"There's a Special Place in Hell..."

DONT READ THIS POST UNTIL YOU'VE FINISHED THE HANDMAID'S TALE - SPOILERS!

I've been reading the many fascinating new thinkpieces and show reviews about The Handmaid's Tale as it's about to come out on Hulu, and two worth mentioning were in the New Republic and The Atlantic. Both the New Republic thinkpiece and the Atlantic review of the Hulu show made me think of that famous, often criticized Madeleine Albright quote "there's a special place in hell for women who don't help other women."

I thought of that quote because the authors of both articles play with the idea that the most vicious villains in The Handmaid's Tale are the women, not the men, referring to Serena Joy and the Aunts. The Atlantic piece states: The complicity of many wealthy women in the tyranny of Gilead is another aspect of the show that sharpens its topical relevance, particularly after an election in which a majority of white women voted against a female president. But casting women as co-oppressors in the novel, Atwood told me, was merely another way of remixing history. “They’re the roles that women have always played,” she said. If someone were creating Gilead from scratch, she said, the most intuitive thing to do would be to enlist women in the policing of it, offering them limited power over other women. “There are always takers for that.”

Sarah Jones, a former devout Christian who left the church partly because she read Atwood's book, in the brilliant New Republic essay writes: Serena Joy chose her life. Lydia is empowered to attack other women with a cattle prod. Both are proof that women are represented in Gilead’s power structure. If feminism is only about representation, choice, or some vaguely sketched notion of empowerment, it is difficult to say our Serena Joys and our Aunt Lydias are not feminists.

However, a few lines later Jones expands on this idea: A form of feminism that celebrates power for power’s sake, instead of interrogating how it is concentrated and distributed, will usher us into fascism. Feminism means something. Some choices oppress the women who make them, and some beliefs, if enforced, would oppress everyone else, too. Allow an antichoice woman to call herself a feminist, and you have ceded political territory that you cannot afford to lose. Stripped of political meaning, “feminist” becomes an entirely subjective term that anyone with any agenda can use.

In other words, individual women who have social power, agency, and decision-making abilities are not necessarily 'feminist'. The definition ought to be more complex and inclusive than that, or there's no point. (This connects to our class discussion a while ago about consumerist feminism and the rise of a culture focusing on the individual over social structures as damaging to feminism). The more we broaden the definition, the less it means, the less powerful it is, and the more repression we allow to creep into the so-called idea of feminism.

As much as I agree with both essays, (and with the sentiment behind Albright's quote, for the most part), something has been nagging at me about their argument that the female oppressors in Atwood's story are the worst. It seems almost un-feminist to engage in this classic act of blaming the females and holding them once again to a higher moral standard than the male oppressors. Of course Aunt Lydia and Serena Joy are despicable for their compliance and participation in this system and its creation, but they are trying to survive in a world with no options.

One of the most fascinating parts of the book to me is the historical note at the end where we receive some background on the creation of Gilead. Specifically on page 306, Atwood refers to the "top-secret Sons of Jacob Think Tanks, at which the philosophy and social structure of Gilead were hammered out." This really struck me the first time I read the book, since as a student of political science I couldn't stop thinking, 'holy sh*t, if a bunch of male religious leaders, academics, and politicians wanted to violently overthrow the US government and turn this into a authoritarian theocracy, it would totally start with a freaking think tank.' Seriously.

And I'm sure those Sons of Jacob meetings where the structure was decided would not have included any women. The Aunts and other women allowed to have some power were let in later in the process, most likely, and fooled into thinking they were part of the elite. To a point they were, but Serena Joy and the Aunts by virtue of their gender were never really trusted. That was the whole point after all.

There are a lot of complex ideas in the book and in Jones' essay and I'm still thinking them all through and making connections. The world of The Handmaid's Tale is complicated and filled with moral gray area, and so is feminism itself. Perhaps that's why the sentiment 'there's a special place in hell for women that don't help other women' rings true at first but also makes me a bit uncomfortable with its simplicity and implied moral absolutism.

Is there really no place in feminism or women's activism for pro-life women? What about women who wrote in Bernie Sanders in the general election because they genuinely believe Hillary Clinton was more dangerous than Trump? How comfortable should liberal feminists be in attacking and tearing down conservative women and how productive is that anyway? I don't know any of those answers, but I won't stop thinking about the questions.