No Way to Win

At the beginning of the text by Susan Faludi, Blame It on Feminism it appears that the liberation of women have caused all this pain. They “have never been more miserable,” they experience “an infertility epidemic,” “a man shortage,” “loneliness,” “identity crisis,” and they experience these things “precisely because they are free.” From these issues it appears that the liberation of women is actually painful to the women. In The Handmaids Tale we see something similar to this, the handmaids are protected, there is no rape anymore, they all have homes, and they are fed and clothed, however their lives are not pleasant. With this “freedom” they also lost education, their rights to read and learn, they also are forced to produce offspring or move to the colonies, they are also hated by the wives that can no longer produce children. Like the women in Faludi’s text the handmaids have been “robbed” of something, love, while the women in Blame It on Feminism lost men.

                Blame It on Feminism also describes how women are not actually really free, they still have many places in their live that are lesser than men’s. I thought that it was interesting that even though liberation has so far appeared to hurt the liberated, that some of the women that are written about in this text feel that they should still strive for equality. Though I see the benefit in becoming equal to men it also would seem apparent how freedom is causing pain among women. The statistics that Faludi provides are “75 to 95 percent of women credit the feminist campaign with improving their lives, and a similar portion say that the women’s movement should keep pushing forward,” this means that that either women think that liberation is more important, the consequences are not as bad as they are portrayed, or the problems may be fixed if equality is reached.

                Continuing through Faludi’s writing she explains that the problems created by the liberation of women are actually hugely exaggerated by the media.  This explains women’s insistence that equality of women is still fought for. This is seen in The Handmaids Tale because we see that the women in that society have a group that recognizes each other by the word mayday , and this group is against this regime and the way that they are force to live their lives.