The Handmaid's Tale.

Name: The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood.

Type: Book

Written in: 1985

Set in: At a guess, probably right about now.  I'm kind of pushing it - 2015 might be a safer date - but what the heck.  Definitely the coup should have happened already.

Why it's a dystopia: Extreme - extreme - gender repression, coupled with all the rigorously accurate and scientific depiction of ecological/nuclear disaster that we've come to expect from liberal arts majors.  A good deal of racism, also (including a soupcon of the usual petulance from the Left that modern Evangelical Christianity has found good, sound, Biblical reasons to avoid anti-Semitism like the plague). Oh, and there's like, heavy infertility and so forth (note the previous sneer about liberal arts majors*).

Why it's significant: It is widely rumored that (at least during the latter 80s/early 90s) proof of possession of this book be demonstrated by any individual seeking a bachelor's degree or higher in Women's Studies.  It also got turned into a movie, which was also apparently required watching.  And, to be fair, on a technical level it's fairly well-written.

What happened? Well, two things, essentially:

1. Margaret Atwood, while a decent writer, has an untreated case of Canadian's Disease: which is to say, she thinks that she perfectly understands the motivations and drives of every facet of every demographic of every sub-culture found inside the United States of America.  This is normally not much of a problem, per se, except when...
2. ...a sufferer of Canadian's Disease happens to hate one particular sub-culture anyway.  In this case, popular evangelical Christianity, which is why apparently we were all supposed to have come under the grips by now of a totalitarian group of fanatical Old-Testament social conservative misogynists with a nigh-literal lust for power.  Meanwhile, out in the real world, white evangelical groups instead went off funding AIDS prevention programs in Africa, assisting Christian Chinese against widespread religious-based persecution, and winning elections that unaccountably did not result in theocratic terrorist regimes.

More to the point: every social conservative I know is far too terrified that his wife will figure out that she's far too good for him for him to even think about going for this kind of patriarchy gig.  Seriously.  Once you drill down the damn Religious Right is practically a functional matriarchy**.

Hey.  Look around.  Remember, the point of this site is that this is stuff that was confidently and plausibly (to some people, at least) expected to have happened by now.   And no, it didn't happen because Margaret Atwood or anybody else wrote a book, either.  Margaret Atwood had and has virtually no influence over Evangelical Christianity; its members decided to refrain from a theocratic coup all on their own.

Moe Lane

*I am one, yes.  Which means that I know what I'm talking about then, huh?

**I exaggerate, but then: so did Margaret Atwood.

Comments

[Blast Hardcheese]

Even though I'm an agnostic libertarian, I never bought into the "OMG, look out for dem Christians" nonsense. 9/11 just strengthened that stance.

It's probably because I was raised Lutheran. Good people, and definitely not what you would call 'fire-breathing despots'.

[Dan B]

Blast, Lutherans, when gathered into groups, tend to be more concerned with when, exactly, are the adult beverages being being brought out. You have to love that about us, Lutherans never had any truck with that "prohibition" nonsense.

[Rob Crawford]

"Blast, Lutherans, when gathered into groups, tend to be more concerned with when, exactly, are the adult beverages being being brought out."

Catholics, of course, have already found the bar and jimmied the locks.

(I speak from experience.)

[Rob Crawford]

Because I was raised one, I should add.

[Blast Hardcheese]

And, of course, next question after 'where are the adult beverages' is 'who's brought what to the potluck'

Mmmm...tuna casserole...

[Wombat-socho]

Niiiice. Looking forward to future posts.

[Calvin]

Personally, I couldn't get past page 50 of the book...I was just giggling too much. I know I was supposed to take it seriously and, as a conservative Evangelical, even be offended but it was so over the top, I really wonder if she meant it as parody.

Perhaps the big difference is that the worst conservative Christian theocracies in our current age comes from a work of fiction. The 100 million dead from atheistic, leftist societies...well, that's reality.

[Cromulent]

Raised Catholic, and joined ELCA (ugh) at the direction of my wife.

Catholics hit the sauce waaaaay faster than the Lutherans.

[Robert A. Hall]

I read “The Handmaiden’s Tale” several years ago, and found it mildly entertaining. It led me to write a short story, “The Supervisor’s Tale,” about a future “gynocracy” with fundamentalist feminists firmly in charge of submissive worker-bee males. Free copy to anyone on request.

Mo, I’d be happy to send you a PDF or hard copy of my own new apocalyptic prediction book for review. It’s entitled “The Coming Collapse of the American Republic: And what you can do to prevent it.” (All royalties go to a charity to help wounded vets, not to me.) You can write to me at:
tartanmarine(at)gmail(dot)com.

Robert A. Hall