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We Lived As Usual

  • Rage

“Is that how we lived, then? But we lived as usual. Everyone does, most of the time. Whatever is going on is as usual. Even this is as usual, now. We lived, as usual, by ignoring. Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.” Offred in The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

Last week, I finally sat down to watch The Handmaid’s Tale based on Margaret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian novel. While the television series was released seven years ago, I have not been able to bring myself to sit before it, neither in print nor on film, until now. This particular work, this tale of subjugation and violence against women, I could not open for fear it would feel too real. I was not wrong.

I have sat with too many women who have been violated in these ways, women who were reduced to bodies, stripped bare of feeling or choice. These women, these friends, were not unlike Atwood’s protagonist, Offred. In those unspeakable moments, they were diluted to just their physical form, Handmaids all of them, all of us. I have experienced this violation myself. I have been reduced to a body more times than I can recall. I do not wish to recall these times but only to warn that such dystopia is not so far away in some imagined work of fiction. It is right here. It always has been here, breathing just under the surface, leaking out in millions of ways upon millions of women. We have all been Offred in some form, though so many still confuse their oppressors with saviors, as does Atwood’s problematic character, Aunt Lydia.

“There is more than one kind of freedom,” said Aunt Lydia. “Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from.” “Freedom from” is exactly what they are selling now. Freedom from choice over our bodies. Freedom from loving our neighbors as ourselves. Freedom from learning the complicated truth of this place. Freedom from having to share. Freedom from making space for all religious beliefs and practices. Freedom from holding sacred this land beneath our feet. It is becoming clear: the “freedom” they desire is not for everyone, and that is how this all begins. “Nothing changes instantaneously. In a gradually heating bathtub, you’d be boiled to death before you knew it.” Offred, Season 1, Episode 3

Offred and the other women stuck inside this new world never sought to be boiled alive, but by the time they woke up to what was happening around them, it was too late. They were to be silent and celibate Wives upholding the hierarchy, Handmaids to serve as walking wombs, or Marthas responsible for cleaning and cooking – but there is one more sinister role residing within Aunt Lydia who trains the Handmaids and holds steady the reigns of their control. “Ordinary,” said Aunt Lydia, “is what you are used to. This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary.”

If we are not careful, it will all become ordinary again. Rights to our own bodies are peeled back layer by layer, state by state, law by law. Lack of access to medical care. Lack of access to contraceptive choice. Lack of access to books and basic knowledge of our own history. How ordinary will we allow this to become? How far backwards will we allow them to drag us by our hair?

The stacking of the Supreme Court and its subsequent overturning of Roe vs. Wade has laid the groundwork for all that comes next. We are already seeing the fallout as women across this nation are denied medical care in instances of miscarriage, need for emergency contraception, fertility treatments, unintended pregnancy, and rape. For a man who has prided himself on his sexual conquests and hyper promiscuity, the irony of Trump’s hand being the one to turn back this page in history is not lost on those paying attention. This is a man who perceives women as bodies or, sometimes, “unlikeable” faces resting atop bodies.

“Look at that face. Would anybody vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?” he mocked, referring to a female political opponent. He reduces women to animals using characterizations like “birdbrain” or “horseface” or “dog” or “Miss Piggy.” Even females he seemingly approves of tend still to be referred to in terms of their appearance, including his own wives and daughters. There is a litany of statements made by Trump that degrade and dehumanize women. They are nearly always focused on the female form, the features of a face, the shape of a body, whether that body is worthy of his gaze, or the way he can grab that body without consequence.

These are not accusations. These are quotes that Trump does not even care to deny. He knows enough voters are okay with reducing women to empty shells of skin and bone. He knows that the world isn’t as equitable as we pretend it to be. This has been proven over the past eight years as we have not only elected this man to run our country, but after having witnessed the devastation it caused for women, especially those within marginalized communities, we have somehow allowed it to happen again. Women are not safe under his watch. Nobody is.

I fear that Atwood’s tale of female subjugation is exactly what America, in its secret, ugly heart, actually craves. Slogans like “Make America Great Again” harken back to a time when women knew their very limited place and minorities did not threaten the racial hierarchy that white men (and women) have worked so tirelessly to engrain across every aspect of society.

Tomorrow, March 8th, is International Women’s Day, a globally recognized day highlighting women’s hard-fought achievements and promoting true gender equality – but when the sun breaks across the horizon tomorrow morning, are we further from or closer to where we were 40 years ago when Atwood first penned this terrifying vision? How many of us will willingly line up and vote to keep pulling us backward in the name of some false freedom? Another female literary pioneer, Maya Angelou, once said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” How many times we will let this man show us who his is before it’s too late? How hard have you been working to ignore it?

Ashley, Woman of a Certain Rage

Ashley

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