​Handless Maid's Tale / handliss mades tayl / n. Margaret Atwood's dystopic franchise, set in a topsy-turvy world where women are dominated by men.

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SEASON THREE of The Handmaid's Tale is too disturbing to watch, unless you're into bondage and panel gags, in which case I recommend Episode 6. And if you want to act out the scene at home, perhaps for some sort of drama project, Etsy will sell you all the props you need to get your Fifty Shades on.

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The Fifty Shades franchise bagged a cool billion servicing a demographic described by Hollywood insiders as "85% female, 15% boyfriend". But the idea of women enjoying patriarchal subjugation is so politically incorrect it had to enter the mainstream through the back door of fan fiction. Another tale that can't find traction is the one about how it's not women these days who live in fear of witch hunts, kangaroo courts and state-sponsored silencing. - just ask James Damore, if you can find him down the memory hole.

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Atwood's brilliant workaround was to invert the genders. Hear me out. Her fantasy world is clearly no Patriarchy, beacause the Second Rule of Patriarchy is NO BONNETS. They make even babes look daft, and anyway the First Rule of Patriarchy is NO CLOTHES. Why do you think women's fashions are designed by gay men? It's because straight men lack motivation.

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But I digress. Back to Atwood. She makes a timely point with her cunning inversion, but just because men are being brutally oppressed right now doesn't mean  women are having any fun. However, if we want to address the lack of female agency in the modern world we'll have to dive a lot deeper than Hulu - all the way down into Jung's collective unconscious, the realm of dream and myth, where we will uncover the ancient mystery of the Handless Maid's Tale.

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PODCAST  III

The Handless Maid's Tale

(COMING SOON)

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