Choose Your Own Dystopia
How much worse will life get?
Some days, it feels like we’re already in a dystopian future. The news is abortion bans and mass shootings and trade wars and 500 tornadoes. It does not feel like we are trending toward a happy future for humanity or any other inhabitants of the planet. But which dystopia will get us first?
The Patriarchy Wins
When The Handmaid’s Tale premiered on Hulu it felt oddly prescient. The old white men were winning yet again, in the real world. Abortion rights and many other markers of agency for women were being questioned, poked and eroded. A lot of people collectively decided sexual assault is not a disqualifying factor for the presidency (or the supreme court for that matter). The erosion of women’s rights is happening now, faster than we thought possible, with states banning abortion and kicking up challenges to Roe v. Wade.
Do women have the right to a safe, legal abortion? masks a larger and more insidious question: Do women have rights? When this nation was founded, the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were explicitly granted to white men who owned property (which, of course, was technically stolen property in this country). For much of the history of our great nation women could not legally own property or claim any right to pursue happiness…
