Corner of Bourbon & Division

I am at work all day for 12 hours, and I can do absolutely nothing about the packing or the bank or the sellers' inability to provide documentation in a timely manner. So, rather than angst about it, I am distracting myself during the down times at work by watching The Handmaid's Tale. 

I started watching it when it first aired in 2017, because I read the book well over 20 years ago (sometime in 2003, if memory serves), and while at the time I hadn't developed as many critical thinking skills and also lacked a lot of the historical knowledge of the real-life atrocities that informed Atwood when she wrote it, I still remember thinking how eerily plausible it all was. 

There are lots of themes and through lines that are worth exploring that I haven't fully thought through yet. There's the ritualized subjugation and infantilization of women, learned and acquired helplessness. There are themes of collaboration, what is means to be complicit in your own oppression (complying in advance, complying after the fact in order to survive, and exploiting the system for one's own gain on both small and large scales). There are themes of secrecy and lies, betrayal and loyalty, and what they all mean when living under an oppressive regime. There's also a lot to examine about the rules of society--who is allowed to break them and who isn't.

I do really like the writing when it comes to the characters and the plot taking place in the present time of the show. If I had unlimited time and brain bandwidth I'd want to do deeper dives into many of the characters, mostly the women but also some of the men: Serena, June/Offred, Emily/Ofglenn, Janine/Ofwarren, Fred Waterford, Joseph Lawrence, Aunt Lydia, and plenty of others.

Where I start having trouble is the world building. Atwood's novel is written in the epistolary style, strictly from the point of view of Offred, who is given no other name in the book, and encapsulates a very limited moment in time--the duration of her stay with the Waterfords (I don't remember if that's what they're called in the book). There is an metafictional epilogue which reveals the whole novel into a conceit that we are observing historical documents, a primary source no less, of a historical period that has come and gone. Gilead has been gone for 200 years, we are told, and very few records remain of its existence.

The show necessarily has to deviate from that after the first season, which follows the novel reasonably closely if my memory serves (which, honestly, it does not serve well these days, so I could be mistaken). The show therefore has to start doing its own world building, and honestly Gilead doesn't hold up particularly well under too close scrutiny. Here's a list of my issues, in no particular order:

- The economy. How the fuck does anything work if suddenly 55% of the working population doesn't work anymore? At higher levels, the loss of institutional knowledge would be pretty devastating, and at lower levels the loss of personnel would be even worse. Women have always been part of the workforce, even when inequality was at its worst. They've been labourers, factory workers, secretaries, assistants, and with increasing equality they have occupied every single rank and position in society. You can't declare all of that illegal overnight and not create a huge, chaotic vacuum. That's never addressed in the show.

- The rules governing women. We are apparently meant to believe that society transitioned pretty quickly and smoothly into one in which women are not allowed to work, not allowed to have their own money or bank accounts, aren't allowed to read, and are rounded up and put into re-education centres according to whichever "class" they've been assigned to (Wife, Handmaid, Martha, Aunt, Econowife). We see some protests initially which are violently put down (armed men gunning down protesters with automatic weapons), and then we just never see anything else from that time period. There is no mention of how these centres were initially set up, nor whose buy-in was required for that. The Aunts run the centres, we are given to understand, but who trained them in the first place? To get a system that regimented takes a lot of time and a lot of practice, and getting all of the centres across Gilead to adhere to the same SOPs must be an administrative nightmare.

- Societal structures and systems. At one point in Season 2 Commander Waterford yells at his wife to call 9-1-1, and that made me wonder who the fuck is still staffing all these institutions, and how they're still running apparently smoothly after removing half the workforce. See my first point about the economy. I worked as a dispatcher and telecomms operator for nearly two decades, and more than half my coworkers were women. We were already short-staffed and stretched thin, and finding qualified candidates to work was time-consuming and incredibly lengthy. Multiply this across every police force across a nation, every other 24-hour centre you don't even know exists. The people in charge of Gilead have completely upended the order of things, have done away with most modern technology, but we're meant to believe that 911 still works? It stretches credulity, at the very least.

- Then there's the costuming. It was established in the book and preserved in the show, and visually it's extremely striking. However it makes no sense from any perspective other than "it looks really cool." Coordinating identical outfits for literally millions of women across an entire country? Come on. If it were local to one city I might be more inclined to believe it, but nation-wide? No. For one thing, there would have to be an extremely long transition period while they get all of the outfits designed and then produced. Also, who is physically making these outfits? We're meant to believe that Gilead has protectionist policies, so they're not outsourcing to another country like China, but in the former USA/now Gilead, the vast, vast majority of sewists would have been women, who are now not allowed to work. Are you telling me that they somehow trained up a bunch of willing men to do "women's work?" Or are we meant to believe that people in each household are expected to sew their own outfits? If so, why do they all look mass produced and not like some terrible homemade hodge-podge?

- The costuming has a secondary problem, which is that it provides the women with too much anonymity. This is demonstrated over and over and over in the show. June/Offred routinely is able to run around and disguise her movements simply by donning the uniform of a different class of woman: either a Wife or a Martha. Each uniform grants her a layer of protection, either through privilege or invisibility. And as June herself says toward the end of Season 1: "They should have never given us uniforms if they didn't want us to be an army." I am reasonably sure that at least one or two of the organizers of the movement would have thought of this. 

- Last but not least, a pet peeve of mine: everyone is constantly miserable. The thing is, this is absolutely contrary to human nature. Yes, under oppressive regimes there is always an undercurrent of fear and constant paranoia about who might be about to report you to the State. But humans aren't built to be somber 24/7: they will take every opportunity for celebrations, small and large. They make food and they hang out over cups of tea or get together for illicit parties. There is so little joy in The Handmaid's Tale, and the vast majority of group encounters are weirdly manufactured and ritualized. Like, where is the secret underground dance party like in Titanic? Why doesn't Offred ever sit and gossip over a cup of tea with Rita after so many months of living under the same roof, even if it's surface-level nonsense? 

 

:::ETA:::

I am back with more thoughts that I forgot about.

- What about the future? Particularly the future Handmaids. In the present, Handmaids are picked specifically because they successfully bore a living child in the past. What is the plan for the next generation of women? There's no telling which little girl will be able to bear children successfully, so what is the plan for them? Only two classes of women can potentially have children (unless you count some of the Jezebels), the Handmaids and the Econowives, should the latter be lucky enough to be fertile, and the Handmaids' babies are of course given to the Wives. Who in the next generation will be picked to be a Wife, a Handmaid, or a Martha? Or any class of woman, for that matter? The whole system falls apart within a generation, because what Wife would allow her daughter to become a Handmaid? Even a Martha would be an unthinkable fall in station. So that leaves only the children of the Econowives who'd have to be divvied up, and that seems unsustainable to me.
 

Anyway, thank you for putting up with all my Handmaid's Tale thinky thoughts. Maybe one day I'll get back to the other characters I mentioned, or some of the more interesting themes. We shall see.

Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Someone on Facebook posted earlier today that the wealthy (the post said billionaires, but I'm willing to bet other ultra-wealthy people whose net work is "only" in the tens or hundreds of millions also profit this way) profit off of stock market volatility, and honestly, that tracks as the youths are saying these days. (Actually, I'm not sure the youths are using that expression either, I might be a few years out of date on that one too). Trump declares tariffs, the markets tank, wealthy people buy up stock at low prices. The next day Trump declares no more tariffs, the markets pick up, the wealthy have now made a tidy profit.

Barf.

The weather also doesn't know what to do with itself, which is fairly typical for the beginning of March. We've had snow, freezing rain, rain, clear blue skies, warm weather and freezing weather all within less than 26 hours. It's been changing its mind more than Trump has, and that's saying something! Today when I tried to go to work for the early shift my entire car was frozen shut, and the windshield cover I use on my car had actually frozen closed over the side mirrors (it has drawstrings that close around the side mirrors that are great 99% of the time because it keeps the cover from blowing around), and it took forever to get it off as well as chip away enough ice to actually get in my car in order to get my scraper out. What a shitshow. Luckily this is a fairly rare weather coincidence, so hopefully I won't have to deal with it anymore this year, or at least only a handful of times before spring sets in.

In politics-adjacent news, I've been having conflicting feelings about continuing to post on Dreamwidth and LiveJournal. LJ is, of course, owned by Russians, and DW has all its information hosted in the USA, which makes me worry a little about what's going to happen to all of the posts and data if more draconian laws come into play. I'm trying to divest as much from anything US-related as possible, and that is probably going to include a lot of my online activities.

I'm still trying to figure out how to divest from social media companies that are overwhelmingly American without sacrificing my connections with friends (my family is mostly not online) and my connection to alternative news sources and help networks. I know so many people online who are wonderful and amazing whom I consider close friends even though I've never met a lot of them in person, and I have a lot of IRL friends who now live far away from me and with whom I basically only have contact online. I don't think Canada HAS a social media platform to speak of. Right now I have accounts on a number of platforms: Discord (not social media exactly, but close), Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky, and TikTok. All but the latter are owned by the US, and the latter is great in some ways and problematic AF in others.

Not for the first time I kind of wish I had learned how to program beyond the basic html shit I learned specifically for LJ back in 2002. ;) I'd be fine with trying to create my own social media platform, even if it was kind of small and janky if it means I could keep all my friends in my pocket like before but without supporting US corporations or sacrificing my data to shitty actors. I suppose I could always try to learn to program an app in my copious amounts of spare time. To be fair, I do have spare time, I am just bad at using it efficiently.

I have always wanted to be one of those highly organized, highly efficient people to whom others look and say "My God, I don't know how she manages it all!" However, I have to be content with people side-eyeing me and probably saying things like "It's honestly amazing she manages to tie her shoes on a regular basis." (Joke's on them, 3/4 of my shoes are slip-ons!) I have a fair number of "extra" hours in the week, but those usually get frittered away either in decision paralysis or general task initiation paralysis, or just because I can't force myself out of bed early on the weekends anymore because I'm never not tired. (My sleep test is in eight days and I am way too excited about it!)

In related news, I've started reading a new book which looks super promising. It's called Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next), and so far it has done an excellent job of defining mutual aid, what is is and what it isn't. The next part of the book is meant to have practical advice on how to start mutual aid or at least get involved, and I am excited to get into it. As usual, my brain isn't letting me read particularly quickly, so I may run out of time before the book has to go back to the library. That being said, if I like the book enough, I may buy myself a copy for future reference.

Okay, time to put this disjointed post out of its misery. Tomorrow I am off to visit my parents and I don't know how late I'll be back home, but hopefully I will be home in time to not break my posting streak. See you on the flip side, friends!

I've been posting to Dreamwidth and LJ pretty consistently, but LJ's "new" interface is pretty janky these days. For one thing, it just isn't loading some of my icons when I select them, for reasons I can't figure out. Some work just fine, others just load the default icon, which defeats the purpose of having other icons. I am displeased.

I also really dislike the new posting interface, but I can't revert back to the older version. I can't do proper text cuts anymore, and adding in images is an absolute pain in the ass. I miss being able to just plug in some html code and being able to preview the entry. Now it's all supposedly "integrated," but in practice it's a hot mess. I'm grateful that Dreamwidth is still operating with a recognizable form of the open source software that LJ was built on. I assume the change at LJ is deliberate in order to do away with as much of the old open source stuff, because capitalism, but I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

It's too bad that both LJ and DW are so quiet these days. I miss the old days of being able to catch up on the minutiae of everyone's lives, both good and bad. I've noticed that on social media people tend to have two modes: 1) Everything is amazing in my life, please look at this aesthetic photo I took, and 2) Rage bait. Those are the two kinds of posts that appear to "drive engagement," as they say nowadays, and the lack of authenticity is a real drag. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that all the friends I follow are suddenly being shallow and inauthentic, but Facebook and Instagram and so forth really encourage you to curate both your posts and what you consume. Photographic posts are rewarded by the algorithm, while text-only posts get "suppressed." The algorithm also decides for you what you should be seeing, meaning that I often miss important news and announcements from friends, which sucks.

There was also something that felt very intimate about blogging, because the long-form content allowed all of us to dive deeper into topics if we felt inclined. At one point I was the queen of very short posts, but I also wrote some much longer thinky-thought type of posts, and having long conversations across multiple comment sections was a great way to get to know people and to deepen my thinking on a number of topics. It also allowed all my nerdy friends to info-dump about the subjects they loved, and by extension allowed me to learn about them. Short-form social media just doesn't lend itself well to this sort of thing.

During Quaker Meeting yesterday, the focus of worship ended up being The Situation At Hand. *gestures broadly* One young online attender shared their trepidation for themself but also their friends in the US, and all of a sudden there was an outpouring of ministry from the older Members, many of whom are old enough to remember World War II, most of whom had family who were active in various war or resistance efforts. So much of the ministry that those elders offered was filled with messages of love and hope and practicality that I could see a lot of the younger people visibly shift out of their despair, even if it was only for a few moments. It was a reminder that we can get through the dark times. We may not get through them individually, but we can get through them as a whole. It doesn't make it any less terrible or scary or awful, but it reminds us that we can be brave and do hard things even when we are afraid.

The elders also reminded us that Quakers have a long, proud history of letting people decide for themselves what pacifism means. For some, it means conscientious objection no matter what, to the point of imprisonment or execution. For others it meant serving in non-combatant roles like ambulance drivers and army medics. For others still it included accepting conscription when it came for them. 

A famous anecdote about George Fox recounts William Penn (another founding Quaker and for whom Pennsylvania is named) asking him whether he should continue to wear his sword. Penn was accustomed to wearing the sword, and at the time was reluctant to give it up. Fox is said to have replied: "Wear it as long as you can, William, wear it as long as you can." And, supposedly, the next time they met, Penn was no longer wearing it.

There are multiple ways to resist in these dark times. We can choose to openly defy those who choose to oppress us, or we can do it more secretly, and take opportunities to resist where they present themselves. We can challenge them in court, we can sabotage their efforts wherever we can, especially if our jobs allow us to slow down/delay/obstruct. We can drown them in useless paperwork. We can hide people who need to be hidden. We can help other people hide people who need to be hidden. We have a wealth of ways at our disposal, and each person's resistance will look a little different.

It was a really enlightening Meeting, and I am glad we were all there for it. I don't think we would have had as enriching an experience of Ministry had we not had both the in-person worshipers and the online worshipers, so I also feel pretty vindicated in that regard.

Today is my only day shift this week. I've switched shifts with a coworker who needed to be on days from Tuesday to Friday, which suits me just fine. I'm working the early evening shift, too, which is great because it means I get to still get to bed by about midnight or half past. Working the regular evening shift usually gets me to bed at 2am, which I find a little rough, but midnight is still halfway decent.

On that note, it's time to get back to work. Catch you all tomorrow, friends!

There's a screenshot bopping around the internet of someone asking: "What's the most boomer complaint you have?" And the reply is "Stop making me make accounts. A lightbulb that changes colours shouldn't require an account. A TV speaker shouldn't require an account."

This is one of the most relatable things I've seen of late, because I have had to create so many accounts for things that honestly should not require any such thing.

I have an account for my computer mouse and keyboard, I have an account for several "services" relating to my television, an account for groceries, an account for Canadian Tire, Home Depot, a couple of restaurants from which I order food sometimes, my Fitbit, my bus pass... I could go on and on and on.

This is, of course, because all of these companies want my data. It started out I don't even remember how many years ago with those points/loyalty cards. Remember when there were physical cards for those things? The companies figured out they could a) keep their customers coming back with loyalty programs, and b) track where people were spending their money. There have been stories over the years about how advertisers know more about us than our own family members, like that time Target allegedly knew about a teen pregnancy before she told her father (that story is likely untrue, but a lot of women reported that when they were "trying" for a baby they started receiving a lot more pregnancy and baby-related materials despite not making any significant changes in their shopping behaviours yet).

These days, it's all about the almighty Algorithm. The Algorithm gets talked about like it's a living, breathing, sentient being, and that's maybe not too far from the truth. It is something that learns and grows and is designed to try to read your mind, to predict what you might want to see next, but it's also designed to influence you to want more things, too. On social media it will feed you posts that it wants you to engage with more, and on websites like Amazon it's designed to make you want to buy more things. Sure, we can joke about the algorithm suggesting toilet seats to us for months after we bought the only toilet seat we're likely to need for several years, but the fact remains that it will absolutely suggest "related" things to the books and other doodads that we're already buying, and I have not been immune to the "Oh, that's a good idea!" effect of having it in front of me, the same way you impulse buy a chocolate bar at the checkout at the grocery store, only worse, because the website remembers everything.

Worst of all, we've gotten to a point where we can't opt out. I seeds from a Canadian retailer a few months ago, and found myself mysteriously signed up for something called Shop, which is now being used by a bunch of retailers that I frequent online. Okay, fine, it seems to be a weird combination of PayPal and Wayfair, and it's not my favourite, but if I have to have this account in order to get seeds, I guess it's fine. But then suddenly I couldn't track my orders without downloading the Shop app on my phone (very sus) OR allowing it access to all of my emails, including read/search privileges (SUPER sus). Like WTF is up with that? NO, THANK YOU. Why do you need the ability to search through my emails, Shop? Hmm? And it's the same with so many other things. Buy a robot vacuum? You have to create an account or it won't work (I had one of the early ones in 2006 or so, and it worked just fine because smart phones were barely a blip in those days and "there's an app for that!" was a cute new catchphrase). Want your landlord to make a repair? Make an account on the new residents' portal! Want to control your own thermostat? FUCK YOU, MAKE AN ACCOUNT.

*lies on the floor*

I'm fed up with being The Product (as in "if the product is free, then you are the product"), especially as I am more often than not paying to be the product these days. I would like to live my life without being in forty thousand databases, and I would like to do that without scrubbing every trace of myself from the internet and going to live in an off-grid hut in a swamp and becoming a bog witch. Surely there must be a happy medium somewhere?

Anyway, that is my rant for the day. Carry on. See you on the flip side!

I was thinking about the old saying: "Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it," and it occurred to me that quite possibly the most tragic outcome of taking that advice would be for someone to stop wishing entirely, on the off-chance that they might not like the result of their heart's desire.