Unveiling the Truth: The Historical Origins of 'The Handmaid's Tale

thank you so much for coming over from Tick Tock if you saw my handmaid's history deep dive video on there and you came over here I know it's kind of annoying to switch from one platform to another the notes that I made for this are just like literally densely packed like 17 Pages worth of just like one long paragraph so it really could not have possibly been broken up into Tick Tock videos without it being very obnoxious and taking a lot of you guys's time so this is really the more efficient way to do this I'm going to start with a quote from Margaret Atwood herself one of my rules was that I would not put any events into the book that had not already happened nor any technology that was not already available no imaginary gizmos no imaginary laws no imaginary atrocities God is in the details they say but so is the devil what makes a handmaid's tale so relevant and so topical and feels so real is because it really is rooted in reality and that's its intention the handmaid's tale is just that it's a cautionary tale about fascism for efficiency's sake I'm going to be breaking this video up into chapters my table of contents should be right here and I'm going to put time markers in the video so that if you revisit this video you can skip to that specific section if it interests you fascist regimes always employ the exact same tactics and that's why it works like these are so important because once you recognize these tactics it becomes so obvious and it really does make it so that you can see the warning signs of a fascist regime developing Margaret Atwood knew this and so she put all 14 defining characteristics of fascism in the book in Gilead once you're aware of these tactics it becomes incredibly obvious when a fascist movement is taking place which is why works like these will always be relevant and always be important so really quickly I'm gonna go through all 14 and how they're present in Gilead one powerful and continued nationalism they terrify people into loving them basically if you don't love Gilead you better pretend that you do those who do experience patriotism for Gilead do so for two reasons one Gilead's completely carbon neutral they're the only country at least in the universe the handmaid's tale that can honestly say that they're not contributing to global warming they're trying to fix these environmental issues and two they're the only country that's birth rate is not declining but it's actually increasing so those who benefit from Gilead's system can always point to those two factors and basically no one has anything to say aside from of course the very obvious human rights violations that are taking place under Gilead's regime which brings me to point two of fascism disdain for the recognition of Human Rights so Gilead basically has this Mantra and Fred Waterford actually is quoted saying this in the book and the show where he says better isn't always better for everyone which is basically Gilead's entire selling point right they're like okay yeah maybe there's individuals who are suffering under Gilead but we're not prioritizing individuals we're prioritizing the species we're prioritizing the globe we're making sure that the human race continues and we're making sure that when it continues we have a planet to live on which is technically true but again they're abusing these ideas right three identification of enemies and scapegoats as a unifying cause this is especially easy to identify in Gilead because it's religious it makes it very easy for anybody who observes the religion at the center of Gilead to go anybody who doesn't believe in this that's our enemy for supremacy of the military this is also very easy to see in Gilead they have military members openly present at basically every turn and it's to act as a show of force and to intimidate anybody who would even consider going up against Gilead five rampant sexism which again do I have to explain in the handmaid's tale how there's rampant sexism in Gilead I don't think so women are obviously second-class citizens in Gilead six controlled mass media Gilead doesn't really have any mass media internally at least most of the populace isn't even allowed to read but beyond that they don't have technology they don't have any sort of news system within Gilead the only mass media that Gilead has is external and it's basically just used to Pedal propaganda and try and create International Ally ships with gilia Evan obsession with National Security this one is obvious because Gilead has completely closed borders eight religion and government are intertwined because Gilead is openly a theocracy this is very obvious their whole system of government is rooted in religion and their entire government was created by a fundamentalist cult nine corporate empowerment is protected this one's a little bit more subtle itliad's main export and import is supposed to be babies children hand Maids fertile women this is shown when they have the representatives from Mexico come and visit Gilead and they're talking about how they're going to start exporting oranges from Gilead really it's just code for exporting handmaids 10 labor power is suppressed and Gilead labor power is actually completely eliminated they have just fully resorted to slavery when you look at the colonies those are essentially just labor camps and nobody is is getting compensated for these jobs they're just this is your job now and they have to do it under threat of violence 11 disdain for intellectuals and the Arts this one's actually very interesting because it often goes overlooked the Arts and Gilead are essentially non-existent women are not allowed to read and write so even though Serena helped create Gilead and she's an author she's not allowed to continue this practice and she knows that going in and then she's like actually this sucks well that's your faults right now there's no dancing there's no singing There's No painting just knitting that's really the only creative Outlet anybody has and it's because they don't want people thinking outside of the box they don't want people educating themselves obviously because that's way more difficult to control and the Arts encourage you to think outside of the box so they don't want to encourage that 12 obsession with Crime and Punishment this one is also very very obvious Gilead has strict and overt rules and repercussions so everybody knows what rules you're not allowed to break everybody knows what the repercussion is when you break those rules executions are all public punishment answer all public so that everybody can see that these are not Bluffs this is what will really happen 13. rampant cronyism and Corruption cronyism is very obvious with the eyes and as far as corruption goes look as far as Jezebels and 14 fraudulent elections if any in Gilead there really aren't any elections at least not any public elections it's pretty much just selections if you will by the commanders they just pick each other and decide who gets promoted and who doesn't all right now that we've covered that let's get into all the real world history behind the handmaid's tale and what things in the book and the show really happened and where first let's start with our main character June June is actually based off of a real one I would actually dedicated June's character to Mary Webster Mary Webster was one of the first women to be persecuted during the Salem witch trial basically what happened is a well-respected government and church official randomly fell ill and everybody just decided that Mary Webster was the reason and that she was a witch she was physically assaulted and hung as punishment but she actually Against All Odds ended up Surviving Atwood said that she based June off of Mary because Mary is actually somewhat of a hopeful historical figure because although she faced this terrible atrocity and there's terrible adversity she ended up living through it this inspired Atwood to actually heavily draw upon the 17th century American Puritan theocracy and in fact the moment where all of the handmaids are taken to the Gallows to be hung as punishment for basically rebelling against the system of Gilead and they're put up there and they're hung but they're not actually hung is a direct reference to mayor Mary Webster because she was hung but she survived just like how all the handmaids were technically hung but nobody died that's Margaret directly alluding to Mary's experience and more than that it's especially fitting because they're experiencing this punitive system even though they didn't really do anything wrong they just were sort of suffering under this terrible regime much like Mary Webster who just was kind of there and then everyone decided she was a witch and for anybody who's interested in learning more about Mary in particular her story is like extremely well documented in the memorable providences so if you look up memorable providences they detail her Story Probably too much and you can learn all you need to know about Mary let's talk about the reproductive and child care system within Gilead and why it is the way that it is totalitarianism is a specific type of government dictatorship where all of the people are expected to be in total subservience to the state in an interview Margaret Atwood said these regimes always have an obsession with who's allowed to have children who's not and once these children are born what is the government going to do with them and to create Gilead system for this she actually Drew from several different historical events on Tick Tock the one that went viral that's prompting me to make this video is I was talking about the lebensborn children the leban's born children were children who were intentionally bred during the Holocaust so Hitler had these women who he deemed to be racially valuable I.E Aryan women with blonde hair and blue eyes and he had them go to these specific centers and birth as many children as possible because the birth rate in Germany was declining though he was eradicating a lot of people during the Holocaust he also wanted to replace those people with Aryan people he had these women birthing as many children as possible but beyond that he also had Nazis go to other countries and kidnap foreign children and foreign women who exhibited these ideal racial traits he would take these children a lot of them were Swedish and polish and put them into these camps basically so they were in their own type of concentration camp not because they weren't Aryan but because they were and he would have these teenage girls brought in who also exhibited these racially valuable traits and have them go to these birthing centers and have as many children as possible and that's obviously horrific another thing about it that is not often discussed is naturally these women and these children couldn't really share their experiences after World War II was over because they were also ostracized and because these women were given financial aid during the Nazi regime for having all these children most of these kids were just cast aside when the regime fell because these women could not afford to support all of these children and actually I learned because of this Tick Tock video that one of the women from ABBA is one of the lebensborn children another historical event that Atwood used as inspiration for the handmaid's tale was actually Argentina and she did an interview where she was talking about how during that regime they would be pushing people out of plane to kill them but if there was a pregnant woman who they also deemed to be racially valuable they would keep the pregnant woman until she gave birth and then they would take the child and give this child to somebody else the children were almost always given to somebody in the command system in Argentina which is very similar to what we see in Gilead where the commanders are given Priority Access to all of these children and then after the children were born they would they would push the mothers out of um an airplane anyway lastly the other place where Atwood actually took inspiration for this system was from the United States and Canada where forced adoptions were actually very commonplace between the 1950s to the 1970s for indigenous women and unwed mothers where they would take these babies and they would place them in different homes for indigenous people they would place these children in predominantly white homes to basically whitewash these children and sever them from their native identity this was also done in Australia and Romania as well and the handmaid's tale really directly covers that because you see that when children are taken out of Gilead and they're brought to Canada and they're returned to their biological families they experienced this insane culture shock where they're like I don't want to eat this food I want to eat the Gilead food I want my Gilead nurse made I want my Gilead house I don't want to be around technology and it's because they've effectively been brainwashed and totally severed from their original intended identities which is pretty much exactly what the child well Welfare League of America did with the Indian adoption program where they took the native children from 1958 up until the 1970s and placed them in white homes to teach them American values with this process there's also a lot of references to the transatlantic slave trade as well where obviously children of all ages and infants were taken from their families and moved to completely different countries completely different locations and we're never able to trace back their lineage to find out where they were originally biologically from and actually when Margaret Atwood was riding the handmaid's tale she found during her research process that Canada was experiencing a very similar drop in birth rates as Romania a lot of people in the media were blaming this on pollution which is very similar to what you see in the handmaid's tale where Gilead is essentially blaming pollution for the low fertility rate which that's certainly a contributing factor to a certain extent but really statistically speaking Canada found that the main contributor to the lower during birth rate was actually more women joining the workforce and this is actually why To This Day Canada has a pretty relaxed immigration policy compared to their next-door neighbor of the United States because they're trying to keep their population rate high there's actually allusions to this in the handmaid's tale specifically when you see the Canadian government talk to Gilead and try and work with Gilead notice that they're inquiring about how they've gotten the birth rate high because they also want the birth rate to be higher once you know about that context it really jumps off the page to you and it's because it's also a problem in Canada and it was drawn from real life and current events at the time of her writing the novel I already mentioned Romania but it was just a casual mention Romania had actually enacted decree 770. the cree 770 was basically completely Banning contraceptives because the birth rate was dropping and they later went on to take this very extremist approach to Banning abortion decreased 770 was incredibly extreme because after Banning abortions they actually started to implement armed guards at the gynecologist's office and forced women to get a pregnancy test once a month these armed guards were placed outside in the Halls to make sure that women complied with the pregnancy test which is exactly what you see in Gilead as well when they have the handmaids go to their Gynecology appointments so that they're unable to flee naturally wealthy women in Romania still had access illegally to contraceptives on the black market which you do see a reference to in the handmaid's tale as well and this policy actually remained intact until the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1980s the ceremony as stated in the book and the show alike is based on Genesis 31 3 which reads as follows and she said behold my mate go in unto her and she shall bear upon my knees and I may also have children by her the biblical story describes a woman named Rachel who is one of several polygamous Sister Wives to a man named Jacob her sister wife Leah has many children but Rachel is unable to have any herself so she asks her handmaid to conceive a child with her husband in her stead it works and Rachel gets to have Jacob's baby and never hears from her handmaid again we know that ligamy was once common practice internationally we don't know how common force surrogacy was but because it's referenced in the Bible we can assume it was at least somewhat present otherwise it wouldn't have been included as for the birthing process in the handmaid's tale the handmaids are supposed to give birth in front of dozens of people they're supposed to give birth in front of all the other handmaids in front of the ants and also in front of the wives and this is actually a reference to the 1600s and 1700s monarchies system what they would do when a queen was pregnant is they would have her give birth in front of the public and this was so that nobody could come in and switch out the baby so they could ensure that this was truly the king's Heir there was rumors occasionally when certain women would snap back from pregnancy too quickly that she could have never been pregnant in the first place and she must have been faking and stuffing something up her dress and maybe one of her servants was actually pregnant and then they just switched in the baby and that's not really a king's Heir blah blah blah to put those rumors to rest once and for all they made these Royal women give birth in front of upwards of hundreds of people and it's actually been speculated by various historians that Marie Antoinette at her young age when she was giving birth almost died during the birthing process and that when people heard that she almost died hundreds more people rushed in to try and witness this birth in case she was gonna die to be like oh the drama which sounds terrible in Gilead the handmaids are stripped of their original names and they're given a new name for each new master or commander and so our main character in The handmaid's Tale her real name is June in the show in the book she doesn't ever reveal her real original name but in the show her name is June and she's placed in Commander waterford's house his first name is Fred so she's renamed offred if she gets moved to a different house she becomes a Warren of Sam and so on and so forth so that she never has a concrete identity and her title is always tied to whoever owns her so people automatically know who she belongs to this is a very direct reference to the transatlantic slave trade first names for all enslaved people were changed sometimes just because they sounded too foreign but usually because it was just a way to strip somebody of their initial identity and make them feel like property and their last name was always whatever the master of the plantations last name was very similar to the whole of insert first name system that you see in Gilead this is why to this day so many African Americans have very English sounding last names that's also why during the Civil Rights Movement there was a Resurgence of African sounding last names and it was because people were like I'm not going to carry on this terrible name that was assigned to one of my ancestors from some terrible [ __ ] I'm gonna come up with my own new name if I can't trace my lineage back because why not that's also why Malcolm X is known as Malcolm X because he was unable to identify what his ancestors original last name was and so he changed it to X because he didn't know it it was basically a way of reclaiming your identity and your freedom the commanders pretend to be religious and Pious when they're at home with their wives and their families but then of course they have to have an outlet right so they go and indulge at this place this illegal nightclub called Jezebels the name Jezebel is also a religious reference Jezebel was married to King and OB and is basically known in religious circles as practically being synonymous with the word treachery she was a murderer she was a prostitute and she's basically just known for being extremely depraved interestingly though she was actually also pretty politically astute and strong-willed and an intelligent Phoenician princess the history behind that is that there really was a secret sex ring just for government officials during Nazi Germany soldiers were allowed to go to these secret brothels that were filled with women who were from conquered territories and were being forced into prostitution as a result the chief of the SS police Heimer kemler he believed that prostitution was a complete necessity for the soldiers because otherwise he felt like morale would dip so in the 1930s brothels were actually a state regulated and the women were forced to have annual STD and STI checks to make sure that the soldiers never got sick in the handmaid's tale our main character June gets involved with this secret resistance known as Mayday this is a very obvious historical reference to the Underground Railroad but there's actually a history behind the name choice and there's actually a little known history attached to the way Mayday specifically operates as well that is in addition to the references to the Underground Railroad the Underground Railroad existed during slavery and it was a way for enslaved people to try and flee their enslavement and escape to Freedom it's not like a literal railroad underground or anything like that it was a system of safe houses and other methods predominantly known for being led by Harriet Tubman which was designed to help people escape to freedom in 1923 an unidentified officer in Corydon airport in London actually used Mayday as code for help to English people the French word for help me sounds very similar to MayDay and so British Pilots as well as other Europeans all understood it as a call of distress being able to cross these linguistic boundaries with all the allies was extraordinarily youthful and so it became commonplace the other influence for Mayday was actually the 20th century women's revolt against the American Plan the American plan is not often discussed and it's not often taught in school but it's actually an insane part of American History during World War One there was an insane amount of riots from women who were imprisoned under the American Plan same amount of women ended up escaping the American prison system and in the television adoption of the handmaid's tale Mayday is predominantly shown as being led by white well-educated women but the revolts under the American Plan were predominantly done by women of color specifically immigrant women the American Plan was also a huge influence for how the colonies are depicted in the handmaid's tale so in the handmaid's tale women who are considered to be promiscuous which under Gilead can be anything from having gotten an abortion before Gilead even existed being gay having been in an affair that Gilead somehow knows about or even just being too overtly flirtatious any of those things can get you sent to the labor camps in Gilead and that's actually based off of the American plan so for those of you who are unfamiliar which I'm assuming is a lot of people because I've really never heard very many people talk about the American Plan the American Plan was implemented during World War one and it was this system where women who were considered to be promiscuous which could be anything from women who were actually prostituting themselves to women who just were rumored to get around could be jailed and imprisoned just based off of essentially being snitched on this was because the government believed that we needed any and all male Soldier is to be available to fight they were not willing to take the risk of anybody Contracting STDs or STIs that could make it so that they were unable to fight for their country so these women were actually considered a literal threat to National Security by the government just for being promiscuous this meant that during this entire period where World War one took place women could be jailed just on rumor alone and there was essentially nothing that they could do about it it was actually the largest and longest Mass quarantine in American history up until that point in the handmaid's Tale on women who are basically that's just Gilead code for gay women were forced to clean up radioactive waste in the colonies this has a very direct real world counterpart in the 1970s under the Soviet Union prisoners were forced into manual labor in uranium mines so that the Soviet Union could gather materials for nuclear weapons and also exhibited any symptoms of radiation poisoning were actually sent off to specific medical centers to be tested on which is also just another tier of terrible as for the gender Traders which is also just another code in Gilead speech for gay women there's still countries today where homosexuality is legal and even punishable by death it actually wasn't even legal in the U.S until pretty recently before don't ask don't tell became a thing under the Clinton Administration any gay man who was discovered to be serving in the military was discharged and during World War II if a gay man was discovered in the military he was shot which is especially unfair because they were drafted into the military they couldn't help being in the military homosexuality was still illegal in 14 states in America as of 2003 and marriage equality only recently passed back in 2015. public executions like the ones demonstrated in Gilead have been incredibly popular for thousands and thousands of years under many regimes at completely different times and different epochs and it's absolutely not exclusive to 20th century America although it was present in 20th century America as well Margaret Atwood herself has admitted that there are a lot of elements from the handmaid's tale that are borrowed from Emily Zola's 19th century novel which was based on true events called germanial spoilers ahead so you might want to skip this next part but germanial focuses on the 19th century coal Enterprises there's a man who runs the company store and he basically forces sex out of the wives and Daughters of the coal miners in exchange for goods because the coal miners are so poor that they don't have any money available when the women finally get a chance at revenge against this guy they actually physically tear him limb from limb and they take his genitalia and put it on a spike and parade it around town the public executions carried out by the handmaids take a lot of inspiration from this Whenever there is somebody in Gilead who's found guilty of rape the handmaids are called upon to Stone the man to death and eventually rip him limp from limb so it's Gilead's way of taking this rage that they know is a byproduct of their political system and still making it benefit them in some way in season two of the handmaid's tale we see a very different type of public execution that we haven't been exposed to before up until this moment and the one I'm referencing is the swimming pool public execution that is an example of somebody taking scripture to such a literal extent that it's actually deadly the Bible verse it's based on is Matthew 18 6 which goes as follows if anyone causes one of these little ones those who believe in me to stumble it would be better for them to have large Millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea in the handmaid's tale the Republic of Gilead is a Christian fundamentalist cult that has seized power over what was formerly called America and is now Gilead all of the laws are modeled after very strict religious beliefs within this cult during the Middle Ages theonomy and common law were so tightly intertwined that sins such as adultery were punishable legally by death in the United States Constitution the separation of church and state is in there specifically to try and avoid the Resurgence of etheonomy for the governmental element of Gilead you might be surprised or maybe or not to learn that Margaret Atwood actually took heavy inspiration from Ronald Reagan in 1981 he was the first U.S president to propose a constitutional amendment to bring back organized prayers in school throughout his campaign and later his presidency he heavily aligned himself with religious political organizations such as the Moral Majority and focus on the family the temporary rise in these politically Affiliated religious groups caused a lot of national anxiety surrounding issues of women's production and a lot of people really feared as a result that there was going to be a Crackdown on women's access to abortion during Margaret's research process where she was looking for a source of inspiration for the religious component she actually stumbled across a very obscure cult in New Jersey which she heavily borrowed from she discovered the cult via the Associated Press and it was a Catholic cult where the wives were actually referred to as handmaids and in the Associated Press article she literally underlined the word handmaids which is where she got the inspiration for the title of her book and the position of the handmaids within the novel although in this New Jersey cult the handmaids actually operated much more similarly to the wives of Gilead they called themselves the handmaids of God and their entire thing was to set a good example for women and they pretty much morally policed each other also within the cult to make sure that nobody disregarded these rules and the biggest rule of course was just being subservient to your husband there's also a considerable amount of history that was taken into account when she was designing all of the rank-based uniforms that all the women in Gilead have to wear so the wives wearing blue the handmaids wearing red the ants wearing brown all of that had a very specific intention behind it and a historical reference attached to it the handmaid's wearing red actually has several different Inspirations behind it during World War II prisoners of War who were held in Canada were actually dressed in that sort of bright red so that they would pop out against the snow red was also the color worn by Mary Magdalene in the Bible who's considered to be a fallen woman and as you can see in the red Center when they're talking to the women a lot of them are only allowed to be handmaids instead of going to labor camps because of their fertility but they still make a point of being like whose fault is it your fault your fault your fault about all their trauma and any missteps that they had taken in their personal lives before Gilead came into Power the bonnets that the handmaids wear is actually got sort of a weird personal tie-in for Margaret Atwood it's from the 19th 40s Dutch cleanser packages which when she was a child she just thought that they looked super creepy but she said that she also liked it because it sort of has a similar look to the Catholic nun habits that they wore to obscure their faces and everyone in Gilead has a uniform because it makes it very easy to determine their Rank and social division is very important in any fascist Society this is also reminiscent of the Holocaust because prisoners wore stripes and stars and even triangles to signify different things the triangles were to signify homosexuality they had different symbols for race and then lastly the long dresses of course Gilead is very conservative and that's taken from Puritan women Puritan women in the 1600s had to wear long skirts with dark fabrics and when you see civilians in Gilead who were allowed to live like somewhat freely that's essentially how they're dressed and that's where the inspiration is from the Traditions are still carried out by Amish people today and the flds church which is a very strict subset of Mormonism also has very very similar uniforms women are only allowed to wear loose fitted skirts forced to follow these very strict mandatory dress codes bright colors are considered to be too flashy so they usually wear various shades of blue which is pretty similar to how the wives are dressed in Gilead as well in the handmaid's tale we see at least two characters uh be forcibly sterilized which is just another word for female circumcision it's a pretty gruesome practice where they essentially remove all the exterior components of the female reproductive system therefore making sex really painful for the rest of your life so that you get no enjoyment from it this has been happening internationally for centuries in some countries it's sort of a ritualistic process which just oppresses women and in other countries it's used as a form of punishment in some African tribes it's still so common today that it is performed on every single woman in the tribe and it's actually performed by the mothers or the grandmothers which is especially terrible when you know that they know exactly how painful this process is but it's because they've been indoctrinated with this idea that the female sex drive is a bug like an illness and a disease and it makes you really sick so they're trying to they're trying to get the sickness out of these girls which is just terrible even though this has been going on for centuries the Western World didn't start discussing it any sort of major way until the 1950s and unfortunately this is actually still common practice in over 30 countries today 27 of which are located in Africa but it's also present in Kurdistan Yemen and Indonesia the final historical element that can be seen in the handmaid's tale is actually the way that the handmaids are sort of forced to mistrust each other the way that they're encouraged to snitch on each other the way that they're constantly thrown together in pairings of two so that there's always someone watching them while they're intended to be watching their partner as well this is actually a Jim Crow tactic it is one of the most Insidious tactics of division that has ever been exposed to the Western world and you can still see the scars of it today it's very present the concept of divide and conquer and the way that it was employed during the Jim Crow era was specifically designed to last well over 300 years white slave owners were encouraged to find any and all physical differences between the enslaved people and their plantations and to point those differences out as much as possible and to employ it different standards of treatment based on these physical differences the most known is colorism where lighter skin individuals were in the house and therefore had Superior treatment because they didn't have to be out in the sun and they didn't have to be doing manual labor where whereas darker skinned individuals were put out into the fields and had to work under extra heinous conditions but they were encouraged to create division on as many physical characteristics as possible not just skin anything that they could find so that infighting wouldn't sue the thinking was that if you can get this group of people who vastly outnumber you to focus on fighting against each other then they'll forget that they could always just turn on you the lasting effects of this form of divide and conquer are still very present today there's so many countries that deal with issues of colorism there's so many groups that deal with issues of colorism and it's unfortunately been extraordinarily effective distracting people from their common cause after the abolition of slavery before Black Codes were enacted divide and conquer was actually used again there was this entire population of formerly enslaved people who were suddenly free they started politically advocating for themselves they started trying to run for office and voting people in who would represent them and their wants and their needs and while doing so a lot of these people people of color started looking around and realizing that poor white people were also pretty disenfranchised and really were only living a step up from what they were experiencing they actually started coming together and being like hey you know we're advocating for all of these things and they could probably benefit you quite a bit as well poor white people in the South started realizing like hey actually you're right we have a lot more in common with you guys than we do with the rich white people who are running everything and taking all the resources and taking all the money and so then Black Codes were enacted to prevent black people from occupying certain jobs mainly political positions and to try and force them back into slavery and Via endangered servitude simultaneously a lot of former Confederates began campaigning and going to rural areas and speaking to these disenfranchised white people and letting them know like hey you know what financially maybe you have more in common with the newly free black people but will always have race in common and that that method of appealing to that sort of ego is still incredibly effective today and that exact same tactic is used for the women of Gilead they have the wives thinking that they're better than these handmaids even though they're also pretty disenfranchised too they're just living a slightly less unpleasant existence but even then you sort of see throughout the handmaid's tale a lot of the wives realize like you know I'm really not loving my situation either all I really get to do is knit kind of sucks if you can create this sense of false division between the women of Gilead what you end up doing is you get them to focus on infighting and turning on each other rather than realizing that if they were to just combine their power they might be able to take that power back that's all I have time for today I hope that you guys enjoyed this video if you have any other historical references that you either know Margaret Atwood pulled upon or you think are relevant and you can easily find a connection to please leave it in the comment section below I would love to hear it if you came from Tick Tock I really sincerely appreciate that so much I love that you were interested enough in this topic to come over here because it's something that I think is really fascinating and I could talk about it for hours and hours so I really appreciate that it's something that you find fascinating as well again thank you for watching please like And subscribe it really does help me out a lot this channel is New so I'm still trying to build it up and transitioning from the short form Tick Tock videos to long form kind of stresses me out so I would really appreciate the validation of people being like you did a good job it actually means a lot to me

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Published: Fri Dec 30 2022