If you are up to date in the world of pop culture, you have probably heard about “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood. It was a popular book for several years but really started gaining popularity in 2017 when the TV adaptation aired. If you aren’t familiar with the plot, the series is set in Gilead, a totalitarian state that used to be the United States. The state is ruled by a regime that believes women are property of the government and uses them as pawns in trying to keep the population alive amid an environmental crisis. The regime running Gilead is an extremely far-right religious group who generally don’t believe in the rights of women. The show has continued to gain popularity throughout the years and recently has been getting a lot of buzz because people have been linking the show to the newest Supreme Court Justice, Amy Coney Barrett.
Here’s why I think that this is something we need to be paying attention to. “The Handmaid’s Tale” is an extreme hyperbolic example of what could happen if the government gets overthrown by an alt-right religious group. With that being said, the comparison to Amy Coney Barrett is still scary. There is a lot of talk about how because Barrett is a woman, feminism is safe, but that sadly isn’t true. The fear that is filling many women in the United States is a very real fear that several rights are going to be under attack—even more so than they have been in the past. The threat to overturn Roe v. Wade is looming over the heads of women more prominently now than ever before. As well as the threat to birth control being covered by insurance.
People are making their own connections between Barrett and “The Handmaid’s Tale,” but the most drastic comparison between the two is Barrett’s link to a religious group called People of Praise. There has been speculation that Atwood loosely based her book on said religious group. In several interviews, she has mentioned a different group called People of Hope were the inspiration for the book, which is not the same group as the one Barrett is a member of. The connections between People of Praise and “Handmaid’s Tale” aren’t cause for sudden panic, but it is definitely something that women should keep in mind moving forward in the current political climate.
One of the biggest reasons people are making the connection between the two is because the People of Praise, at one point, had a position called the “handmaiden.” The “handmaids” and “heads,” if they were male, are advisors to the members of the group and counsel them on things such as marriage, children, jobs, homeownership, etc. They have renamed them now, but the connection was there. Another issue people have with this group is that they openly object to LGBTQIA+ men and women. There are also accusations that they place a very strong emphasis on gender roles within the community and believe in stark differences between men and women’s roles.
There is no proven correlation between Margaret Atwood’s “Handmaid’s Tale” and the religious group People of Praise, but that doesn’t mean there is no threat to the reproductive and contraceptive rights of women.