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metaphysics
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30 Mar 2012, 10:35 pm

What is your opinion about the book and why?

Anything from you are most welcome^^



OliveOilMom
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31 Mar 2012, 2:37 am

I really enjoyed that book, it was great. It's one of those that you have to read again, once you understand everything thats going on. Because they don't give you much background on how society came to be that way except little by little as they go along, it's hard to know whats going on. Once you read it and understand the full story, it's much better when you go back and read it again. You'll notice more.

I did not like the movie at all though.


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ValentineWiggin
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31 Mar 2012, 6:55 am

I loved it, though I didn't agree with her indictment of feminists who aligned themselves with anti-porn conservatives.
I'm a huge Margaret Atwood fan.


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VMSmith
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31 Mar 2012, 11:49 am

that book was scary sh!&. it was speculative fiction but close enough to this reality to actually be possible. reading it freaked me out a little. its been a while since i read it so its a bit hazy in my mind but i liked it- it had everything: under ground revolutionary organisations, class divides, womens liberation struggles, etc. was she critical of those anti porn feminists who sided with conservatives? i thought she was anti porn... but its been a while so...



OliveOilMom
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31 Mar 2012, 1:33 pm

They talked about how in the "old days" women were wanting freedom. They were wanting "freedom to" do something and that getting that freedom to do things backfired. "Now" women had "freedom from" those things. That was considered to be the goal. I thought the book was about abortion. Abortion was outlawed because so many women were sterile from pollution, and those who could have children were made to have children for the sterile women. The sterile women were the richer class. Now of course I could have misread it and the richer class women did not even have sex, only the handmaids did, but like another poster, it's been a long time since I read it.

I know that the first inclination that something was wrong (for the main character Offred) was that her debit card wouldn't work. She had no way to buy anything on her own. Only men had access to the money.


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alcockell
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01 Aug 2017, 5:17 pm

VMSmith wrote:
that book was scary sh!&. it was speculative fiction but close enough to this reality to actually be possible. reading it freaked me out a little. its been a while since i read it so its a bit hazy in my mind but i liked it- it had everything: under ground revolutionary organisations, class divides, womens liberation struggles, etc. was she critical of those anti porn feminists who sided with conservatives? i thought she was anti porn... but its been a while so...


At the time (1985), Dworkin & Mackinnon were telling women who disagreed with them "Don't let those evil men tell you what to do - let US tell you what to do. And if you disagree with us- it's all in your head, you've been brainwashed by internal misogyny/patriarchy/our next buzzword". CF Ofglen suffering FGM to make her more malleable... Inculcating hatred of female sexuality... a tad misogynistic of the Aunts, perhaps?

Nancy friday wrote about the Dworkin/Mackinnon/Dobson tie-up in Women On Top - about how women would be "on the fast track with feet bound". Think how Charlotte Proudman and Gail Dines was sex-neg lyrical against sex-pos...


Kinda like the scene in National Lampoon's Animal House - "he can't do that to our pledges! Only WE can do that to our pledges".



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28 Sep 2017, 3:18 am

Read the books ages ago, and I am surprised at the recent upheavel about it....

Great Atwood fan. Loved the book, didn't like the new (Hulu) series a bit.