Hulu’s Handmaid’s Tale and Its Depiction of The Sufferings of Women Today (and How We Can Help)
I recently finished watching Hulu’s Handmaid’s Tale, a show adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s book the Handmaid’s Tale. It’s a show that divulges a brutal regime. One that strips women of their human rights and freedom. Females are raped, abused and brutally punished for breaking any regime rule. These rules include but are not limited to: no reading, no writing, no media consumption, no voicing of opinion, and no disobedience. They have to play the role the regime granted them and they have to do it without straying.
In writing the book, Margaret Atwood was quoted on People’s official site saying, “There’s a precedent in real life for everything in the book,” Atwood told People recently. “I decided not to put anything in that somebody somewhere hadn’t already done. But you write these books so they won’t come true.”
In other words, the sufferings endured by the women in the book and television production happen or have happened to women around the globe. I was not entirely surprised by this; because, as a female, I’ve experienced my fair share of sexual harassment and inequality. I’ve also seen a mountain of stories speaking on the unfair treatment of women, sexual abuse and domestic violence all over the internet.
Rape and sexual assault
In the Handmaid’s Tale, women are forced to have sex with the household commanders in an attempt to conceive. They mask this act of rape by calling it “the ceremony.” Throughout the production, the handmaids are sexualized in general due to the mere fact that they have the ability to be impregnated. This means men will also take advantage of the handmaids in ways that do not follow the regime structure.
This trend of violating a woman’s body is not merely fictional. In reality, according to World Population Review’s official website, “it is estimated that approximately 35% of women worldwide have experienced some form of sexual harassment in their lifetime.” Tragically, Unwoman’s official website finds that “approximately 15 million adolescent girls (aged 15 to 19) worldwide have experienced forced sex (forced sexual intercourse or other sexual acts) at some point in their life.” There is a high chance that we all know another female who has been sexually harassed/raped, if not having been personally sexually assaulted.
In addition, the 1 in 3 women who are harassed do not usually receive any form of help. World Population Review’s site found that “the majority of countries that have data available on rape report that less than 40% of women who experience sexual violence seek help.” Very rarely, do women feel that they can report sexual assault to a government official.
A rapist being locked up for their crime is even more rare than a woman reporting sexual assault. According to CMSAC’s official website, if you factor in unreported rapes “only about 6% of rapists ever serve a day in jail.”
In one scene, the handmaids are forced to surround a handmaid after she had been raped and tell her that it was her fault while pointing at her. This shame-based approach is an illustration of why some women avoid speaking up about assault.
In an article from Psychology Today’s official website, they assigned shame as a reason that survivors do not come forward. In the article Psychotherapist Beverly Engel said “Women, in particular, feel shame, because they are often blamed for being sexually assaulted. Even today, women are accused of causing their own victimization with comments like, ‘What did she expect when she dresses like she does?’ and ‘She shouldn’t have had so much to drink.’” These types of comments contribute to the shame women feel and keep rapists from ever being reported.
Domestic violence and aggression
During the show, the main character Offred says a bone-chilling statement: “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.” According to an article on Elite Daily’s official site, this quote was actually inspired by a lecture Atwood gave at the University of Waterloo.
Atwood was quoted talking about conversations she had with men and women: “’Why do men feel threatened by women?’ I asked a male friend of mine… ‘men are bigger, most of the time, they can run faster, strangle better, and they have on the average a lot more money and power.’ ‘They’re afraid women will laugh at them,’ he said… I asked some women students in a quickie poetry seminar I was giving, ‘Why do women feel threatened by men?’ ‘They’re afraid of being killed.’”
This fear has truth to it. Global estimates published on WHO’s official website indicate that “about 1 in 3 (35%) of women worldwide have experienced either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence in their lifetime.”
Furthermore, an article posted on NPR’s official site said according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s (UNODC) global study on gender-related killing of women and girls that in 2017, “50,000 women worldwide were killed by intimate partners or family members — a figure that translates to 1.3 per every 100,000 women.” They also stated that most of these murders of women are carried out by male intimate partners or male family members.
Women are often victims of violence and aggression carried out by their male counterparts. We are told to not go out alone, to avoid men we don’t know, and to carry pepper spray with us. The fear of men is instilled in us from a young age.
Female Genital Mutilation
In the show, one handmaid is punished for her sexuality in a very literal way. They took away her ability to experience an orgasm while leaving an opening so that conception was still possible.
This procedure the character underwent is known today as Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). According to Women Health Organization’s (WHO) official site, FGM “includes procedures that intentionally alter or cause injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons.”
According to WHO’s site, there are no health benefits to this procedure. However, there is a plethora of negative health consequences. Issues can include but are not limited to: severe pain, excessive bleeding, urinary problems, shock and death.
In the U.S., we hear of these procedures and can be fooled into believing other women are not suffering from this surgery. However, FGM is still performed and is typically carried out on infants and adolescents. According to WHO, “more than 200 million girls and women alive today have been cut in 30 countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia where FGM is concentrated.”
How we can help bring about change
Knowing that some of the events that occurred in Handmaid’s Tale happen to women somewhere in the world today gave me an awakening. There are many sufferings that females are experiencing worldwide just for the mere fact that they are women; and, some countries limit women more than others.
Readers, we can unite and bring about change to these sufferings illustrated in the Handmaid’s Tale by using our personal freedom and resources to do as much as we can to help other women. In the United States, while women are suffering, we still have the ability to help others in our own country and the freedom to provide for women in other countries as well. Overall, it is important to speak up about issues such as: inequality, rape/assault and defend and support those who are suffering. But, there are more ways to bring about change.
Websites you can visit to find out how to help lessen the sufferings of women today:
Help survivors and victims of domestic violence/rape:
https://www.rainn.org/get-involved
Help End Female Genital Mutilation
https://www.equalitynow.org/end_fgm
If you or someone you know is experiencing or has experienced domestic violence/sexual assault:
Call National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-7233
Call National Sexual Assault Telephone Hotline: 800.656.HOPE (4673)
Written by Kenzie Jade