“We lived..as usual, by ignoring...
Female genital mutilation, Westerners paying poor Indian women to mother their surrogate babies, sexually abusive nuns, expensive fertility treatment for rich career women who 'forgot' to have children, nuclear radiation fallout, Japanese wives who's only function in life is to shop and have sex, burqas, legalisation of prostitution, female infanticide, academic shortsightedness...
I am so glad Ms Atwood was given the gift to write. Without her brilliant, disturbing writing these issues probably wouldn't even get a look in. If feminism means basic human rights for females then I'm all for it.
Aside from that..in 'The Handmaids tale,' it must be said the men are equally trapped. It can't be said that Atwood is feminist in that she champions women over men, it is just she is writing from a female point of view. A trend I've noticed in Atwood's writing is the men are more or less emasculated, they are either afraid of women or bewitched by them...neither side seems to communicate with the other...maybe it's just me but I find it an curiously outmoded idea, probably belonging to earlier generations, that female and male are different species or different planets when in these enlightened times one would hope everyone realises that underneath it all we are all human.”
posted Saturday, June 14 2008