She and Her Still Pleases I; He and Him Overreaches High
A critical look at queer theory and The Handmaid’s Tale.
A significant portion of males -that is, heterosexual males- are fucking idiots. Literally, idiots when it comes to anything in relation to the topic of copulation and what others please to privately do with their private-parts in their very own private lives. Heterosexual men -largely religious, heterosexual men- create all strange sorts of double-standards and expectations when it comes to what is done behind closed doors (I don’t like the term double-standard; it implies the whole ‘male or female, no in-between’ false dichotomy imposed on American society, and patriarchal societies at large. For this paper’s purposes, double-standard will have to do). Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale exposes this through Moira’s lesbian experiences relayed to the narrator in the scene that takes place at a Gileadan speak-easy-esque club called Jezebel’s, and in the public display on the Wall of two male Guardians caught committing Gender Treachery.
Most men who conform to patriarchal notions do so out of their own insecurities, yet this paper will not discuss these shortcomings at length. Rather, this essay aims to highlight the dissonance (I love identifying internally opposing ideas in commonplace arenas) found from personal experience in a patriarchal-male culture as well as what Moira details to Offred at Jezebel’s in The Handmaid’s Tale.
For a large percentage of heterosexual-men, women are thought to be more attractive for having queer tendencies (not sure how that one started, female choice is the enemy of patriarchy; this might teach these same men something about queer tendencies), whereas a man who is queer is deemed intolerable. It is common for men with these ideals to be excessively anal in the rationale that women may be bisexual (a human who enjoys intercourse with either of the binary sexes) or straight, while men are believed to only be straight or gay. If a man is bisexual, he is considered to have completely turned gay (as if people just suddenly became queer of their own volition). There is no leniency on the matter; no nuance is afforded the queer man. Further, a female who is bisexual, or even gay, is still found to be attractive by men, despite the queer person having no interest in men. This represents what Parker describes as “compulsory heterosexuality” (Parker186) in that, even in a woman’s earnest disinterest in her binary counterpart, she is still considered through the heterosexual, patriarchal lens of said counterpart, despite having no sexual interest in that counterpart . Put simply: if a woman does it, she’s hotter for it (more attractive) to men; if a man does it, he is cast aside and told he is disgusting, an abomination.
Unfortunately, patriarchal systems such as those found in contemporary America and those described in The Handmaid’s Tale force us to think of our fellow queers as “others” or “unnatural” people. In Atwood’s novel, gays are killed and displayed on the Wall for what Gilead considers to be an offense most egregious. Offred goes for a walk on a May day and discovers that two out of the current three bodies hanging dead by the Wall “[had] purple placards hung around their necks: Gender Treachery” (Atwood 43). Atwood shows us that gay men are killed and accused of a crime against their gender. But, later in the story -as we will see at Jezebel’s- lesbians, or queer women, are forgiven for their crimes of Gender Treachery. Nay, they are encouraged to be queer, unlike males in the Republic of Gilead who are executed for it. But why?
Moira, a friend of Offred’s from the time before the installation of Gilead, whom she finds at Jezebel’s with the Commander, offers us insight as to why women are permitted to break a law that men are so extremely punished for violating. When Offred finally gets to speak with Moira, she asks her about what it was like being a queer woman who also was a courtesan of sorts. Offred wonders if the Commanders would do anything to her if she were caught in an act of Gender Treachery. Moira explains that they do not care about the female prostitutes’ queerness, adding that “…women on women sort of turns them on” (Atwood 249). Here, Atwood gives us an extreme form of modern patriarchal beliefs: men are executed for queerness, while women are celebrated for their queerness because, after all, they are the property of the Commanders; a national resource. Because men are not considered objects of reproduction to other men, their queerness is perceived to be predatory (likely a projection of their own insecurity due to the predatory nature in which heterosexual men pursue their desired, objectified mates) and thus makes them an enemy of the insecure, heterosexual male. Atwood casts an exaggerated light on this notion, but that is not to say that the shadow of this belief does not exist today. A quick visit to any popular adult site reinforces that this way of thinking is persistent in patriarchal male heterosexual culture where, to find homosexual or queer films, one must specify ‘gay’ while the initial page will contain mainly heterosexual endeavors and often include some lesbian or queer female productions with the typical heterosexually-assumptive videos. Again, the double-standard. Adult websites are better suited a subject for a separate paper on compulsory heterosexuality, but this example reinforces the feelings described about male versus female queerness and social acceptability that is observed under a critical reading of The Handmaid’s Tale.
Margaret Atwood’s dystopian The Handmaid’s Tale offers an interesting, harsh critique on patriarchal culture in many ways beyond those of the surface-level-reading feminist concern. Many readings will yield many conclusions, and a queer-critical reading shows us a sentiment we are all familiar with: she and her still pleases I; he and him overreaches high.
Works Cited
Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid’s Tale. First Anchor Books Edition, New York, NY, Random House, Inc., 1986.
Parker, Robert Dale. How to Interpret Literature: Critical Theory for Literary and Cultural Studies. 3rd ed., Oxford University Press, 2015.
