Opinion: Handmaids aren’t the avatar of the abortion rights movement
Women wearing handmaid costumes protest in front of the Alabama State House. By Molly Roberts Molly Roberts Editorial writer covering technology and society Email Bio Follow Editorial Writer May 17 at 8:29 AM Handmaids are everywhere these days.
The comparison has some power. The title character of Atwood’s creation, remade for millennials on Hulu two years ago, is treated as a human incubator. The laws that states are adopting this spring banning abortions at the first detection of a “heartbeat,” or prohibiting them outright as Alabama did this week, also yank any semblance of bodily autonomy away from women.
Yes, it can be uncomfortable to watch women don the garments of oppression as a way of arguing against it, even when the aim is reclamation. And yes, it’s odd to see so consequential a battle doubling as a Hulu marketing campaign. But there’s more to it: Seizing on any pop cultural trope as a political tool tends to flatten both the work that trope comes from and the world it’s supposed to be describing. And in this case, the flattening creates all kinds of confusion.
This muddle points to the larger flaw with leaning too heavily on handmaids to talk about abortion in today’s America. It is difficult to tell whether protesters are trying to say that the United States is on the road to becoming Gilead or whether they are trying to say that in the most important ways it has become Gilead already.
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