Refuting Conservative Dogma...Yet Again: Why do people pretend The Handmaid’s Tale is about white men, when it perfectly mirrors Islam?
On Quora, N.J. Aubin asks: Why do people pretend The Handmaid’s Tale is about white men when it perfectly mirrors Islam? My reply: Let me turn this around and put this in its proper perspective, okay? Why do white men who also identify as Christians pretend that The Handmaid’s Tale is about Islam when it’s perfectly clear what Margaret Atwood’s authorial intent is? First off, if Margaret Atwood had wished to tell her dystopian novel about a near-future America where the government was annihilated and a particularly strict branch of Islam had declared an Islamic Caliphate and renamed Washington, DC into New Al-Andalus, she would have. But she did not. She wrote about the creation of a radical Christian nation governed by white Christian males where men are at the top of the power structure, and women are either their powerful but sterile helpmates and others - the handmaidens - are there to be used to breed future citizens of the Republic of Gilead. Lo...