At the great march for the homeland, for a moment I was a handmaid, because for me this symbol of women's enslavement was most consistent with what PiS politicians are doing to women.
Who are the handmaids? In her novel, Margaret Atwood showed a world in which religious fundamentalists triumph. In this world, women are divided into three main categories: the wives of the Commanders who rule the country; domestic helpers belonging to those Commanders, like livestock, all named Martha; and handmaids—fertile women used by the Commanders for rape in the presence of their wives. Handmaids—living incubators for the Commander's couple's children.
The world according to men, arranged by their male god, is simple. Women are a resource: for tidying their homes, feeding them, fulfilling a representational role, and satisfying their sexual and reproductive needs. Women, like the Earth, are exploited, used, and stripped of their resources.
That is why I marched in the great June 4 demonstration in Warsaw. And you? Why were you there, or how did you support it in another way?
More about the television series “The Handmaid's Tale” can be found in Kaja Szafrańska's excellent video review below.
Margaret Eleanor “Peggy” Atwood (born November 18, 1939, in Ottawa) is a Canadian writer, poet, and literary critic, as well as a social and environmental activist. She won the Booker Prize in 2000 and 2019, received the Prince of Asturias Award in 2008, and has been mentioned among candidates for the Nobel Prize in Literature.