Posted on 10/09/2018 10:54:51 AM PDT by Morgana
New York Times editors must have thought Alexandra Alter’s article a timely response to conservative Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation: “How Feminist Dystopian Fiction Is Channeling Women’s Anger and Anxiety.”
Thanks to President Trump’s attacks on women’s rights America’s, women are just a few weeks away from mandatory Handmaid’s Tale uniforms, judging by this ominous overview of recent novels in the genre.
On a desolate island, three sisters have been raised in isolation, sequestered from an outbreak that’s causing women to fall ill. To protect themselves from toxins, which men can transmit to women, the sisters undergo cleansing rituals that include simulating drowning, drinking salt water and exposing themselves to extreme heat and cold. Above all, they are taught to avoid contact with men.
That’s the chilling premise of Sophie Mackintosh’s unsettling debut novel The Water Cure, a story that feels both futuristic and like an eerily familiar fable. It grew out of a simple, sinister question: What if masculinity were literally toxic?
The Water Cure, which comes out in the United States in January and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, joins a growing wave of female-centered dystopian fiction, futuristic works that raise uncomfortable questions about pervasive gender inequality, misogyny and violence against women, the erosion of reproductive rights and the extreme consequences of institutionalized sexism.
For Ms. Mackintosh, those questions don’t feel abstract.
….
This new canon of feminist dystopian literature — which includes works by up-and-coming novelists like Ms. Mackintosh, Naomi Alderman, Leni Zumas and Idra Novey, as well as books by celebrated veterans like Louise Erdrich and Joyce Carol Oates — reflects a growing preoccupation among writers with the tenuous status of women’s rights, and the ambient fear that progress toward equality between the sexes has stalled or may be reversed.
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Canadian writer Margaret Atwood and her 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale, the founding document for the current feminist dystopian movement, gets respectfully cited as foreshadowing a real-life threat to women’s rights.
Lately, Ms. Atwood’s imaginary dystopia has inspired real-life political activism, as protesters dressed as handmaids in red robes and white bonnets have gathered at state capitols around the country to oppose policies that restrict women’s access to abortion and health care. In September, a group of red-robed women protested at the United States Senate during hearings for Brett M. Kavanaugh, who was confirmed to the Supreme Court after being accused of committing sexual assault, and could potentially cast a decisive vote overturning Roe v. Wade.
“The moment that we’re in is terrifying for a lot of women, and the story that Margaret Atwood created captures that fear so incredibly well,” said Lori Lodes, an adviser for Demand Justice, a liberal advocacy group that organized the recent protests at the Senate.
Alter encouraged these wild flights of fictional fancy as real-life electoral warnings.
Christina Dalcher’s debut novel, Vox, where women are limited to speaking 100 words a day at pain of electric shock, “was inspired in part by the women’s marches around the country after the 2016 election.”
….
[Louise] Erdrich began writing the book many years ago, when she was pregnant with her fourth daughter. She set it aside until shortly after the 2016 presidential election, when, with a Republican-controlled Congress and White House, liberal activists raised alarms about the potential threat to women’s reproductive rights. Ms. Erdrich began to worry about what the world would be like if the gains made decades ago through women’s liberation movements were lost.
To her credit, Alter also briefly addressed places where The Handmaid’s Tale is sadly not far from reality for women. She mentioned “China’s former one-child policy, a rule that led to sex-selection abortion of female fetuses.” Pakistani writer Bina Shah was quoted: “In patriarchy, women are always going to end up being the losers. What’s going on now in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Afghanistan is worse than what’s happening in The Handmaid’s Tale.”
For once, that’s not liberal exaggeration.
But then Alter returned to Handmaid’s author Atwood, described as “a sort of patron saint of feminist dystopian fiction,” to claim “There’s certainly a very concerted push toward making women’s bodies a possession of the state in the United States.”
How does protecting human life in the womb add up to ownership by the state?
These people are absolutely insane.
What are they going to do when their ‘Blue Wave’ fails to materialize and none of the dire consequences they predicted come about?
They will look like utter fools...................
Every feminist descends from a long, continuous line of these toxic males, going back to the beginning of time. What does that say about them?
When society needs a cop or a soldier does it want somebody who isn’t masculine? I’ve known men who would have been a ten on the masculinity scale who were astonishingly good parents. These are guys who tromp around on all fours playing with their babies. How toxic can that be?
Off Topic: “Clay Waters” is their real name or a pen name?
It sounds cobbled together for a Blog, i.e. Grey Stone or Candi Kayne.
That’s cute. A misandrist calling us misogynists.
I notice he has a twitter account but other than that know nothing about him.
This feminist crap is 100% contrary to human nature. The inability to process reality is the definition of insanity.
Hysterics like this should not be taken seriously, but given a choice of shut up or shut the f*ck up.
What was that about 100 words max a day?
I would say there is a good reason God didn’t place women as the head.
God never put a women as head of families, church, nations and it was a very good decision.
No, actually, femininity is what is literally toxic.
I’ve had enough of these psycho bitches, really.
Toxic feminism
Name one matriarchal society that wasn’t stone age and thrived for a long period. One. I’ll wait.
These things always tend to boil down to their essence.
1. Liberal want to kill babies.
2. Liberals hate real men.
3. Liberals want power.
Note, this is not a war between men and women.
This is a war between liberals and conservatives.
Maggie Thatcher count?
My magic 8 ball sees ice cream and cats in their future.
Wanna bet the left goes full hysteria over this book? man-hating rejects all over the world will acclaim the book. Airheads on daytime TV will promote it. Hillary will hand out copies.
Looking more and more like a segment of the population should be in soft-walled cells, with no sharp objects.
Toxic feminism is the cure for “toxic masculinity”.
Hey Alexandra Alter - just iron my damned shirts!
“...They will look like utter fools...................”
They are utter fools...and have been for quite awhile.
Leftist insanity knows no bounds....NONE.
They would kill us all if they could get away with it.
No. I didn’t say “had a woman leader”. I said matriarchal society. Not the same. Thatcher was an exception, most of western history has had men in leadership with the occasional female on top. Show me a society where they base is women running the show with only an occasional man in the top job. There have been a few in ancient history, goddess worshiping stuff with high priestesses and the like. All of them seem to collapse within a generation or two. That’s why I said to show me one that thrived, not plodded along for a couple of decades and they fell apart.
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