General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsMargaret Atwood: Go Ahead and Ban My Book
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/02/margaret-atwood-handmaids-tale-virginia-book-ban-library-removal/673013/No paywall
https://archive.is/7FOGY
Its shunning time in Madison County, Virginia, where the school board recently banished my novel The Handmaids Tale from the shelves of the high-school library. I have been rendered unacceptable. Governor Glenn Youngkin enabled such censorship last year when he signed legislation allowing parents to veto teaching materials they perceive as sexually explicit.
This episode is perplexing to me, in part because my book is much less sexually explicit than the Bible, and I doubt the school board has ordered the expulsion of that. Possibly, the real motive lies elsewhere. The conservative Christian group Focus on the Family generated the list of unacceptable books that reportedly inspired the school boards action, and at least one member of the public felt the school board was trying to limit what kids can read based on religious views. Could it be that the board acted under the mistaken belief that The Handmaids Tale is anti-Christian?
The truth is that the inspiration for The Handmaids Tale is in part biblical: Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheeps clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves (Matthew 7:15). The novel sets an inward faith and core Christian valueswhich I take to be embodied in the love of neighbor and the forgiveness of sinsagainst totalitarian control and power-hoarding cloaked in a supposed religiousness that is mostly based on the earlier scriptures in the Bible. The stealing of women for reproductive purposes and the appropriation of their babies appears in Genesis 30, when Rachel and Leah turn their handmaids over to Jacob and then claim the children as their own. My novel is also an exploration of the theoretical question What kind of a totalitarianism might the United States become? I suggest were beginning to see the real-life answer to that query.
Wittingly or otherwise, the Madison County school board has now become part of the centuries-old wrangling over who shall have control of religious texts and authority over what they mean. In its early-modern form, this power struggle goes back to the mid-15th-century appearance of the Gutenberg printing press, which allowed a wider dissemination of printed materials, including Bibles.
*snip*
SheltieLover
(57,073 posts)RKP5637
(67,112 posts)weird drug laced stories, The Book of Revelation.
Hekate
(90,807 posts)RKP5637
(67,112 posts)Dr. Strange
(25,924 posts)crickets
(25,983 posts)S/V Loner
(9,000 posts)exposes them.
MontanaMama
(23,337 posts)panader0
(25,816 posts)paleotn
(17,962 posts)West of Culpepper. Just outside the DC orbit. Trumplandia. I guess they just don't like Atwood sharing their plans.
FakeNoose
(32,766 posts)Especially "The Handmaid's Tale." Margaret Atwood is a treasure.
tavernier
(12,401 posts)Sweet!
wnylib
(21,611 posts)if it isn't available there, they will order it online and pass it around among their friends.
It will become the most popular book in the school.
panader0
(25,816 posts)wnylib
(21,611 posts)my last post. I read a copy of Candy that my cousin had. Don't know where or how she got it.
llmart
(15,552 posts)These people who want to ban stuff like this from high school students are so out of touch with reality of these times.
wnylib
(21,611 posts)RKP5637
(67,112 posts)Ollie Garkie
(186 posts)These hogs are sooooo transparent.
tavernier
(12,401 posts)you can get anything on the Internet.
Go ahead and tell a kid hes not allowed to read something.
Irish_Dem
(47,406 posts)Elessar Zappa
(14,063 posts)One of our DUers posts from there and he uses a VPN to access websites that the CCP blocks.
Irish_Dem
(47,406 posts)And he is not a Chinese national.
Even if you can "work around" something in China doesn't mean
you are not being monitored.
Duppers
(28,127 posts)IronLionZion
(45,530 posts)niyad
(113,573 posts)tiredtoo
(2,949 posts)SouthernDem4ever
(6,617 posts)And I really think she based Aunt Lydia on Sarah Sanders.
radical noodle
(8,013 posts)That would be perfect (if she hadn't written it so long ago).
ShazzieB
(16,515 posts)Among many other things of course, but I'll bet that's a big one. The narrator, Offred, uses it to describe what the Commander is doing to her during the monthly ritual of trying to impregnate her, and I honestly can't think of a better word for what is happening during that scene. None of the common euphemisms apply, really, because she's describing an utterly impersonal, completely animal act. I guess that's what the book banners consider "sexually explicit," lol.
They'd probably consider the book "sexually explicit" even without that, though. After all, it's pretty clear that sex is what the handmaids are there for, the reason they even exist. People like these VA book banners don't want their kids to read anything that even implies that sex can happen in any context other than between a husband and wife in a heterosexual marriage. Mustn't give the kiddies any "ideas," you know!
Solly Mack
(90,787 posts)SalviaBlue
(2,918 posts)Thanks for posting.
Timeflyer
(2,002 posts)Hekate
(90,807 posts)malthaussen
(17,216 posts)... is exactly anti- to the thing being practiced under the name of Christianity, as I am sure she understands.
-- Mal
Wounded Bear
(58,713 posts)Pepsidog
(6,254 posts)Elizabeth Olson to a time when women first began losing their rights. For context, the plot features a dystopian future following the Second American Civil War wherein a theonomic, totalitarian society subjects fertile women, called "Handmaids," to child-bearing slavery. (from wiki). The flashback was Olson remembering a time before the war when Olson left for work. Before walking out of the house, she reminds her husband to sign her birth control prescription. Without the husbands consent she had no right to birth control. I told my wife and two daughters about this and warned them don't be surprised if this doesn't happen in some states soon. All three looked at me like I was nuts. Crazy Dad being an alarmist, that could never happen here in NJ. The fact is that NJ is a Dem state, but after Dobbs and Bruen every horrific possibility is on the table which should scare the crap out of us all, not just women.
LiberalLovinLug
(14,176 posts)czarjak
(11,294 posts)Martin68
(22,890 posts)guarantee the county probably has more Trumpists per acre than most places in the US.