Dystopia: Reading In Our New Reality, Part 2
“This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.” — The Handmaid’s Tale (THT) copyright, 1986
It’s really something when you can’t get past the copyright page without making this face:
I’d heard (and undoubtably made) hyperbolic comparisons between the 2010–2016 Republican cis, white, male obsession with controlling every uterus in the country and THT; it wasn’t until the election of Vice President Mike Pence that I realized we might have been forecasting rather than truth stretching. He was added to the ticket to balance DT (I try and avoid his name — we all know who I mean). Pence was the commensurate politician — a man who’d held executive office and served in the House, made friends (or at least allies) and who, thanks to his years as a radio host before running for office, can (usually) refrain from overt racism and sexism when there are microphones present.
But he’s a horror. I picture him more than DT when I consider the potential of the “history” laid out in THT. Like the shadowy characters in the book, he appears reasonable to far too many people — especially next to DT (something I’m certain he considered when he accepted the nomination). He oozes alternative facts without blinking — like how he says he halted an HIV outbreak in his home state, but doesn’t bother to mention that he kicked it off by cutting reproductive health funding and leaving people in central/southern Indiana without anywhere to get tested.
So it was his face I saw when the narrator said this on page four:
“[W]e still had our bodies. That was our fantasy.”
I went outside to read on the patio while smoking in the sun (let’s hope the new AG doesn’t find a way to take away my MMJ just when it was supposed to get easier to access). My only company was a lizard and a snail, but I told them out loud what I was thinking:
Good god, we’re already practically here.
Yes, I have my body, but to what degree? For those whose identities are more attacked than mine, how much less do they have their bodies? Do we have them if the actions we take are under attack? If I can’t see my doctors, my body becomes a cage rather than an asset like the narrator describes. If I am not a child bearer, do I have value in Atwood’s imagined world, or in DT-Pence’s?
I can already imagine the setting in THT. Living well below the poverty line for more than a decade makes it easy to picture the unadorned rooms where everything has a practical purpose. In a country where one in five people are food insecure (a pre-DT stat), I know I am in good company.
“There’s a rug on the floor, oval, of braided rags. This is the kind of touch they like: folk art, archaic, made by women, in their spare time, from things that have no further use. A return to traditional values. Waste not want not. I am not being wasted. Why do I want?” (pg 7)
This question plagues a lot of us in our capitalist patriarchy; people who are plugged into the world of cubicles and widget creation are doing what they’re told they must. They are “productive members of society” according to our society’s evaluation methods. How many wonder why their daily lives are not enough?
If we’re already there and our government is promising to make our lives harder, it’s no wonder so many folx are having trouble just getting out of bed in the morning. And for what? The whims of a bigoted egomaniac and a power hungry, calculating cretin?
No, according to them they are making this country great again. These claims echo through a book published more than 30 years ago; “A return to traditional values.”
The narrator continues to describe the house in which she lives; she has a small space set aside for her.
“[T]his could be a college guest room, for the less distinguished visitors; or a room in a rooming house, of former times, for ladies in reduced circumstances. That is what we are now. The circumstances have been reduced; for those of us who still have circumstances.”
Every day I know I’m lucky to have the circumstances that I do. I don’t have to worry about being homeless or hungry. I’m sick, but I currently have access to (expensive despite subsidies) healthcare. I have access to food assistance. I’m a citizen with all my papers, including a passport and birth certificate. I live in a large state (and therefore a sizable tax base) with a governor who has essentially told DT to go fuck himself. (Seriously, it’s great; you should watch it.) I’m cis and I’m white, so the likelihood I’ll be denied the most basic of rights is small. I’m queer, but I “look” straight. I’m sick, but I can pass as well. I’m poor, but I can pass as middle class.
While my rights are certainly under attack, it will take more than an executive order or change in attorney general to make my daily life significantly different. (Setting aside the three-month PTSD nightmare streak that my therapist and I suspect was set off by the election, of course. DT didn’t cause my trauma or make me a lifelong insomniac.) But families with mixed documentation status and transgender people are having their lives torn apart RIGHT NOW.
The question implied in this passage from a generation ago rings loudly right now:
Will you wait until your circumstances are reduced to resist?
Read this series from the beginning: “Dystopia: Reading In Our New Reality, Part 1”
You can support this self-published work and get bonus Katie Speak Show content by subscribing at Patreon for as little as $1/month!
