Universität Augsburg 29.11.2017 Phil.-Hist. Fakultät: Anglisk/Amerikanisk WiSe 2017/2018 Proseminar: Feminist Dystopias Dozenn: Johanna Pundt, M.A., M.Ed. Nicole Valuev, Bernhard Hösl, Linda Decker The Handmaid´s Tale in the Age of Trump 1) The Handmaid´s Tale 1985 vs.now The future is now what has happened so far. 1985 : - Margaret Atwood wrote the book while she was living in West Berlin -  Division of the country; feeling of wariness and being spied on - Conservatives Ronald Reagon and Margaret Thatcher held the highest elected offices in the U.S. and the U.K. -  Equal Rights Amendment had just been re-introduced; marital rape was still legal across much of the U.S. Now: Why is the novel more relevant now than ever? - book shows how much has changed and stayed the same - Trump's presidency and his opinion of women - Women’s rights to control their own bodies are at risk again; the environment is threatened again; legal prohibition of abortion - homosexuality: gay marriages 2) Analysis of significant book sections Correlations between Handmaid’s Tale and The Donald Trump Administration: There are a some correlations that appear in the book and can be connected to the current US government. The main points would be: - Disregard for working class - NSA - scandal (p.71, 80) - Women’s access to birth control - Men with power are given more privileges and rights (p.71) - Trump is disparaging about gay people - Crimes against humanity - Women are things not people (p.38, 70, 71, 75, 76) In the Handmaid’s Tale one will realize that one of the main subjects is, that women are seen as objects and treated like tools by those in power. In the book, Offred is valued solely for her fertile uterus. She, like the other women of Gilead, is neither treated as nor valued for her existence as a human with autonomy. This reduction of her personhood to a fertile uterus essentially robs her of her right to reproductive choice. In a similar manner, Donald Trump’s government seeks to deny women this same right, as one can see by his efforts to cut funding for Planned Parenthood, clinics that provide American women and men access to birth control, and decisions to prevent women from accessing birth control using their insurance policies.