64 newyork| november25–december8, 2019print of a house. You have to seetheblue-
print before you move into the house.Is this
the house you want to live in? Take a look
around. Are there enough bathrooms?Do
you like the wallpaper? But you canchange
it. It’s still just a blueprint. There’sa very
good book by Madeleine Albrightcalled
Fascism: A Warning. For her, “fascism”has
a pretty broad definition. Whatshereally
means is totalitarianism. But she kindof lays
it out on a plate. Here’s the warningsigns...
and here’s what they all do. The coursesof
action are detour signs: don’t gohere. So
what I say to people when they say,wringing
their hands, “What can we do?,” Isay, “How
about voting next time?” Theyguiltily
applaud because they didn’t. Theywere
too pure to vote. They didn’t likeeitherof
the candidates.
What do you make of the high-profile
women of the Trump administration^5?
What else is new? It’s the old story.Hier-
archies are hierarchies, so that atthetopof
the hierarchy [you] may have malecom-
manders, but a woman affiliated with
somebody at the top is going to havemore
power, influence, money, and stuffthana
man at the bottom. Who had moremoney
and stuff: Queen Elizabeth I ora Tudor
male ditchdigger? If that’s the trainthat’s
got all the Champagne on it, a lotofpeople
would prefer to be on that train.
I think many women have an emotional
response of revulsion, a kind of“gender
traitor” response. Is that a naïvereaction
to someone like Ivanka TrumporKelly-
anne Conway?
Going back in time, looking aroundat
Hitler’s entourage, there werea lot of
women in it. Of people who participate,
there are usually three motives. Thefirstis
they’re a true believer. No. 2 is opportunists—
this is the only game in town; therefore,
we’re going to play this game becausethat’s
the only hope of advancement.Andthe
third is fear: “If I don’t do this, I willbepun-
ished in some way. I will be excluded,I will
be killed, I will be jailed, I will be
disappeared.”
In really thoroughgoing totalitarianism,
fear is a big factor. In the Americaoftoday,
it’ s a factor but not as large a one.I don’twant actual people.
And you haven’t gone on 4chan and
investigated?
I have not.
More than three-quarters of Americans
would like Roe v. Wade to be upheld, yet 19
states have introduced restrictions or
near-total bans on abortion this year. Was
there a turning point when legislation
began to diverge from public sentiment?
I think Republicans worked very hard at,
No. 1, controlling education textbooks and,
No. 2, getting in [to office] at the municipal
and state levels.
Do you think it was possible to avert
this turning point, or was it inevitable?
Hard to say, but nothing is inevitable. In
my world, nothing is inevitable. I don’t
believe in predestination.
The pink pussy hat from the Women’s
March and the handmaid’s uniform offer
two different ideas of visual protest. One
is that we assert our femininity by wearing
pink vaginas on our heads, and theother
is that we demonstrate, symbolically,how
bad it could get. Which do you thinkisa
more effective tool of protest?
I have zero idea because wecanonly
measure effectiveness by results.Let’ssay
that they’re both very visual andthey both
make their point. So why rule outoneor
the other? Going back a couple ofelections,
some people were knitting littlecervices
and sending them to politicians.
Did you knit a cervix?
I did not knit a cervix. My knittingskills
are a little bit rusty.
Protesters in handmaid cloaks appeared
at the Brett Kavanaugh hearing.^7 Didyou
watch the hearing?
Some of it.
What did you make of it?
I made of it the following: Thesekindsof
stories are not unknown; they happento
young women. I’ve got news for you,Molly:
It doesn’t happen to me anymore.There’sa
bright light at the end of the tunnel.I’m
never going to be aggressed by adrunken
Brett Kavanaugh. I thought Congress
missed their chance. They shouldhave
asked him more about the drinking,because
that was obviously untrue, but they werenotthink we’re poisoning people with radioac-
tive tea, but you could lose your job, be
unable to get another one. You could be
blacklisted. That has certainly happened in
this country. Those things are not to be dis-
counted or sneered at, because they moti-
vate a lot of people. And you don’t know
what you would do until those are the
choices offered to you. So are they wrong to
be disapproving? No. Are they consigning
these people to the category of nonhuman?
That would be a mistake.
There’s four kinds of stories: extraordi-
nary people in extraordinary times,extraor-
dinary people in ordinary times, ordinary
people in ordinary times, and ordinary
people in extraordinary times. If you wanted
peace for life, you should vote for ordinary
people in ordinary times. Handmaid’s Tale
is ordinary people in extraordinary times.
The book is. The television series isturning
that ordinary person into an extraordinary
person. And that, too, has happened.
In 2018, a man killed ten peopleby driv-
ing a van down a busy street in Toronto.
He identified as an incel^6 —a word that
sounds straight out of an Atwood novel.
Doesn’t it? Oh yes, this was not a phe-
nomenon with which I was familiar, but I
read up on it. It seems to havekind of
petered away or what?
I think it’s still going strong.
4chan, is it?
Yes, among others.
Have you gone there, Molly?
Unfortunately, yes.
What a brave girl you are.
Incel gives a name to something that
has always existed, which is the old
“women won’t have sex with me” com-
plaint. The word allows these guysto form
an ideology around it and to dohorrific
things ostensibly to advance that
ideology.
I mean, if they wanted to have sex, there’s
lots of it available, but they don’t want just
any old sex. They want—what do they call
them? It’s a woman’s name that’s supposed
to mean sort of a model.
Stacys.
They only want pictures out of maga-
zines to have sex with. They don’tseem to1 Atwood’s 1985 2 3 4
dystopian novel
imagines a future
theocracy called
Gilead where
women become
reproductive slaves.
It e a TV
se t premiered
i nTh e financier, who
had ties to Bill Clinton
and Donald Trump,
among many others,
was accused of
running a sex-
trafficking ring that
ensnared dozens of
underage girls. He
committed suicide in
jail in August 2019
while awaiting trial.Atwood’s 2019
sequel to The
Handmaid’s Tale
follows a group of
activists attempting
to overthrow the
government of
Gilead.
FOOTNOTES
PHOTOGRAPHS: @THEREALMARGARETATWOOD/INSTAGRAM (EMBROIDERY); JABIN BOTSFORD/THE WASHINGTON POST VIA GETTY IMAGES (IVANKA TRUMP)5