“In times of extremes, extremists win. Their ideology becomes a religion, anyone who doesn’t puppet their views is seen as an apostate, a heretic or a traitor, and moderates in the middle are annihilated" [Atwood wrote]....
Many online took issue with her view. “If @MargaretAtwood would like to stop warring amongst women, she should stop declaring war against younger, less powerful women and start listening,” wrote one person on Twitter. “In today’s dystopian news: One of the most important feminist voices of our time shits on less powerful women to uphold the power of her powerful male friend,” wrote another....
January 16, 2018
Feminist backlash against "Handmaid's Tale" author Margaret Atwood for advocating some #MeToo moderation.
The Guardian reports.
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53 comments:
No one is pure enough to survive the revolution.
Forget it, Jake. It's Canada.
Nuance, we don't need no stinking nuance.
It's worth remembering that when the Stalinists were shooting the Bukharinites, ordinary Russians were being arrested and sent to be worked to death in the Kolyma.
From what I've gathered, she was essentially arguing that women should be presumed to have agency over and responsibility for their own lives. Evidently that makes her an enemy of this new brainless #metoo revolution where there's no place for reasoned thought or discussion. The idiots are taking the wheel now.
The constant concentrated artillery bombardment of fear-mongering by collective feminist hivemind that abortion will be illegal and a Christian theocracy is right around the corner, chugs the decades. Get your abortions now! Trump is going to force you to be a hand maiden. I reds it in a book. Also, the spaceship is coming and quick- drink this purple fluid.
You know there are always crazy people on twitter who will attack anything and everyone. It doesn't mean anything and I dislike it when Twitchy and sites like that show outrageous tweets from some unknown morons as somehow meaningful. They're not.
What was meaningful to me on the Aziz A piece was reading the first 20-30 top-rated reader comments in NY Times. That is a better measure of the zeitgeist (at least on the left) and in this case it is firmly on Atwood's side. The #metoo pendulum has swung too far. The cultural elites are in consensus regardless of what the more crazy radicals think.
Confirms what I've suspected since Handmaid's Tale became the it show. These people have not actually read Margaret Atwood. They get their news from Comedy Channel. Direction from late night TV variety show hosts. And inspiration from Netflix (or in this rare case, Hulu).
If you said Oryx and Crake to them, they'd respond with Gesundheit.
[S]he should stop declaring war against younger, less powerful women and start listening.
Where "listening", of course, means agreeing.
Virgil said:
That is a better measure of the zeitgeist (at least on the left) and in this case it is firmly on Atwood's side. The #metoo pendulum has swung too far. The cultural elites are in consensus regardless of what the more crazy radicals think.
1/16/18, 10:32 AM
It’s starting to dawn on the cultural elites that the crazy radicals, if unchecked, will put an end to all their bed hopping fun. If the witchhunters confined themselves to occasionally wrecking the life and prospects of a college dude because he forgot to ask his hookup if he could please place his right hand on her left boob, they could live with it.
Feminist backlash against "Handmaid's Tale" author Margaret Atwood
Why is she "Handmaid's Tale author"?
In case people don't recognize her name? Anyone who recognizes "Handmaid's Tale" will probably recognize "Atwood". I've read just about all her stuff and the "Tale" was not her best work.
I do not believe the idiots are taking the real wheel. They have one of those stick-on steering wheels that kids get. Horn and everything. Out here in the real world no one gives the slightest rat shit about what these women are up to. Real world women have agency, guts, determination and a desire not to be laughed at.
When the most articulate (loudest, anyway) of a generation consciously and deliberately rejects the very principle of due process of law, not just in a particular egregious case but in general, we are in serious trouble.
We are in serious trouble.
Virgil Hilts wrote:
You know there are always crazy people on twitter who will attack anything and everyone. It doesn't mean anything and I dislike it when Twitchy and sites like that show outrageous tweets from some unknown morons as somehow meaningful. They're not.
******************
Some months ago, it struck me that we are all operating on an old and outdated paradigm, dating back back to when it took time and effort to write a letter or send a telegram, and even a few comments to a company suggested that there were many people of similar opinions who did not make that effort. Now, we see businesses, the media, and individuals reacting to Twitter or FB storms as if they are meaningful, when in fact it is often a handful of people, losers with time on their hands, and even more so, bots, creating a false impression. There are calls for censorship, but the real answer may be that we all need to just ignore the a-holes, and most of them will eventually go away for lack of attention.
anyone who doesn’t puppet their views
Jobs parrots won't do.
"Jobs parrots won't do."
Awesome.
From what I've gathered, she was essentially arguing that women should be presumed to have agency over and responsibility for their own lives. Evidently that makes her an enemy of this new brainless #metoo revolution
No woman may be made to feel bad about, or held responsible for, anything, ever.
The Shitshow continues.
George Grady: "Listening means agreeing. "
Yes, and "conversation" means I talk, you "listen".
The last time someone advised self-moderation, the feminists exploited vulnerable women and staged a Slut Walk. While it's still cold throughout most of the country, is that something in the works? I suppose in response to Atwood's suggestion to self-moderate, that this time it will be a Slut Orgy. Progress.
The radicals always get their way; they are young and loud, and volume trumps all.
When the older die or lose their powers there will be no replacements.
The only way to defeat radicals is with opposing radicals.
Feminists denied agency to women when they demanded conception to be placed before choice and resumed abortion rites, treated men as biological automatons, and babies... well, not just babies... as interchangeable ("diversity"), disposable, and recyclable. We have been on a progressive slope ever since in both love and war.
While I agree with Atwood on this matter, it's pleasing to see her smug ass hoist on her own petard.
Note:
In her time Atwood was a radical.
Her own ideas were intensely corrosive and she played her part in creating a generation of miserable people.
Yesterday's progressive is today's conservative. Eventually, the cycle is reset and begins anew (evolution).
I enjoyed "The Handmaid's Tale", but it was a bit message-heavy.
While I agree with Atwood on this matter
"conservatives, racists and traditionalists of all kind..."
- Deneuve
Principals before principles.
Atwood committed heresy by advocating for due process rights: "I believe that in order to have civil and human rights for women there have to be civil and human rights, period, including the right to fundamental justice."
For that crime, feminists have convened an Inquisition tribunal where she will renounce her heresy or be handed over to be burned at the stake.
Due process is a tool of the White Patriarchy, designed to oppress women and minorities.
Simple rule: You aren't allowed male friends.
"Why is she "Handmaid's Tale author"?
In case people don't recognize her name?"
Not everybody is you, Fern. In fact, very few of us are.
Anyway, this controversy about Atwood, author of "The Handmaid's Tale", happened because lefties don't care about right and wrong, but only about which side are you on.
"Feminist backlash against "Handmaid's Tale" author Margaret Atwood for advocating some #MeToo moderation."
How can you tell "feminist backlash" from "a few mentally limited people whining"? If I get pissed off at Chuckles, is that "feminist backlash"? If not, why not? Is it just because they have twats, and I don't? I thought that didn't matter any more. Is it because they call themselves feminists? Is anyxang that calls xitself a feminist a feminist?
The bitches whine. The caravan moves on.
"Is it just me, or does the whole Aziz Ansari story have a faint fragrance of late-stage Reign of Terror to it?"
--David "Iowahawk" Burge
The Atwood thing is even more apt, tbh
It's not surprising that so many women are unhappy in Donald Trump's misogynistic Canada. Oh...wait.
I thought 'The 'Handmaid's Tale' was a utopian fantasy?
"How can you tell "feminist backlash" from "a few mentally limited people whining"?
Good point. Many of these "controversies" consist of the Internet and Twitter squabbles of a handful of people. Writer X in NYC says something mildly heterodox in Salon or the New Yorker or Slate; writer Z in LA takes exception; both marshall their Twitter troops and behold! "A backlash!" Or "a backlash to the backlash!"
One man's utopia is another's dystopia.
Orwell understood pretty well that his dystopia would be attractive to a certain sort.
Else it could not plausibly happen.
The word of the week is "agency." I can't say I had heard it much at all in this usage before this week.
"How can you tell "feminist backlash" from "a few mentally limited people whining?"
When much larger players take them seriously. Employers and media companies and public agencies.
Which they do. Consider the fury over Matt Taylors shirt. He was TOLD to kowtow by his presumably responsible superiors, at the Quango (Quasi-NGO) European Space Agency. For the sake of his career, funding, and likely also his British university post.
Delicious how Maggie falls victim to the impulse to control from the left, which she had fictively attributed to the right.
Most lefty screeds are projection.
A new phenomenon: honesty-shaming.
In times of extremes, extremists win.
A good reason to be, in times of extremes, an extremist. (The more extreme, the better.)
Ferdinand (sorry for this misspelling) wrote:
Why is she "Handmaid's Tale author"? In case people don't recognize her name? Anyone who recognizes "Handmaid's Tale" will probably recognize "Atwood".
I'm afraid so. Well-read readers are outnumbered 10:1 by those who don't read, but saw the title "Handmaid's Tale" and think they know what it's about.
The one thing I'm enjoying about these circuses is the Twitter outrage that ensues when some wag refers to the hashtag campaign as "poundmetoo".
It was predictable and predicted that the weak sisters pushing #metoo would eventually equate hurt feelings and bad sex with rape, sexual assault and exploitation.
Bill Peschel said...
"Well-read readers are outnumbered 10:1 by those who don't read, but saw the title "Handmaid's Tale" and think they know what it's about."
I like to read, but I'm not going to read that.
Leftists are always in poor victim backlash mode.
The media are still going ape shit over shithouse.
Yes, media - Leftwing dictatorships make for shithole countries.
How can she label Atwood one of the most important feminist voices of our time AND correct her improper views - in the same sentence.
"Handmaids Tale" was acknowledged as feminist agitprop thirty years ago.
Its purpose was pushback against the conservative revival under Reagan.
That is, it is a political screed of its time.
Its in the same category (in modern US literature) as "The Turner Diaries" in one political direction, or the "Left Behind" books in another.
"Turner Diaries" would make an excellent and very topical movie actually.
You could make it a bit more complex (treat the narrator as just a bit "unreliable" and you're there), but its quite a good premise for an action-packed production.
And the US social-cultural situation is such that a "Turner Diaries" scenario is much closer to reality now than it was in its time. A very great deal in it is far more familiar to the general public these days than it was when it was written.
It would be very "edgy".
This kind of shit is why, when dating women, I didn't treat them with respect until they earned it. She was my sex toy until she decided to act like a grownup. Y'all think this behavior is new? This type of female bullshit has been omnipresent since 2010 at least.
First girl that came to my door, sexy but sapient, coy yet capable, horny but human, alluring yet adult - she's my wife now. The others, who showed up ready to fuck but not much else? Pumped and dumped, and in some cases, passed on to my friends who were looking for easy action. Act like trash, get treated like trash.
Hint for those of you with daughters: if I, or any man, can fuck them senseless on the first date (or even before that, taking them home upon meeting while out), they're sluts and fucktoys for evermore in my head. They could have a doctorate or a Nobel-prize - I don't care. Give it up on Date #1, you're a slut and I'll never ever consider you as anything more significant than a fuckbuddy.
How's that for sexual liberation?
"The Shore of Women" by Pamela Sargent is a far better tale of a sexual dystopia than "The Handmaid's Tale."
Which, I suppose, is why it will never be adapted for Netflix.
https://www.amazon.com/Shore-Women-Classic-Feminist-Science/dp/1497640644
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