ABSTRACT
Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) discloses what happens when bodily autonomy is lost. A Christian theocracy controls a global population crisis, enslaving fertile women and raping them to “reproduce” the fictional nation of Gilead. Following the 2017 television adaptation, women dressed as handmaids to express anger over the state of sexual reproductive health rights (SRHR) in the United States (Oates, 2006). Sometimes, dystopian fiction reflects brutal realities. Despite constituting half the world’s population, women are often marginalized in discussions of security. Gender and sexuality remain an addendum to “hard” security challenges—to be addressed only once “real” conflict is eradicated and stability achieved. Therefore, this chapter connects gender, sexuality, and security, examines why they matter and why policymakers deny their significance, and develops a composite perspective for the biopolitical security nexus (BPSN).
