success. Of course it’s unthinkable that a skilled and popular novelist who has managed to be successful despite inherent societal and institutional obstacles based on her merit. It must be because she took advantage of easily manipulated, soft-brained feminists. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2017, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-actually-find-a-handmaids-tale-remotely-plausible/785357/168 "2017-04-30T15:58:20Z")
> [@jtur88](#): > > Exactly at a time when people were re-reading “1984” and discovering that it was about America, not the USSR. In addition the all the other wrong stuff in your post, 1984 was never “about the USSR.” ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2017, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-actually-find-a-handmaids-tale-remotely-plausible/785357/169 "2017-04-30T17:13:58Z")
> [@jtur88](#): > > Exactly at a time when people were re-reading “1984” and discovering that it was about America, not the USSR. It wasn’t about either - Orwell was writing from the perspective of the British colonial and bureaucratic system, of which he’d been a part. ---
**Author:** ![raventhief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/raventhief/32/4_2.png) [@raventhief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raventhief)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2017, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-actually-find-a-handmaids-tale-remotely-plausible/785357/170 "2017-04-30T17:22:11Z")
> [@jtur88](#): > > The book is not about feminism, except as a marketing tool. Atwood described it as “a study of power, and how it operates and how it deforms or shapes the people who are living within that kind of regime”. The only reason it is pegged to feminism is because Atwood had the savvy to jump on the feminist bandwagon, which in the 1980s was sprialing up to a shrill crescendo. Exactly at a time when people were re-reading “1984” and discovering that it was about America, not the USSR. Plus she had the cachet of a woman-writer, with a willing and ready readership in place… All the ingredients of literary success. Are you kidding me with this? ---
**Author:** ![Muffin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muffin/32/4341_2.png) [@Muffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muffin)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2017, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-actually-find-a-handmaids-tale-remotely-plausible/785357/171 "2017-04-30T17:22:27Z")
jtur88, which of Margaret Atwoods’ works have you read? ---
**Author:** ![Sherrerd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sherrerd/32/8_2.png) [@Sherrerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sherrerd)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2017, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-actually-find-a-handmaids-tale-remotely-plausible/785357/172 "2017-04-30T20:51:26Z")
That post, dripping with resentment, embodies the reason that J. K. Rowling published her first detective novel under a male pen name. No doubt Rowling hoped that the work would be judged on its merits, with no condescension or aggrieved speculation about bandwagons and such. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2017, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-actually-find-a-handmaids-tale-remotely-plausible/785357/173 "2017-05-01T01:20:28Z")
By and large, when someone describes a woman as “shrill”, I assume he’s sexist. Especially if he’s describing written words. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2017, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-actually-find-a-handmaids-tale-remotely-plausible/785357/174 "2017-05-01T01:23:01Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > By and large, when someone describes a woman as “shrill”, I assume he’s sexist. Especially if he’s describing written words. Not only sexist, but also misogynist. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2017, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-actually-find-a-handmaids-tale-remotely-plausible/785357/175 "2017-05-01T03:15:45Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > By and large, when someone describes a woman as “shrill”, I assume he’s sexist. Especially if he’s describing written words. Valerie Solanas and the SCUM Manifesto would qualify. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2017, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-actually-find-a-handmaids-tale-remotely-plausible/785357/176 "2017-05-01T03:58:40Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > Valerie Solanas and the SCUM Manifesto would qualify. Well there you go. You’ve discovered one shrill woman, and therefore feminism is over. You’ve won! Back to barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen for all those bitches. ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2017, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-actually-find-a-handmaids-tale-remotely-plausible/785357/177 "2017-05-01T04:52:43Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > In addition the all the other wrong stuff in your post, 1984 was never “about the USSR.” But it was widely interpreted, by western readers, to be a warning about the Soviet model , which Orwell was very aware of. The fact that Orwell never used the word “USSR” in the text of the novel is not proof that he did not have that in mind. Why don’t you itemize “all the other wrong stuff” in my very short post, to give your attackee a chance to respond to it? ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2017, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-actually-find-a-handmaids-tale-remotely-plausible/785357/178 "2017-05-01T05:23:03Z")
> [@Muffin](#): > > jtur88, which of Margaret Atwoods’ works have you read? You expect me to remember all the books I’ve read in the past 30 years? And your only basis of criticism of me is that I can’t? Most of them were not memorable enough for me to remember, and I consider he to be barely average among modern woman writers. partly because she does cater to a feminist, rather than mainstream readership. And partly because I don’t think she is a truly great writer. The last book by Atwood I read was “Hag Seed”, which I admit was quite good. And since I know you, or someone, is just dying to ask, I’d prefer to read Shirley Hazzard, Rachel Kushner, Elizabeth Gilbert, Ann Patchett, Zadie Smith, Herta Muller, Sarah Waters, Louise Erdrich, Anne Tyler, just to name a few who quickly come to mind. ---
**Author:** ![Beren\_Erchamion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/90ced4/32.png) [@Beren\_Erchamion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beren_Erchamion)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2017, 5:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-actually-find-a-handmaids-tale-remotely-plausible/785357/179 "2017-05-01T05:48:14Z")
> [@madmonk28](#): > > Do you think that Orwell thought _Animal Farm_ was actually going to happen, that animals were going to develop speech and then authoritarianism? > > I do think that the Christian right is the greatest threat to America and has been for decades. The Christian right is why we are not addressing climate change Well, the capitalist ruling class has more to do with _that_ particular one. ---
**Author:** ![Muffin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muffin/32/4341_2.png) [@Muffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muffin)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2017, 9:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-actually-find-a-handmaids-tale-remotely-plausible/785357/180 "2017-05-01T09:13:34Z")
> [@jtur88](#): > > You expect me to remember all the books I’ve read in the past 30 years? I have no expectations of you. Why you opine on Atwood without having read much if any of her works is of no particular interest to me. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-actually-find-a-handmaids-tale-remotely-plausible/785357.md?page=8) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-actually-find-a-handmaids-tale-remotely-plausible/785357.md?page=10)