ABSTRACT
Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale, which began streaming in 2017 and now extends to five seasons, offers an exemplary case study of how issues of gender and sexuality broadly and debates about and within feminism specifically play out in a major science fiction (SF) television series. Based on Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel, the series is often brutal in its depiction of a patriarchal, misogynistic, and theocratic regimen, and it notably began airing in the wake of the election of Donald Trump and the resurgence of patriarchal, evangelical, and fascist ideologies in the US and on the global political stage. In this article, we argue that The Handmaid’s Tale forefronts not only violence against women but also debates within feminism and concerns over the politics of representation. In many ways, the series serves as a compelling if at times vexed, contradictory, and critiquable televisual introduction to contemporary thinking about gender and sexuality. Specifically, the series is often deeply compromised by its failure to acknowledge White supremacy as equally central to the authoritarian politics it critiques as is patriarchy. Moreover, the series’ prioritizing of fertility as the central issue of the series also has consequences for its capacity to think capaciously about sexuality, gender, and futurity. As such, we argue ultimately that a more robust queer perspective on such matters offers multiple other political possibilities for how one imagines a thriving society; in particular, we argue, a queer approach to The Handmaid’s Tale encourages us to decenter biological reproduction and motherhood in ways that would radically transform the series’ capacity to represent a diversity of women.
