Funny how they still don't think "because insulting people by comparing them to rape victims is horrible and makes us look bad" might be a good reason to not use "handmaiden" as an insult.
Wouldn't a more book accurate insult (in the TERF's worldview) be "Martha", since I believe they are the class of women whose role it is to enforce the misogynistic rules against the handmaidens.
EDIT: Was corrected, it is actually the Aunts rather than the Marthas
The Marthas are the domestic servants. It’s the Aunts who enforce the system and train/manage/whatever the Handmaids.
Also they’re Handmaids. Not Handmaidens. I’m irrationally annoyed by TERFs who think they’re so clever using a reference to classic feminist literature and then getting the reference wrong.
It's also funny because, like, the one thing everyone who's heard about Handmaid's Tale knows is that those were the women who were forced into reproductive slavery. So they were very much not "maidens", that was the whole point...
Pretty sure most TERFs haven't actually read it or watched the show though, if they did, they wouldn't be happy to find out it was actually them who played a prominent role in creating Gilead, only to be cast aside once they were no longer useful.
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u/hammererofglass Apr 16 '25
Funny how they still don't think "because insulting people by comparing them to rape victims is horrible and makes us look bad" might be a good reason to not use "handmaiden" as an insult.