Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard about the Handmaid’s Tale – a classic book written by acclaimed author Margaret Atwood and turned in to an award-winning TV show by Hulu.

Over the past year, feminists have been using the show as a cautionary tale of what America is becoming at the hands of conservative men who just won’t stay out of their uteri. Some have even staged protests, dressed as handmaids from the show.

 

But now, in the wake of the #MeToo and #TimesUp movement, Atwood has had some very sane things to say about due process. In her op-ed in Sunday’s Globe and Mail, Atwood, she states:

My fundamental position is that women are human beings, with the full range of saintly and demonic behaviours this entails, including criminal ones. They’re not angels, incapable of wrongdoing. If they were, we wouldn’t need a legal system.

Nor do I believe that women are children, incapable of agency or of making moral decisions. If they were, we’re back to the 19th century, and women should not own property, have credit cards, have access to higher education, control their own reproduction or vote.

Furthermore, I believe that in order to have civil and human rights for women there have to be civil and human rights, period, including the right to fundamental justice, just as for women to have the vote, there has to be a vote.

Then goes on to talk about her support of due process because of some claims made against a Professor in British Columbia:

A fair-minded person would now withhold judgment as to guilt until the report and the evidence are available for us to see. We are grownups: We can make up our own minds, one way or the other. The signatories of the UBC Accountable letter have always taken this position. My critics have not, because they have already made up their minds.

…they are just feeding into the very old narrative that holds women to be incapable of fairness or of considered judgment, and they are giving the opponents of women yet another reason to deny them positions of decision-making in the world.

A common sense approach to the situation, but feminists weren’t having it, torching one of their idols because she wouldn’t fall in line with the rest of their hive mindedness.

Always an interesting time when feminists decide to turn on their own, especially when it’s someone so revered in the movement at Atwood.

-K