Rev Left Radio - The Handmaid's Tale: Feminism, Fascism, & The Fractured Self

Episode Date: June 19, 2019

-THIS EPISODE DOES *NOT* CONTAIN SPOILERS- Speranza joins Breht to critically analyze "The Handmaid's Tale". Topics include: domestic abuse, patriarchy, Freud, theocratic fascism, white supremacy, class struggle, liberal idealism, and much more!  Find Speranza on Twitter @retroition Follow her collective @LCPCollective Here are some resources for people in abusive relationships, in need of reproductive healthcare, and more: - www.thehotline.org - www.plannedparenthood.org - www.womenagainstabuse.org  - www.thefriendshipcenter.org - www.mtlsa.org Outro Music: You Don't Own Me by Lesley Gore ----- LEARN MORE ABOUT REV LEFT RADIO: https://www.revolutionaryleftradio.com/ SUPPORT REV LEFT RADIO: www.patreon.com/revleftradio   Our logo was made by BARB, a communist graphic design collective! You can find them on twitter or insta @Barbaradical.  Intro music by Captain Planet. Find and support his music here:  https://djcaptainplanet.bandcamp.com --------------- This podcast is affiliated with: The Nebraska Left Coalition, Omaha Tenants United, Socialist Rifle Association (SRA), Feed The People - Omaha, and the Marxist Center. Join the SRA here: https://www.socialistra.org/  

Hello everybody and welcome back to Revolutionary Left Radio. On today's episode, we have Sparanza from our Radical Parenting episode back on to discuss the main themes in The Handmaid's Tale. Now, at the time of the recording, I had finished the first two seasons, and she had caught up with season three, episode four. These episodes are coming out currently at the moment, so they come out every Wednesday, and so we're sort of in between season three. but in any case whether you've seen the show or have not seen the show this will be a good sort of leftist take on the show and more than that we've made sure not to do any spoilers so if you have not seen the show and you're worried about spoilers

fear not we've made a conscious effort to not put those in this episode so you can definitely listen to this without having seen it and not have the show completely ruined for you we also have a new website revolutionary left radio.com on that website everything is there so you can find our patreon you can find red menace You can find our YouTube page, our Twitter accounts, et cetera. And so definitely go do that if you're interested. And if you like what we do here at RevLeft Radio,

you can support us at patreon.com forward slash RevLeft Radio. You get access to multiple bonus contents each month. And it's just a really great way to support the show and help me and David, who are struggling-ass working-class people, doing our best to survive. So, yeah, thank you so much for those who do support us. Having said all that, let's get into our episode with Sparanza on The Handmaid's Tale. This is my least favorite part.

I know, right? It's the hardest part for every single guest. It's so uncomfortable. It is. Oh, yeah. Okay. All right. I'm Sparanza.

I'm a student of sociology and legal research. I have been on the show before. I did an episode with Brett on parenting from the left. I'm a former Democratic organizer. I was radicalized in 2016. I'm a socialist activist these days. I'm also a mother partner. And as it pertains to this subject,

a domestic violence and sexual assault survivor. So I think that that's an interesting perspective to come at this from. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm really, really appreciative for you to come on and have this discussion, even though I'm sure at points, you know, I mean, before we started recording, you talked about how this can be very traumatic just to watch this show, especially for women who are survivors of the, you know, sexual assault and stuff like that.

So I appreciate you coming on and having this discussion. I wanted to talk about this because it's really timely. I know the show itself launched during the rise of Trump, and then the third season is just starting right now in the wake of a bunch of states, you know, passing what amount to basically bans on abortion for most women in those areas, which we'll get into in a little bit. Okay, so I've only watched the first two seasons,

and season three has already started. I think they're dropping the fourth episode tonight, the night of the actual recording. But you have actually not only seen every episode, including the newest ones, but you've also read the book as well. Is that right? Correct. Okay. So we'll get into a question about the book later on, but do you agree that we should keep this episode as spoiler-free as possible

since we know that a lot of people have not watched the series yet and might even be sparked to watch it based on this conversation? I do. I do agree. So we'll stay away from spoilers and try to cover the main themes without giving too much away. All right. So let's just go ahead and get into it. first let's just start off like you know wide angle bird's eye view of the entire show what about the series thus far do you appreciate the most so i think that there's a couple of things that really stand out to me um from a political analysis perspective the class struggle issue um is is super interesting to me that's maybe a little bit less obvious on the feminist themes the tension between the martha's and the handmaids is is one of the most fascinating

parts of the show, I think, because I think that it reflects a lot of the tension between different cultural groups and social groups in capitalism today, right now, and historically with racism and slavery and the ways that those classes of poor white people and enslaved people of color were pitted against each other in order to kind of prevent those oppressed classes from working together against that system that oppresses them. is something that's really loud in this show, but maybe gets buried a little bit by the more obvious feminist themes. So that's super interesting, and I appreciate that a lot.

And then the aunts are also a really interesting character and sort of subplot to me, because they're objectively oppressed by this system as well, but they're loyal to the oppressors and to the system that oppresses them and I feel like it's a really great allegory for the attention between the tension between the working class law enforcement

and then the rest of the working class. There are a number of points throughout the season where that relationship is put under a microscope and you're constantly kind of thrown back and forth between do these characters, the aunts who are essentially law enforcement actually care about these people that they're holding under a thumb and there are moments where you almost think that they do and then that gets ripped out from under you and I think that that's something

that that I hope that that's an intentional comparison that's that's being drawn and it seems like that's solidifying more as this the show goes on from a political analysis perspective that's I think the thing I appreciate the most about the series yeah for sure just some of my initial thoughts kind of taking a different angle on this question. I really do think it's a beautifully shot film, right? The cinematography, the very concentrated aesthetic, the use of colors to reflect roles and categories and broader themes. I found that very interesting,

and I love those sorts of aesthetic filmmaking techniques. I'm also really in love with the shallow depth of field that the show uses over and over again to give us a sort of sense of claustrophobia broadly, but also to attach us to the perspective of the protagonist, who is June, aka. Offred, you know, the, the camera's very tight on her face, and that allows Elizabeth Moss's like facial acting to just really, you know, take center stage. And she does so much wonderful acting just in the minutia of facial mannerisms. And I really appreciate that because this

shallow depth of field shooting technique could not work with an actress who did not have in my opinion that high level of ability to act with her face because so much of the acting goes on on that level and that the whole thing sort of gives you that that claustrophobic feeling that you know she feels in the fascist gilead you know that that sense of she's trapped in her own mind and being able to hear her thoughts you know when she's thinking internal thoughts out loud it really allows us to connect with the character because you can't say that stuff out loud. So I really loved it and the whole idea of only being able to have freedom in your thoughts under a totalitarian system I think is really interesting and the way that the series is shot

reflects that. And then lastly, I think broadly that it really is a critique of complacency and of the sort of people who say I'm not political, right? Like we know what June knows, especially in the first season, like the whole world of Gilead is really confined to what June knows and her flashbacks and her understanding of the situation. And you can tell before the whole thing happened that she wasn't very political, right? This whole thing must have been bubbling up for years and years to come to a head like this.

And she was just sort of complacently living her individualist life and taking care of her own little problems with their own friend and family. And then all of a sudden is, you know, a wash in this fascist dictatorship, basically. And so I think that broad critique of complacency. and this idea that you can possibly be apolitical, I think is another strong point of the show. Yeah, I think back to what

you were saying a moment ago about the way that the show uses color, I think that's a really interesting point. I was watching a thing with interviews with the producers that were talking about the costume design and the thought that went into deciding what colors to use. And a lot of that is in

the book that the wives wear blue, the Marthas were green, the handmaids were red, but specifically choosing exactly what shades of color and things worked, and they picked the red that they chose, partially to make it work with everybody's complexions, but also because it reflects the color of menstrual blood, which is an interesting point. But also, the blue is something that's super interesting to me, because I don't know if you know a whole ton about the history of the color blue in art, but blue has been historically a really difficult

color to manufacture. So it's usually reserved for depictions of royalty or of the Virgin Mary specifically. So that color is chosen for the wives to represent divinity. And I think it's a really interesting point. Those two colors, the red for menstrual blood and the blue for divinity, because one of the points that they're making is that women can be oppressed in different ways that that seem very different but ultimately end up being largely the same one is through being placed up on a pedestal and objectified that way and the other is being held down and used exclusively for their bodies which is another form of objectification as well absolutely yeah you can even take the color theme even further than that you know the whole idea of like the scarlet

letter you know being being something that you put on women you know who are seen as as sinful or you know quote unquote slutty or whatever um and the the handmaids are clearly used by the commanders in this series as sort of sex objects behind their wives backs right it's not only the the main family that we're with but we also get hints and clues of other handmaids being you know basically treated as you know forced prostitutes by the commanders in these different situations and it's really grotesque and so you know that does come to the front as well and then the marthas are in this sort of bland light green khaki color and you know i've heard people talk about that as like you know the martha's are the servants right they're the the women that are supposed to fade into

the background the wife and the handmade pop out uh in the in the commander's household but the servants are not to be you know heard or not to really be noticed they're there to blend in and become part of just the general you know housework or whatever that that's supposed to exist which really works from a the color perspective and then the name that they get martha is as i believe a biblical reference it's referring to um the character martha in the bible say character i think we can comfortably say character yeah in the bible who's who's um her lot in life is to work and do all of the things and and then there's you know debate about whether that's fair um but the point of this class of people as Martha's, and the color that they wear, the green is supposed to represent

cleanliness. And one of the things that they say is that they're cleansing themselves through work. So it's these three different types of women that are all being pitted against one another constantly because the Martha's resent the handmaids and the handmaids resent the wives and the wives resent the handmaids and everybody else. and that keeps them from working together to go, hey, wait a minute, this isn't super fair for any of us. But the point I think here is that there's all of these different lots in life

that they've been assigned. There's no freedom to it, and they're all being oppressed, regardless of whether they feel theirs is better than somebody else's or they're looking down their nose at the other. Yeah. They're all there together. They just don't notice immediately all the time. Absolutely.

Yeah, and that, you know, hard and fast categorizing of human beings into a hierarchy marked by the colors of the wardrobes they're forced to use, you know, is very fascistic and it's very much a way of naturalizing a socially constructed hierarchy, you know, of really reinforcing the categories that the fascist men, the patriarchy in this instance, wants women to fall into and not giving them any space outside of those very slim categories to exist in. And that leads into the other thing that I was going to say I appreciate a lot about this series, which is the normalization factor, how normal it all feels after a while. And that's something that's addressed both in the book and in the show. It doesn't take very long of being exposed to this constantly and beaten down with it before it just feels normal. It just feels like your day. And without getting too into the details, when people are able to get out. how hard it is to readjust to normal life and normal things feel bizarre like someone at some point is asked about their cholesterol level and that's the weirdest question that they've ever

heard in their lives what are you talking about yeah how is this an important thing to be talking about right now um and and from in in my experiences having been in a less than ideal situation um personally and having experienced domestic violence and oppression and I guess a stripping of freedoms and a depersonalization that way. How normal it really does all feel. So one of the things that I guess resonates with me the most is that because you can think, I think it's easy to look at people in those situations and go, how do you not just kill everybody? How have you not set this on fire a long time ago because it it's that's part of the the mind fuck that happens um it it um everything that's real outside stops existing after a while and then this is just

what is now um it's easier to fall into that than it would seem and it took me a really long time after leaving my situation to be able to fully i think reintegrate into the world and I remember um for me there was sort of a moment after I had left and it was probably six months or so and I was sitting in a parking lot and I went to put on my seatbelt and realized I was doing that because I didn't want to die and that's a cool progress and not because I felt obligated to do so or because I didn't have a choice but because I actively like wanted my now. That's, I think, a really strong theme for me as well, the normalization and then how how weird the real world feels. Yeah, absolutely. And I think Aunt Lydia, when they're first

getting into the Red Center and basically being given their roles as handmaids, she mentions, like, this will be your new normal now. And, you know, she sort of accepts that that's true about human nature almost, is like you put somebody into a situation that's totally new, but then you, you know, make them live in that situation over and over again. They will more or less, you know, quote unquote adapt but it's really just sort of learned helplessness and i think women in particular we've had thousands of years of being forced into stuff we don't want to do women are adaptable as hell we can we can adjust to damn near anything i don't think that that that's should necessarily be held up as a virtue oh hell no yeah but it's true right yeah and you know last point before we

move on to the next question is you just mentioned your own personal you know trauma in your own personal situation in an abusive relationship and one thing i haven't heard with regards to this show is that how it is sort of a macrocosmic society wide could be seen at least as a sort of metaphor for an abusive traumatic relationship that women are in right on a microcosmic level you know gilead could be on the level of an individual abusive relationship and the the the depersonalization the the normalization of abuse. Those all exist in that individual relationship context as well as in the broader societal one as portrayed in this series.

Absolutely. I know just quickly, when I got in touch with a therapist after I started realizing, oh, I mean, it took a while for me to actually be able to look back at things that had happened and go, oh, that was real, that was not good. That was really, that was not a normal thing that happened. And when I was finally able to do that, I thought, should probably get a therapist. So I did. And one of the things that my therapist said was that the first thing that she has domestic violence victims do is make a list of things that they like.

And just that broad, there's nothing specific about it. What do I like? And she said that invariably, it's hard to come up with five or ten. And when you can get up to like 50 things that you like just generally in the world, that's where she starts feeling like, okay, you're making a lot of progress here because that dehumanization and that depersonalization is so thorough. And there's a character in the show that you see that with. And she kind of snaps in and out of reality on and off because that depersonalization, I think, is the most effective tool that abusers have is stripping you of a sense of self to the point that you just stop existing even in your own mind. So the point that you made earlier about the only freedom that you have is, is in your

thoughts. That stops being true after a while, too. Damn. Yeah. Shit. All right. We're starting to show off heavy as fuck. But no, that's so crucial and so important. And, you know, what is cultural analysis if we can't use, you know, this, this cultural product to make real points and get real clarity about, you know, the real world situations that we live in? So I think that's so important. But moving on, what if any are your sort of primary critiques of the show? What does the show generally not get right or do poorly in your opinion? I think the lack of conversation about race is something that's frustrating. And I know that that's probably the most common critique that I've heard of both the book and of the series. And I think that that's fair. It's a very, very white

show. But I do, I think, see that starting to shift a little bit. We saw toward the end of the season two without, again, getting into spoilers, that shift toward at least a focus on, I mean, you're telling the story from the perspective of a privileged white woman who suddenly had her privilege ripped away. And you can't really shift that perspective too much. But there's more focus in the show on the ways in which she is holding on to that privilege, even in this situation and and I'm starting to see a little bit more criticism of kind of white feminism as it exists now and how it would exist in this situation as well even start to crop up so I'm hoping that they'll continue that trend but I think up to now that would that would be it the

lack of conversation about race issues yeah and it's not and it's not just that it's a you know quote unquote very white show and that pretty much all the main characters are white but I think it's also a reflection of sort of a broader liberal idealism or a liberal misunderstanding of what fascism is because, you know, fascism in a white supremacist settler colonial state, if it manifests at all, even a very patriarchal-centered theocracy like is shown in Gilead, there is no right-wing movement in the U.S. that would not be rabidly and virulently anti-black, very racial. The show is almost like post-racial in that the far-right Gilead fascist theocracy is polluted at least on the middle and lower levels of the sort of hierarchy by people of all different colors.

You know, men, black men are often used as like bodyguards in the show, but it just, it really shows a lack of understanding of U.S. history. I would say that in the book, there was less of that. And that was actually one of the criticisms of the book was that there really weren't. any white character, or excuse me, non-white characters in the book at all. But part of that was because I think she intended to acknowledge Margaret Atwood did that in this reality, these things would be separate. Like you wouldn't really see black handmates, likely. And I think that that's something that they change for the show.

I think from the interviews that I've listened to from the producers to increase, I guess, representation so people could different types. if people could see themselves in these characters. And I think that there's pros and cons that come with that. I appreciate that there's more representation, but also on the other hand, I think that it does do something to sort of water down this issue. That's a really super important part of how we would theoretically get there in the first place.

Exactly. Exactly. And the underside of that, right, not understanding sort of the settler colonial white supremacy roots of American society. The other side of that is this sort of liberal idealism, with regards to America as a freedom thing, right? Like me and my partner were watching the episode where they all sort of spontaneously break out

in like this pro-America... I forget they're singing the anthem or whatever. Like at a party, you know, in Canada as they escaped Gilead. And the idea I think that the show is trying to get across is that, you know, real America, little America is still here and that's still a bastion of democracy and freedom. And Gilead was sort of an anomaly, a sort of alien presence in what would otherwise be a very free and open

American society, but I think we on the left know very, very well that, you know, Gilead is just as American as anything else. And if we did have a fascist movement grow, you know, inside of this society and take over, that fascist movement would not at all be something alien to America. It would be an undercurrent that America has had since it's very founding and even well before it, you know, and I think that liberal idealism comes up a lot in the show. And I just, I just don't like it. but um it kind of is picky because i mean the racial thing isn't i mean that's a big part of it but again like this this whole pro america thing it is sort of subdued and it's only one or

two scenes that it kind of gets ruined but when me and my partner were watching that when they all broke out in the anthem or whatever like we just like audibly cringed like what oh like stop you know i would say i would say on on um liberal critique critique of liberalism uh that there is There is a point in the show where there's a free speech liberal who's defending a character, who I won't name, who's, it's before Gilead exists. And this person is speaking and trying to kind of rally people to this conservative cause, which is ultimately very gender roles focused eco-fascist system. It's all the domestic feminism, right? Something like that, yeah. So there's a point where there are all these protesters who are there saying,

you need to stop giving this person a platform. And the person who allowed them to speak says, but they still have free speech. I don't like it either, but, and then they all get booed. But ultimately, that's the voice that wins is that free speech liberal, we don't want to de-platform people because that's not fair, because all voices are the same, without having any real concept, because the person who's defending their right to speak is a white man doesn't really seem to fully grasp how much damage that sort of speech does.

And that it stops being a free speech issue. Anyway, so I felt like that was a gentle critique of some liberal talking points that we see today. exactly and you know it's worth re-saying like what is fascist free speech really it is the right for fascists to recruit and organized unencumbered right they only use words until they can possibly use violence and take over so allowing them those platforms is the way that you allow them to you know get their message out to more people recruit and organize a movement to eventually get to this level of depravity and in the moment these fascists do what is the first thing they do

take away free speech rights from the very same liberals who are crying about about theirs, you know, a couple months before. Yeah. All right. So I'll actually want to talk about characters a little bit because I think one thing that this show is so good on is just the range of actors and actresses and like every single character is just performed so well, in my opinion. So who are the, who are among the most interesting characters in your opinion and why are

you connected to them or otherwise fascinated by them? So my favorite character in the show hands down is Serena. The Searcy of Handma's Tale. Well, sort of, yes, yes and no. I think that she's a really interesting character to me for a couple of reasons, I guess, on a personal level, because I came from a really religious Pentecostal background initially. And up until my early 20s, really, really hardcore believed in some of the things that she talked about. And I at some point, thank God, had a change of heart. And I think that that mostly had to do with being in the world.

I was homeschooled for a decent part of my life and had access to just a very limited type of information. Because I've been in a position where I believed some of the things that she believed, I know what that feels like. And I think that that makes her maybe a tiny bit more sympathetic to me. But also, I appreciate how complicated she is as a character. That character development has been phenomenal, and how incredibly conflicted she is,

even about the things that she's doing. And as the story progresses and things start happening to her and around her, and stuff is starting to happen that's crossing over the threshold of what's acceptable for her, her looking back at the choices that she made to get not only herself here, about everybody here watching her experience, that emotional journey has been super fascinating. And I also see really, really strong similarity between her and some modern-day fascist leaders' wives.

I have in my free time done some studying of some of these people and I'm not going to name any names, but there's a particular person that I think, of when I think of Serena, who's the wife of a fascist leader. And she's an fascinating character to me as a real life person in a lot of similar ways. Because there's this strength and this voice that if she had used it for something other than this would have been incredible, but it went a different direction. And it's difficult for people to look at people who are doing bad,

things and acknowledge the strengths in them at the same time. And I think it can make it a lot more difficult to fight against those things. If you can't acknowledge the complicated good and bad of the people that you're trying to fight against, you're not very effective against them. I think that we have a tendency to try to create monsters out of people and think you are this thing and nothing else. but Serena is one of the architects of this horrific world, but she's also an incredibly strong person.

And if you can't acknowledge both of those things, you can't, first of all, use them for good later, but you also can't really, you can't fight against them particularly well. I think one of the issues that was dangerous early on is that they significantly underestimated her, and that allowed her movement to grow a lot faster than anybody really anticipated. And I see in this real life person some of those same things.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's fascinating. She's definitely one of my favorite characters as well. But, you know, personally, when I think of the most interesting characters, I am enamored anytime that Aunt Lydia comes on the screen. I think there's the same moral ambiguity and the same sort of conflict, the internal conflict that you see come in serena pops up an aunt lydia as well but she's also this very stern mother figure and she does both the stern part and the motherly part creepily well and the way

that she can go from you know violent abuser beating her subjects into submission to genuinely sympathetic person who seems very emotionally connected to the women and actually in some sense tries to protect them i mean that leaves me in a very morally ambiguous place with regards to this character you can see some real you know wonderful traits in this human being but she is also you know one of the most cold-blooded enforcers the violent henchmen of this fascist regime the commanders you know they rarely if at all have to get their individual hands dirty it's the ants it's that that job falls on the women you know and the role of the ants to get their hands dirty um on the on the handmaids and so i don't know i i found aunt lydia to be a particularly

fascinating character for some of the same reasons that I think you find Serena to be fascinating. Yeah, absolutely. I think, well, I think that Lydia to me, like I mentioned before, is just such a clear allegory for law enforcement in America. And that I've had experiences in my personal life where I had more faith in those law enforcement figures. And And the story that always comes to mind is a time when I had to actually crawl out of a window and then crawl into another window in order to get to a phone to call 911 because I was not able to leave.

And when police got there, they essentially said, well, we're sure that you're telling the truth, but we don't see any signs of struggle other than that you had to crawl in this window. So we're just going to go by. But on the other hand, when my ex-husband kind of turned those tables against me at one point, but from a money perspective, I spent a year in and out of court situations proving, and I eventually did that this was something that he was just using. He was using the law to punish me, essentially. And I think that that is, at the end of the day, Lydia's loyalty is not to the women. It's to the system.

She's not protecting them as individuals. She doesn't care about them as individuals. She cares about the system that they are necessary parts of. Do you think there's bursts, though, of her seemingly caring about the individuals? I think that there are. But I don't think, I think, I guess, I'm sure that my. experience has colored out a lot but the number of times that I had law enforcement officers look at me deeply sympathetically and saying if anything gets worse just give me a call

they're not going to do any they don't actually care they really want to feel that they do and they want you to feel that they do but at the end of the day they're not going to put their neck on the line for you ever absolutely and I think that that fact I think is reflected in like the stoning scene I'm not going to give characters away but You know, the way that Aunt Lydia, you know, somebody that's supposedly ostensibly, you know, caring for these girls so willingly will not only, you know, create a stoning situation, but make the girls themselves carry it out, really, you know, unerced that brutality and shows the sort of shallowness of any, you know, perceived or, you know, tried to omit sense of care for these girls. You know, it's all bullshit. And so in that sense, I think you're absolutely correct. And that character in particular, she had kind of a special bond with and stayed up.

at her bedside as she got well enough to be stoned. I think that that was just such a powerful imagery tool as well. Absolutely. Okay, so everything else aside from a purely feminist perspective, what does the show get right and where are its weaknesses with regards to feminism, in your opinion? All right. I think that one of the strongest points is something that I've brought up a couple

times now, but that enforced competition between women is something that's very present now and amplified significantly in this reality between the different classes of women and then between the women themselves. It's, oh, you can talk about this without getting too spoilery. The handmaids have walking partners and that constant tension of trying to figure out what's going on in that person's head. And invariably, there's this line that Offred says it's in the book, and it's said a few times throughout the series where she calls her walking partner in her head privately a pious bitch. And sometimes she's proven right and sometimes not.

But that competition and that tension between women, I think, is something that's done very, very well in the show from a feminist perspective. and then also shame as a tool and that works that works two ways if you're you're made to feel ashamed if not just everything you've done but everything that's happened to you and then that having experience that enables them to feel prideful and and empowered to shame other women because you know I've been through this and I'm fine so you're fine too so shut the fuck up and I think that that's that's that's a really common theme in the show as well and something that I see on message boards all the time on the internet is a meme that somebody shared with me

recently that I've been posting all over the place which is I promise not to take comfort in other women's struggle and I think that that's a really really powerful one in life and as it applies to this as well

all right so the last thing that I would talk about in this theme of things that they've done really well is there's this scene where a character is escaping, one of the handmaids, and the Marthas are assisting in that escape attempt. And there's this beautiful scene in the show where these Marthas, who are primarily women of color, are handing off this white handmade to the next one and the next one and the next one. And it's like, I feel like an underground railroad allegory. Definitely.

And a really, really strong allegory as well for the women of color who have laid down their lives over and over and over for the feminist cause, even when that has not been reciprocated by white feminists at all and certainly not adequately. And then those white feminists who continue to demand their place as the most important of the oppressed class, seemingly without realizing that without those women of color, they wouldn't go anywhere. And I think that there's this, there's a moment in that scene where this handmade who's escaping seems to acknowledge what is being done for her. And it kind of remains to be seen whether that's going to to impact the way that she interacts with them going forward. But I felt like that was as a single scene, but as something that I felt they had been building toward through most of the show, something that was really well done because it addresses the feminism. And feminist perspective and feminist concepts, but outside of the lens, even for a moment of white feminism, acknowledging, hey, you can't do shit without these people, maybe stop ignoring them.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, on a class perspective, just quickly, I mean, you're talking about the luxury of especially white women in the imperial core in the global north, living lives of relative comfort and luxury on the backs of the proletariat in the global south, which is. largely, you know, women of color. So for whatever flaws this show may have with regards to class and I think we'll get

into it a little bit, there's definitely an attempt there by somebody on the writing team to gesture towards it or perhaps maybe you and I are imposing it on it, but I don't think so because the imagery of that scene particularly was so clear cut and so obvious what it was referencing that it couldn't have just been a coincidence, you know? Yeah, absolutely. There's also these, from the idea of feminism here is like the Freudian concept of the Madonna and horror complex, you know, and yeah, so like the, the wives are, you know, seen as virtuous, but there's no sexual desire. At one point, Serena early in the series,

tries to even go down on, on her husband, and he stops her. But the, the handmaids on the other hand, while they're given socially the sheen of, you know, we're just doing this for religious reasons, and we have this whole thing called a ceremony because it's not really about lust. It's about procreation, right? But underneath that, is a clear, you know, sexual desire that the commanders have and can, you know, have a sort of release towards on the handmaids behind the scenes because they're so in control, because there's nobody that can outpower them. They, behind the scenes, they can, you know, use their handmaids in any way that they want

and then just toss them aside. And so separating women into very specific categories that appease men. And so men don't have to have, you know, multidimensional women, basically, women with, you know, all these different things, you know, in one person, they have to be sort of teased out and put into categories. You have the wife and slash mother. You have the reproductive sort of sex object. You also have the servants in the house doing the work. You have the aunts, as you alluded to, are sort of the violent arm of this whole fascist machinery. And then you have the unwomen who live in the labor colonies, basically. And so, yeah, what do you think about the whole Madonna horror complex

and how the show deals with how women are perceived by men in their, you know, male neuroticism or whatever. Well, if we're looking at it really literally as just men and women, I feel like it plays to the idea that the men are really threatened by the women. And when we see that multiple times, every time, even though Serena is ultimately the one who built this world, or at least one of the major players, and she was a voice. and that's been robbed from her and whenever she starts to we start to see echoes of that and there are these little like bursts of light in her where she gets to like do something again because she's really this very very smart person she just isn't allowed to exercise it anymore

and she has to kind of be fine with it because she created this her husband is threatened by it so, so threatened by it every single time. And that builds and gets progressively more intense throughout the series. And we say that with other women as well, or with the other wives, in particular, whenever they start trying to exercise a voice again, they are absolutely terrified, beaten, and then sometimes murdered as punishment for exercising that voice. And I think that that fracturing of womanhood, of you can't be all that you are. You can be one of these three things is a really great example of ways that men can do that sometimes. And we see it, I like to say that there's nothing louder than the injustice cries of a mediocre white man shouting about how he can't, women can't be given a chance because, and people of color can't be given a chance and nobody else can be given a chance.

And ultimately, it's because they know that they're mediocre. They know that they can't compete with the entire world. And the only way that they have what they have is because the competitive pool has been shrunken so significantly for them historically. So there's a point where Commander Waterford says, he asks, Offred, if she thinks the world is better. And she just says, better for who? And he says, well, better is never better for everyone. And that's so true. And I think that that's something that white men in particular,

but people who are benefiting from that patriarchal system as a whole feel from the opposite direction. In their minds, they're being really dragged down by being made to really compete with people that they're ultimately intimidated by. Yeah, incredibly, incredibly well said. Yeah, I could not agree more. And then before we go on to the next question, there's also, this whole idea of like the obsession of patriarchal and especially theocratic men with the concept of virginity and purity I mean the women in this show the wives they're infertile but literally what that results in is that they sort of have a baby vicariously through the handmaid without

ever having to engage in the sex act right it's sort of like separating reproduction from the actual act of sex by separating women into these different categories and And certainly I think that if there was a specifically theocratic flavor of fascism, those sorts of purity obsessions with regards to women would definitely become institutionalized in some fashion, if not in the exact way that they were in this show. Yeah, absolutely. And that's, again, back to my history with the Pentecostal movement, I was very much raised in a purity culture-focused household.

In fact, somewhere there exists a contract that I was made to sign when I was 14, promising my virginity to my future husband that is a real life thing my god yeah have you ever seen those pictures of the so that's very literal yes yeah have you ever seen the pictures of the dads with their with their daughters and in a bride's gown and you've ever seen that weird shit yeah yes i have we never we never had a purity ball but we did have a big a big ceremony we had a little um we had to wrap a little wooden block in white wrapping paper and with a bow and we're supposed to hold on to that. And someday when we got married, we were going to give that

to our husbands. It symbolized your purity or your virginity or whatever? Yeah, I guess. Right. Oh, you're Jesus. It didn't go well. But I appreciate what you're saying about the wives as these

Madonna characters. Because again, that brings up that the color thing, the Madonna and the whore, the red and the blue, the birth and sex as completely emotionless and then the opposite of that where there's this there's an emotional experience but no nothing physical to go with that so these this womanhood divorced from itself yeah yeah man you know and this leads next well into the next question because purity is is always an

obsession of fascists no matter what form that fascism takes right there's always this you know this alien invasion of intruders or, you know, this anti-Semitic line about subhumans and needing to purge the fatherland of degenerate elements. And in the the theocratically inflected fascism, it obviously comes about with purity with regards to women's sexual lives and the domination of their bodies. So broadly, what do you think of the way that fascism and the individual fascists are portrayed in the show? In what ways would a real world and modern fascist movement in this country, be similar or different? What are your, what are your thoughts on that? Well, I think it's interesting. When I think fascists, I'm thinking a lot of like scarier,

like the the Nazis marching through pride in Detroit and, and that kind of stuff. But I think that the focus in the show in particular is more on more palatable kinds of fascism, which I think is correct and really well done. So it's, it's conservatives. One thing that that pops in my head is this speech that Paul Ryan gave right as he was throwing his hat out of the ring, I guess, pulling his hat out of the ring. And he talked about fertility specifically. And it reflected a moment where Serena Joy is in her former life talking about, well, what if we presented fertility as a moral imperative? And Paul Ryan said not those exact words, but more or less that a primary focused needed to be on getting people to have more babies.

So then following all of the reproductive health care laws that have come out of that is, that's a particularly powerful moment historically for me. But that is the kind of maybe more attractive. It's said very politely kind of fascism that I see as being really, really the focus of this show. It's because people, nobody, well, I guess that's, that's, that's, that's, shifting now but the public in general nobody says i like nazis yeah no one wants to do that people probably say i'm i'm a member of the republican party so watching that that overton window

shift the window of what is considered acceptable for society as a whole watching that shift toward the farther farther farther right and then watching republicans be fine with it oh yeah Every time. Yeah, every time. Because they don't really have anything that they stand for in particular. The thing that they stand for is the concept of capital and capitalism and this particular class structure. I don't think that it matters particularly to them what that looks like as long as they're able to maintain that power structure. And then even watching Republican women getting absolutely dragged through the mud on both sides of the aisle is,

something that's especially interesting to me is that Susan Collins is is constantly say well I don't know about this and then eventually falls in line with the party you know as as people who lack character do but in terms of the way that fascism and individual fascists are represented in the show I don't think that they are in the way that we're looking for it now I think that they are in the way that we should be looking for it now very well said and i completely agree you know the term fascism in a lot of people's minds because of our education and conditioning is sort of flagrant explicit and nazi you know paraphernalia and and like that it's like so obvious to people but i forget who said it but there's this famous line that says if you know if fascism comes to

america it'll be draped in the flag and it'll be carrying across and i specifically think that that this book was written by Margaret Atwood in 1985 is when it was published. So this is the height of the Reagan era. You know, we're not as churchy. We're not as religious as we used to be in the 80s. The far right has now taken on a very different sort of posture and aesthetic and all of that. But in the 80s, if fascism were to arise in the U.S. out of a crisis, it would be theocratic and precisely the way that is shown in this series.

But I think if it arose today in 2019, it would be very very. very, very different, not as theocratic. And in some ways, that would make it even more, I think, barbarous maybe, because sometimes the religion can sort of restrain some people morally, or at least there's this sense you have to gesture towards the good book or, you know, what God would want from us to justify your actions. But even that is stripped away. I think the fascism becomes much more naked, much more aggressive, much more violent with

no need whatsoever to justify itself, right? The violence itself is, it's only. justification and that's all it ever aims for you know right and serena joy's character actually was modeled after a real life person um and it was during during that reginaire there's there's um the person that she was modeled after was phyllis schlafly i think is how you pronounce that and she was uh an anti-equal rights anti-feminist figurehead during that time and she was against the right to vote and all of these things was really, really, really vocal.

So that's the person actually that she was originally modeled after in the novel. Interesting. And as a religious right figure, who had a pretty mainstream following. So that was an interesting point. Also, the existing eco-fascist movements

that I see today are of great concern to me. I see a little bit of it with Identity Europa, which has re-branded themselves. And I'm not going to even say the name now because they've fallen into obscurity, and that's where they should remain. But in the studying that I have done of these groups, that's one of the issues that I see coming up the most frequently, because I think that it's really easy for the left, and especially actually really for moderates and for liberals, to get really focused on one issue at a time.

And I think that that's really a dangerous thing to do with the eco-fascist movements. They're fascinating to me, but it's ultimately what this society is. in Haydman's Tale is. They're very focused on everything being green. And that's something that's very much growing in the United States. They're far right. They're largely religious. They're very deeply racist, deeply sexist, but very green.

Yeah, so weird. Right. Well, because if it makes sense, because if their focus is primarily on reproductive issues in terms of making sure that, that white people are essentially able to outbreed everybody else, making sure that there's a world for them at the end of the day and that everything's organic. I remember I've read conversations between women in these groups

where there's this bizarre disconnect between health and making sure that they're the perfect vessels for white babies. and also absolutely no educational frame of reference whatsoever for what they're even talking about, which is something that you also see in the book that women aren't allowed to read. Yeah. And in the series, it's a really fascinating thing.

Yeah, utterly, utterly fascinating. And you're right, I mean, the whole thing about, you know, we're talking about race and fascism arose here, and then you think about the infertility crisis that was part of the problem in the book and the show. You know, and we hear today, what do we hear? We hear this idea of white genocide. that you know the the the conspiracy theory is like that jewish globalists are breaking down borders

and letting immigration flow to europe and america in order to displace the white race and part of the propaganda posters of a lot of modern-day fascist is like save the white family you know this whole this whole paranoia about white women having white babies um and so that that would be sparked like you know a forest fire if there were anything close to the actual infertility crisis, you know, as it is in the, in the show itself, which I think is interesting and more fun. I do worry that we're getting there. I read something recently in Japan.

They've been studying that issue there. Well, there was actually a point that I wanted to point out earlier. You mentioned that women, the wives were infertile, but that's actually not true. And it's hinted at repeatedly throughout the show, but in the novel as well, it's not that the women are infertile. It's that sperm counts have dropped significantly. So it's the men's fault. Right, which is why even with handmaids who are fertile, they have such a hard time reproducing

because it's not about, it's not about the men. You're right. It's the men's fault. And the men push it on the women and create this whole system, but it's the men who are more times than not at least sterile and can't make babies. Exactly. And then in Japan, there was a study done where they've been collecting sperm samples from men all over the country for some time.

And recently the number of viable samples, meaning the number of samples that had a sperm count high enough to be considered healthy was under 10%. Weird. What the fuck. Yeah. So that's something we've been working toward this crisis for some time, really, with our complete lack of awareness of the way that we live our lives impacting the world and then how that will impact us. We've just pretended that's not happening for some time. And that's why I think it's really important that we make sure that even as we pivot toward the issue of climate change and those green initiative issues, we also maintain

focus on social justice and reproductive health issues as well. Because I know that this is something that I saw, maybe it was Nancy Pelosi, probably Nancy Pelosi, who said that she felt that we really need to be open. to Democrats who are pro-life because then they've at least got this one thing covered. Absolutely not. I could not possibly disagree more because we can't afford that Overton window to shift any further than it already has. Yeah, and that's that Democratic obsession with never looking to their left to recruit,

but looking to the center to see, is there any Republicans that might be a little disillusioned with Trump and might be, you know, coming over to the Democrats anytime soon? It's like, my fucking God, what a losing strategy. How many more times will it take for you clowns to realize that? One thing I did want to say before I move on to the next question, talking about fascism and something and talking broadly about the entire sort of show, I think one thing it does really interestingly, and I don't know if this is conscious or not,

but I kind of take the show in some respect, at least, especially when you strip away the politics and just have like the in-home sort of focus, is it really could act as a critique of sort of the upper middle class suburbanite bourgeois culture, right that that sort of hypocrisy their their comfort is explicitly premised on other people suffering and they rationalize it via religion right like like in the past things were rationalized via the divine rights or manifest destiny right that's very much at play but just between the the commander and his wife and the handmaid especially the wife and the husband the seething marital resentment always bubbling below the surface the oppressive social context they all exist in where they don't really like their friends and the undercurrent of sort of extreme rage that is always just right below the surface I think is an indictment of that of that upper middle class bourgeois culture broadly because it fits perfectly with that sort of lifestyle and those sorts of people you know right absolutely and I feel like it also it it calls up I don't

know if you've ever read the feminine mystique by betty ferdin it's phenomenal but there's a lot of those issues that are that are addressed there as well that resentment that they have even surrounded by all of their privilege and whatever, and they have all these things, how they just consume themselves. Yeah. Because largely out of just boredom, but also because it isn't natural to use their language against them

to force people into this one little box. And I feel like it's the point of making that a class analysis issue is super important because I do think that it's, extends outside of just a feminist issue. Ultimately, if women are being employed as slave labor, essentially, for their households, then that frees up the labor of the men indefinitely. So their lives become working and coming home. And the women's lives become coming home and having sex. And then that's all that anyone does. That's it. You just make more workers and then go to work and then make more workers to go to work. And I think that that's a super.

super good point that middle class hell that it's kind of a critique of as well yeah and and maybe perhaps the sort of oppressive nature of the marriage contract in the family unit broadly i don't know if that's you know maybe that's getting a little too far but something is definitely there you know i think so i think so because i think that there are there are points throughout the show where they examine even even june and oh i can't remember her husband's name their marriage as well They examined June's marriage throughout the series as well. And from that perspective even. So, yeah.

It's really interesting with the other relationships and like the husband in a different country and lots of interesting marriage analysis that you could pull out of that. Okay, so as we mentioned earlier, season three of the series is just now starting and it's very timely as we've recently seen a large surge of anti-choice bills being proposed. and passed in numerous conservative states around the country. Could you just like inform the listeners about some of these bills and the threats they pose to women's reproductive rights and bodily autonomy? Because I think it's important to use this show as a jumping off point to talk about these very, very real issues. Sure.

I'm not going to get into the names of the specific bills. That's fine. So it's focusing more on. So the bills that have been the most problematic as far as I can see, there have been five states now that have passed six-week abortion bans, Georgia, Ohio, Kentucky, Mississippi, Louisiana. Alabama is one that's particularly concerning because they've passed a ban as well, but they're also one of a handful of states that still allow rapists to have parental rights, which is super concerning because it's really creating a great way for abusers to maintain access to their

victims, especially when marital rape is almost impossible. to prosecute anyway. So that's a super concerning one. But there have been all in all, I mean, a lot of the focus is just on these six-week bans. I feel like sometimes that can create a bit of a false narrative because we're focusing on the wrong thing. There have been 42 abortion restrictions

enacted between January 1st and May 15th of this year. And that's a whole bunch of measures prohibiting certain types of birth control, requiring parental consent for teenagers to get abortions. All kinds of things. The point of these bills, and the reason I don't necessarily want to get too into the weeds about what they are and what they mean individually, the point isn't what's in the bill. The point is to flood the courts with these, because these are not sustainable. They're always going to get overturned in the courts because of Roe v. Wade.

What they want is to trigger a re-evaluation of Roe versus Wade. At the Supreme Court. Yeah, at the Supreme Court level. Exactly right. Because then they can go back and just go, okay, then we're going to ban the entire thing. So what they've done is whatever level of control they have in these different states is what they can get away with, whether it's a six-week ban with exceptions or a conception ban with no exceptions. It's kind of irrelevant.

They're getting away with what they can get away with until they can get it to the Supreme Court. So that's what's happening right now in the world. and what's going to be really important to watch is how the Supreme Court responds to these because it's getting there and we've been seeing it these bills are being struck down in federal courts consistently

and that'll continue happening I really want for people to not celebrate that because that's not a victory in any way that's halfway to the battlefield yeah exactly and you know the playbook has been in play for a very, very long time. This goes all the way back to the Republicans refusing to let Obama put Merrick Garland on the Supreme Court. It is the main reason why

evangelicals and Christian fundamentalists supported Trump, even though he's a clearly non-religious man and it doesn't really care about these issues and it's pretty obvious to anyone with the brain that he doesn't. But it's all part of this broader plan to stack the Supreme Court And then once you have that favorable condition in place, as you said, to flood the courts with all these different bills and then hope that one or two, make it to the high levels of court and even the Supreme Court to put pressure on and maybe even overturn Roe v. Wade now that you have a conservative majority Supreme Court. So this is a long game they're playing. They've been playing it for a very long time. And to get lost in the immediate specific bills, as you said so perfectly, is to really miss. the point and lose sight of what they're actually doing here because it's really nefarious,

incredibly insidious, and these people plan this shit out over generations. Mm-hmm. Oh, God damn. I hate it. So pay attention to local stuff when it's happening. Yeah. You know? For sure.

Because if this legislation hadn't been able to get through to begin with, then we wouldn't be having this conversation right now. But here we are. Exactly. And if the Supreme Court does decide to overturn. row v way these are lifetime appointments the court is not going to shift the only thing that we have at that point is mass movements is organization is a more radical women's movement broadly throughout this country because there's nothing else you can do legislatively to overturn a supreme court

decision if it gets to that point so we really got to be thinking about that and if if our enemies are planning for the long game we also have to be planning for the long game and that's something I don't see the left doing nearly as much as the right does in this country. Absolutely. Okay, so I'm just going to zoom in there because we talked about class issues. We talked about feminism. Overall, though, a couple things that really stand out to me is that when patriarchal societies, like the one we live in right now, are under pressure, right, in the face of a climate catastrophe

or a nuclear war or some sort of natural crisis, like an infertility, quote unquote, epidemic, when those societies are under pressure, they punish women. And the domination and the violence come down on women and their bodies. And that is what we have to think about going forward, specifically with climate change barreling down on us and destabilizing our political institutions. I've talked about this a lot. Everybody on the left knows that climate change is coming.

It's going to create chaos. But in that chaos, that's when this sort of fascism will thrive and in the in the book and in the series you know there was a series of crises that led to this situation it wasn't just a normal running about of things there was sort of nuclear or some other sort of natural disaster and then there was this this quote unquote infertility epidemic and so I just want us to realize that this is not a story of the past this is a story that very well could happen in the not so distant future it will not look exactly like this. But one thing that is important and that you said earlier, Spronza, is the idea

that fascism, when it comes, it will not be super obvious to people who don't think about this a lot, right? Those of us on the left, we know, we see this, but we can already see just in the past couple of years alone how liberals are totally, totally ill-equipped to understand, let alone resist the rise of fascism. And we also know that the conservatives are more than goddamn willing to jump on over to that fascist train and ride it wherever it goes. And so that leaves us in a very precarious situation right now and one that we really have to think very deeply and strategize about going forward

because all these different currents in our society are coming together and they will be put under immense pressure in the face of increasing climate chaos. And so I think that's at least one lesson that I really want to pull out and reiterate before we close. What are your thoughts? I think I seconded on everything that you just said. I think the big one that always resonates with me is that concept of how ill-equipped liberals are to deal with what's happening right now.

And the constant shock, like, well, what do you mean? This isn't working over and over and over. And to bring up a personal experience from my time in politics, having worked with, a local democratic organizing body that's a wing of the actual DNC, there was a moment that I feel was a really great tidy metaphor for what's happening right now. And in the way that liberals tend to prioritize things very incorrectly, we had a committee put together to address the immigration crisis that's happening right now. And all we were going to do was, put together a resolution that just condemned what was happening at the border.

It wasn't anything particularly useful. It was just symbolic. And I think that sometimes those things can be really helpful, especially with mainstream political groups, if they're willing to say and make a definitive statement and a line in the sand. That is really helpful for at least slowing the move of that Overton window that we talk about so often. what happened with that situation was that they refused to make that resolution until after the election because they didn't want to alienate Republican voters. Oh, my God.

And then once the election had come and gone, and I got in contact with everybody and said, hey, you guys, we need to do this. This is super important. I don't particularly care if it makes anybody uncomfortable. This is something that has to happen because the range of what's normal is getting shifted really rapidly. and the response was to dissolve the entire committee because I had made somebody uncomfortable. Jesus Christ.

And so no resolution was ever made. It's so simple and innocuous. What the fuck? And I feel that that ties in really well with the overall theme, the thing that I find the most impressive about the show in the way that they're able to portray it, the thing that I find the most concerning about that world, and the world right now, the normalization of things that are not normal and centrist political

party's willingness to accept the new normal every time it ships farther to the right. So if there's if there's a theme that I see in the show that that stands out to me the most in an overall lesson, it's don't accept that. the new normal isn't normal and you don't have to for the sake of politics sit down and shut up and every time women get bullied into doing that into sacrificing our voices into saying well I don't want to offend anybody I don't want to challenge the status quo I don't want to run for this deciding voice because I don't want to step out of my place that window shifts further and further and further and further. And it's going to continue happening until people stop

caring about our individual comfort levels and start considering what's best for the world and our children and our great-grandchildren. Amen. Well said. And on that note, I think we're going to wrap up the episode. Thank you so much for coming on. This is awesome. This is the second time we've worked together. I love it. The listeners love you. And hopefully we can collaborate again. Before I let you go, where can listeners find you online? I've got a couple of things. My Twitter account is my own thing, but it's, I mean, frankly, mostly memes to have retribution. Talk about a few of the projects I've got going on, but mostly it's just that.

I also have a new project in the works. You can find us online on Twitter at LCPC collective. It's the last chance people's collective. And it is, I would like to see it spreading outside of our area. It's the idea of putting together organizing body. that actually want to do things and take stands and the motto there is more doing and then talking about it less talking about doing things and I will link to both of those links in the show notes thank you so much comrade it was an honor and a pleasure to talk to you about this

topic and I'm sure you'll be on again to tackle more topics with me thank you so much hopefully I'll stop having a panic attack every time you're so good there's no reason for it thank you so much You don't owe me, I'm not just one of your many toys, you don't owe me, don't say I can't go with other noise. Don't tell me what to do. Don't tell me what to say. And please, when I go out with you, don't put me on display because you don't tie me down You don't owe me, don't try to change me in you anyway You don't own me, don't tie me down close I'd never stay

I don't tell you what to say I don't tell you what to do so just let me be myself that's all I ask of you I'm young and I love to be young I'm free and I love to be free to live my life the way I want Just say and do whatever I please

Don't tell me what to say And please when I go out with you Don't put me on this way I don't tell you what to say Oh Don't tell you what to do So just let me be myself That's all I ask with you

I'm young And I love to be on.