The Road to Gilead.

In media res is a Latin phrase used to describe a storytelling device where we just start in the middle of the story. So here we are. I’ll start in the middle, and tell you what I was doing at the beginning in the end.

In a hallway in The Present

”I’m a writer,”
the middle-aged mom confidently told me, looking to her fellow mompatriot for affirmation.

“Neat!”
I said.
“What do you write?”

She appeared unprepared for this question, a reaction that led me to suspect she may have publicly identified herself as such on a number of occasions without expectation of being asked further follow-up.
“Oh, I write a lot. And I’m an artist. I art a lot.”

I’ve come to the belief that people who throw around the word “art” as a verb are sometimes not ones from whom I would purchase art from, and sometimes the products of arting are the equivalent of a movie poster done in un-ironic Comic Sans-Papyrus typeface combo.

My frame of mind was such that I was disinterested in being distracted by a tertiary topic, so I ignored the reference to her second profession and prodded a little further.

“So…”
I asked from across the hallway,
”What do you write?”

Her eyes scrambled left, right, up, and then returned to meet my question with a smile.
“I write sermons.”

Sermons! This has my interest.

Like few, I am extraordinarily interested by the idea of sermons, because, like many, I am extraordinarily bored by most sermons. I have met no one previous to this who had ever identified as A) a writer and then immediately followed that up with B) “…I am a writer who writes sermons.“

I was interested. You may be interested in why I was still so interested, as the idea of talking about the writing of sermons seems on the surface to be even more dull than the act of listening to a dull sermon.

I was extra-interested because of the television program Becca and I have been watching, but before I tell you about the program, I need to briefly jump backwards in time even more, and then jump forward twice from that point.

1985

This was the year Margaret Atwood wrote a book called The Handmaid’s Tale. It is a novel that is often identified as science-fiction, but she has not ever comfortably embraced that genre label for her book. A surface description of the plot might make it sound as such - A dystopian future drama in a totalitarian society called Gilead, formerly the United States, where men hold all (apparent) power and institute a process to battle worldwide sterility by forcing fertile women to become surrogates, a.k.a. ‘handmaids’ in order to keep humanity alive.

So yeah, handmaids basically get raped once a month by a commander; the commander’s wife is also present during this unholy sacred ceremony that is inspired by the Biblical tale of Jacob, Rachel, and Bilhah in Genesis. When Rachel, Jacob’s wife, is unable to have children, she gives him her handmaid Bilhah to bear him (them) children. When Bilhah gives birth…the sons are claimed by Rachel as her own.

Thankfully for those of us who manage to not vomit when the current leader of the United States describes himself as “a Christian,” Atwood lays the groundwork as Gilead being a fundamentalist and grotesque interpretation of the Bible, and then lets go of broad brushstrokes about Christianity in general, or even organized religion per se. It is made clear, both in the text and in subsequent interviews, that Gilead is based on a perverted version, in the same sense that a certain leader’s understanding of Christianity is so twisted as to be unrecognizable.

late 1990s

I did not read this book in 1985. I would have been nine. But I finally read it for the first time in the late ‘90s. It made a big impact on how I thought of subjugation, control, language, gender and specifically the role of women.

And the role religion plays in power dynamics and differentials.

It was an important landmark in my journey to becoming a feminist. Not the only, not the catalyst. But an important one. It stayed with me.

2005, 2012, 2017

Leaping forward: I had three conversations over the years with my friend Rachel.

Bible Rachel was raised in a patriarchal society where her life was not her own to make. My Rachel was raised in a different society that still had gender expectations and difficulties, but she made of life what she wanted. And had an impact on my thinking and the way I processed ideas about gender and power. I held onto her observations and thoughts and we shared a sense of horror at Atwood’s dystopian speculative fiction and were thankful that we lived in a country where brutal totalitarianistic orders could never rise to power like occurred in Gilead…

…and I continued to be interested in the idea of how people enable their own imprisonment or subjugation.

1852

Like many, I have never read one-hit wonder Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery, pre-Civil War best selling political novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Like many, I have not led my lack of complete knowledge about the book prevent me from commenting on it. The first time I recall reading a summary was early in elementary school. Possibly around…1985 and the publication of a particular novel I refer to above (possibly not, but I am drawn to the symmetry).

Even at this age, there were aspects of the story I had trouble understanding, despite only experiencing a condensed version. The main struggle was with title character Uncle Tom; a passive slave who sometimes seems eager to not only appease, but to please white people. And of course the white people in the story are the plantation owners: those in power. “Plantation owners” being a euphemism for “slave owners,” in the sense that today “alt right” is used as a similar code for “white supremacist.”

I don’t have much to contribute in the way of literary analysis about the validity of the book or the apparent stereotypes of other key characters. What I do know is the ongoing query it provoked in my tiny brain about what it means to betray something you’re a part of.

Uncle Tom, the character, has been accused by some of betraying his race. A race traitor. A character whose passive acceptance and desire to get along with those persecuting slaves leads him to a martyr’s end and does…what for those oppressed?

The author, Harriet Beecher Stowe, was an abolitionist and Christian; I have rarely rose-tint rear-view mirrored the past, but I am drawn strongly to past expressions of Christianity being at the forefront of social justice and fighting for the oppressed, as opposed to its current role of institutionally defending the powerful. Whatever side you land on in analyzing her characters and themes, I find it difficult to argue that at minimum, her heart was not in the right place and that she did not advance dramatically the cause of abolition and awareness of slavery as a moral evil to be eradicated.

I also understand some of the characters she wrote went on to become unfortunate and poor examples of racial stereotypes that have persistently risen again and again.

That said, was the success of her book a good thing or a bad thing in the overall shifting of justice in the mid-19th century world?…

2016

A Presidential election. Maybe the guy who won won’t be as bad as his campaign bluster. Maybe he can change and learn and grow into a good leader. Maybe, maybe.

2017

He doesn’t.

2018

He gets worse.

2019

And keeps getting worse.

Back to 2017

I plan to watch Hulu’s adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale with Rachel. We talk about it, but never do. Then it’s too late.

Back to 2018

Becca talks about reading the book so we can start watching it together. But there is life to deal with, and other books and other distractions. And children.

January - September 2019

Becca talks about reading the book so we can start watching it together. But there is life to deal with, and other books and other distractions. And children.

October 2019

I get impatient and tight-lipped, autocratically deciding we are going to start watching The Handmaid’s Tale. We do.

My mom

My entire life my mom has been intensely impacted by movies, especially violence. She is possibly the most deeply empathetic person I know, and certainly one of the strongest. And when violence and horrific scenarios are vividly displayed on screen, it is almost more than she can handle. Frequently it is more than she can handle.

That may be a good thing. She feels deeply and perhaps that is a big part of why it’s so difficult to watch horrific acts committed on screen: because there is a point at which you know or feel that somebody has endured, or is enduring, or will endure the horrific nature of whatever is happening on screen. And to fill your mind with that is…

…intense. At what point does awareness of horror become a celebration?

Season 1

I can barely make it through an episode. Not because it is poorly-done. It is an incredible rendition of the novel. But it is intense. Intense in an uncomfortable, suffocating awareness of the horrors that lie ahead as the story skips around in time, and where there come certain points that are so horrible the first time you see…

…and then they happen again, and you start to get into a rhythm and be a little less horrified because it’s become normal. You’re adjusting to this new reality, this new world. Of course it’s fictional though.

Today, whatever today is

Like the often-told story of a lobster getting boiled, blissfully unaware as he heads toward death because it’s happening comfortably and slowly, we live in a world now that has rapidly changed norms for what is acceptable;

for what we will tolerate. And each time we tolerate something unacceptable, the bar for normal is changed and we accept that it’s different and get used to it.

And we get weary of fighting, because there’s too many things to fight and we gotta choose, right?

In the meantime, there is a complete societal shift taking place that is moving the normal; what is acceptable, for everyone.

For everyone. For what we will tolerate. For how we will accept being manipulated with lies and language in the name of fighting easy enemies.

Back to “in a hallway in The Present”

“So you write sermons?”
I ask.
”About what?”

She does not know me well, she does not know me at all, otherwise she would have understood that she could never simply give me partial details such as these and not expect me to pursue them vigorously.

For a short second, she goes doe in headlights, but only momentarily. She looks up confidently.

“I write sermons about the demasculinization of men in today’s society.”

“Okay,”
I said, and now I am both interested and thrown off balance.
”Interesting.”

“I also write,”
she says, picking up steam,
”about how women can best be supportive of their husbands.”

I say nothing, because my mind is going back to the previous night.

The previous night before a hallway in The Present

We watched an episode of The Handmaid’s Tale, and in this episode - MINOR SPOILER ALERT - there is a great deal of exposition about how Gilead came to be, and the government coup that brought men into power and women into state-mandated subjugation.

Also, as a relevant aside, women are forbidden to read in Gilead. A first offense and you lose a finger, a second and they chop off an entire hand. Anyone who knows my views on libraries as white blood cells for society can guess how fast this gets my heart racing, to say nothing of a persistent belief I can’t shake that people should not have limbs chopped off for reading books.

The wife of a high-up figure (the Commander) figures prominently throughout the storyline, and it shows her significant role in the successful revolution that toppled the President, Congress, and the Supreme Court, suspended the Constitution, and brought men to power and women to chains. Always metaphoric chains and sometimes literal.

She is a key figure in the early creation of Gilead, of this society whose solution for a world-wide epidemic of sterility is to co-opt fertile women into the workplace; one of a handful of ‘occupations’ in which women are deemed fit to serve.

Let me say that again: she not only tolerates, but helps to build a society in which her own gender will be oppressed and diminished to, at very best, a subservient and supportive role to men.

1987

Around age 11, I started reading the political satire of Art Buchwald, the political opinions of P.J. O’Rourke, and the political news contained in The Oregonian and USA Today. These writings got me interested in paying attention to government and who was running for office and who was mad at who in politics, and so forth.

It gave me knowledge and insight into what was happening in a variety of forms.

Thank God for print.

And for First Amendment free press protections.

1991

Around the time George H.W. was running against Bill Clinton for President, I also became aware of a woman with an audience. Beverly LaHaye. Wife of the author Tim, who wrote the ultra-popular rapture-fest series Left Behind, which I have not read, primarily due to not wanting to.

Bev LaHaye started an organization called Concerned Women for America (CWA) in 1979. It’s a fundamentalist Christian organization run to support women and traditional values.

Traditional values are essentially defined by the organization as being ideas that feminists are against.

CWA is very anti-feminist. I am not attacking them in using that phrase; they proudly and consistently promote the idea that they are pro-women’s rights, and at the same time…anti-feminist.

Back to traditional values: the easy way to read through the code of what “traditional values” means when you hear an organization, politician, or religious leader reciting it over and over, is that it basically means a return to the good old days when women stayed home to raise families.

So the short version of Ms. LaHaye and her organization’s mission is to promote women’s rights, via the protection of traditional values, by keeping them home.

Where they belong. Raising children and supporting their husbands.

As long as they’re not supporting their husbands financially. That’s his job, according to CWA theonomy dreaming. A woman’s job is to stay home, raise children, and fight against anything threatening traditional values, such as same-sex marriage, abortion, sex education, and secular education in general.

In a nutshell: CWA exists, as a women’s organization, to ensure that women have less independence, less freedom, less autonomy, and fewer choices,

and they pursue this agenda in the name of…

(turn over, Mr. Orwell, language is being flipped upside down again)

…women’s rights.

To be clear on two things

I believe in the value of domestic work or livelihood as a choice for women, for men, for both.

I support and advance a family-first agenda in focusing on the well-being of our children collectively in order to create and advance the best society for all.

Ms. LaHaye created an organization that promotes the subjugation of its gender by…

…identifying itself as a protector of women’s rights.

I have long been mystified by people and groups who fight against their own self-interest.

I do not think that a member of CWA automatically makes one a gender traitor. There are likely many lovely women and wonderful mothers who are a part of it.

Yet I cannot understand the idea of being part of something that devalues, delegitimizes, and diminishes your very gender.

These women

I have a daughter.
A wife.
Sisters, mom, mother in law.
Aunts, nieces, grandmothers, girl friends,

all the women I care about,
the ones I know,
and the ones I don’t:

I cannot imagine, I cannot imagine, and yet I am imagining
a world in which their rights are being stripped down,
eroded, destroyed,

sometimes quietly, sometimes loudly,
because the road to create a new normal may be rocky, but it’s consistent and it’s repetitious.

It makes you get used to things you don’t want to get used to and makes them feel…normal.

It normalizes the perverse and the deviant while glorifying homogeneity, tradition.

It relabels facts as lies, truth as falsehood, and the sacred as the profane. It rebrands servitude as a type of freedom, in the sense that alternate facts are simply another type of facts.

It bastardizes and perverts the radical roots of Christianity in the name of fundamentalism. It does not set free. It enslaves, while claiming to do the opposite.

I have to be able to look at the women I love in the eyes, today and tomorrow,

and say truthfully:

“I will fight for you, and more importantly,
I will follow you in your fight, our fight, for equality and a road that does not lead to Gilead.”

a hallway in The Present : finally, The End.

“So you write about the demasculinization of men, and you write about the role of women in being supportive wives to their husbands?”

“I also,”
she replied,
”write about how to raise families in households that aren’t corrupted by the secular world.”

“You,”
I said, searching for words,
”sound like, um…you write a lot.”

“Yes,”
she said.
”And I art too.”

“Well,”
I said, snuggling our two-month old close to my chest,
”I think I’ll go do something now, like burp the baby.”

And I strode off in my most masculine swagger,
being careful though to not jostle the baby too much.

They grow up so fast, and
someday, someday,
I dream of watching Handmaid’s Tale with all the kids

and having them experience it as the most far-out piece of fiction they could possibly imagine,
because how could something like that ever, ever happen?

I dream of that.