Ages ago I read Margaret Atwood’s brilliant dystopian novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, about patriarchal religion gone nuts. Now in 2012 I just can’t help thinking that with the world sprouting nutty fundamentalist religions of various stripes all over the place – including here in the U.S. – we might just have to live under a similarly toxic religious government in the not-too-distant future.
It seemed unnecessary for me to add to the chatter with so much commentary swirling around Rep. Todd Akin’s horrifying and completely idiotic comments about “legitimate rape” and the way a woman’s body functions. A great number of commentators have pointed out that his comments were made as part of a right wing effort that’s been going on for some time to deny women who have been raped access to abortion.
So why should I jump in?
Because I just can’t help seeing the same breathtaking mix of cynical manipulation and warped religion used to gain and keep power in the U.S. that Atwood described in The Handmaid’s Tale’s totalitarian Christian theocracy.
The religious zealots want all of us to be handmaidens to their twisted view of the world. I don’t know just what is it about these fundamentalist patriarchal believers and their medieval crazed fear of women controlling their own bodies, but it’s alive and well here in the 21st century.