Is Margaret Atwood high? It’s a fair question. Her latest insistence—that The Handmaid’s Tale is now “more and more plausible” in America—arrives with the seriousness of a warning siren, as though the republic were one ill-timed election away from issuing bonnets at the DMV.
Atwood’s always dealt in dire forecasts. It’s her brand. But her recent interviews take on a curious, almost giddy fatalism. On BBC Radio’s Desert Island Discs, she recounted the early days of writing The Handmaid’s Tale, back when the idea seemed “bonkers” because America was still a “beacon” of hope. Now, she explains, that dystopia “feels closer.” Not the outfits, she reassures us. Just everything else.
At this point, you wonder if Atwood has confused modern-day America with modern-day Afghanistan? The country may be loud, divided and erratic, but sending women into reproductive servitude is not one of them. The modern American woman has never been freer, had more opportunities, wielded more economic, educational, and cultural influence. Half the Senate could be replaced with suburban moms armed with tote bags and iced lattes, and few would notice the difference. Yet Atwood sees Gilead in the grocery aisle, like a ghost only she can spot hovering above the organic quinoa.
Still, her fears don’t come from nowhere. America does feel slightly more authoritarian these days. Not in the theocratic, red-cloak sense, but in the bureaucratic, algorithmic way that makes you wonder why every app wants your location and blood type. There’s a creeping managerial mood, a tendency for institutions to confuse “public trust” with “public obedience.” Atwood’s right to sniff danger there. And yet the great irony of the moment is that the loudest warnings about tyranny now come from people whose own ideology has never been stronger.
Because what Atwood never acknowledges is that neo-feminism—the movement she helped shape—is booming. It dominates universities, publishing, Hollywood, HR departments, and half of TikTok. It decides casting choices, marketing narratives, and the emotional temperature of entire political blocs. You can’t call that Gilead. It’s the opposite. A cultural matriarchy powered by hashtags and absolute certainty.
This contradiction—America drifting toward control while women hold unprecedented sway—is part of the strange, swirling atmosphere Atwood is now interpreting as prophecy. She looks at the turbulence and sees her own novel reflected back at her, distorted into a kind of funhouse sob. But what if the real story is simpler? What if America isn’t becoming Gilead at all, but rather an exhausted republic struggling to balance too many competing absolutes? One side insists abortion is murder. They believe that life begins at conception, and that the country’s moral foundations crumble the moment that principle is compromised. Religion, for them, is the backbone of civilization. The other side treats religion as something people took seriously before streaming services and woo-woo spirituality blew up. Their non-negotiable is bodily autonomy. They view abortion as an untouchable right, a private choice elevated to the level of a personal sacrament. My body, my choice, full stop. And this side is the left. A highly feminized left, where even the men have adopted the movement’s tone, posture, and priorities.
You see it in figures like Pete Buttigieg and Tim Kaine. Both move through public life with the air of men apologizing for existing. These aren’t leaders who push against the cultural weather. They’re the kind who simply let it carry them along. Their political identities are carefully molded to fit the ethos of a movement that prizes therapeutic sensitivity over anything resembling male conviction.
Still, there’s something endearing about her high-alert vigilance. Atwood radiates the energy of a grandmother who keeps reminding you to pack a jacket “just in case,” even as the thermometer melts. She means well. She’s lived long enough to know that complacency is fatal. “It can happen anywhere,” she says—and history agrees. Humans have a knack for turning bad ideas into governing principles.
But the problem with Atwood’s current claims isn’t that she’s too cautious. It’s that she’s too selective. She sees threats to women where there are threats to everyone: censorship creep, corporate surveillance, digital dogma, and political polarization. These dangers aren’t gendered but general. They don’t produce handmaids, but they do produce citizens who speak more reservedly, joke less freely, and look over their shoulders before posting a meme.
Atwood’s spent decades warning the world not to get too comfortable, and that is a public service. But her latest alarm bells echo a different era, one in which women truly lacked power and needed champions. Today, the landscape has changed. The dangers have changed. And the dystopia we dread may arrive looking nothing like The Handmaid’s Tale.