The Handmaid’s Tale Is Hard To Watch With Everything Happening In Our Country Right Now
So, I just sat down and watched the first three episodes of season 3 of The Handmaid’s Tale, and within ten minutes I was in tears.
Why? Sure, the show is emotional, and it’s designed to get you right in the gut, but that wasn’t it. It was just hitting so close to home.
These women are being told what to do with their body, they are being told who, when, where and why they can get pregnant and they aren’t even allowed to keep the babies when they do.
When you watch it, it seems so far fetched, so far off. Like a fantasy. And sure it has problems just like in Game of Thrones, but there are no dragons in the dystopian society of Gilead.
Just very real possibilities. Handmaid’s Tale takes everything to the very extreme to make a point, and when I turned to my husband in the middle of the episode and said, “and now, right here in America, women are being told they don’t have a choice about carrying children.
And if they choose not to carry a child, they are being told they will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
That is happening, right here, right now, and it’s happening with lady law makers. Let me just say that one more time. Female law makers are helping make these decisions a reality.
Just like in Gilead, when those women fought for sanctity and purity, and then ended up on the wrong side of things.
There are too many similarities right now to this act of fiction. It’s too close to what is happening in our own backyard, and it’s hard to watch, because it really can make you feel like you are two or three laws away from the government having complete control over your fertility at all times.
These are our bodies, and we should get to make our own choices with what to do with them– let’s not end up in white hats and red robes, okay?