Gender Treachery

I first read the expression ‘gender treachery’ a week ago, having been so blown away by the series The Handmaid’s Tale, I read a number of articles and reviews, in one of which it was used.

As many, I studied The Handmaid's Tale at school and found it haunting and left me curious – was it fact or fiction? A path we could somehow accidentally slip onto or a road some were already treading somewhere in the world?

For those not familiar with it, it is set in near present day (although written in the 1980’s, the TV series brings the viewer up to present day). It is split between a democratic society and one of religious and sexually bias extremism. Brought on by environmental changes of our own doing, the ‘present day’ is one where infertility is prevelant and therefore fertile women become a dehumanized resourse.

The series is captivating with each scene set in the dystopian state of ‘Gilead’ created as a stunning tableaux – be it stark and sterile or claustrophobic, austere and detailed, the colours and engulfing back drops, right down to the choreography.

It is this visual feast, which enables you to become drawn in, whilst remaining safe from the horrors which play out. The flashbacks to a soft-lit, life-filled, chaotic, comtemporary world stand in stark opposition as the ‘before’, only ever mentioned in nervous whispers.

Many have debated on social and traditional media whether this is a feminist work. It is generally regarded as such, with many identifying it as (perhaps ironically) seminal in their journey to becoming feminists. However, what is very apparent in this work, is not so much the way the men treat the women – Virgins and Whores – but how the women treat each other.

Whilst it can be argued that the men have imposed the religious laws, from chosen passages of the bible’s Old Testament – it is men who stand guard with threatening rifles, it is men who are given full financial power – and it is set out as a patriarchal society – it is the women who are so cruel to the other women.

Whether it is the FGM, the taking of other’s children, the cruel and often violent hierarchy, the torture, the rape, the stoning – in this series, these are all women at the hands of women – occasionally using men as the conduits. At one point it is made clear that most of the laws have been created by a woman – a woman who believes god is on her side and women should not control their own money because it encourages them to strive for education and academia instead of focusing on the god-given role of child bearing – a role, as a baren woman she embraces through cruel imposition on those who are fertile.

Having previously worked at Amnesty International and having openly wept at the general treachery and cruelty humans impose on each other, nothing in this series is made up – it is simply out of context – and not gender specific.

So is it a feminist work?

I think so – I think we have been fooled into thinking that feminism is only about sticking it to the man, as opposed to empowering the sisterhood.

I believe that, for all the critisms I heard about the Women’s Marches (about them not having a single theme, about the futility of them etc) they spoke loud and clear to this need to counter ‘gender treachery’ as well as sexism and injustice - and stand together. Together in gratitude for those who have made progress through which we and society benefits, together against oppression and injustice and together in the hope that in so doing, those men and women who would step over or on an individual - repressing, torturing, gaining from others loss - should see that in oppressing a group of individuals, you create a unity by which they become defined – and eventually empowered.

As they might say in the series… Stone drop bitches, the new mic drop.