Amy Coney Barrett is not a handmaid

[boston bean]

The social caste she belongs to is “wives, wife”.

A handmaid is a subjugated victim. A woman raped, forced to give birth to her rapists baby and then give the baby up to the rapist. The wife is fully complicit in the act of rape and subjugation along with her husband.

Many are using “handmaid” in a completely incorrect context.

Amy Coney Barrett is no handmaid.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

1. Except for the time when she served as what is known as a handmaid in People of Praise.

It has nothing to do with "The Handmaid's Tale."

[haele]

16. She was still an elite in that organization, she was a founder's daughter.

She is one of the few who would be granted some autonomy and would be allowed to go to university. She was used to put a "normal" face - allowed her own "hobbies" and some pleasures so long as she followed the rules. She was groomed to one of her cult's elite, a professional as well as s wife, and mother.
She was still introduced to and given to a powerful cult member as a wife and give him children, like all the women recruited or born into the cult. But unlike most of the other women in that cult, she was given help to raise her kids and keep house as an executive or executive's spouse would, to retain her loyalty and high profile propaganda status.

In my observation, she is a groomed creature. Smart and capable enough to get a pHD and teach law at a prestigious university, but simple enough to emotionally manipulate to do "her duty" for everything she was granted in her life. She has no mercy, no empathy for anything outside her cult cage. She is an extension of her father's religion and husband' ambition.

Haele

[Hekate]

35. Thank you. Sounds like a more highly successful version of Tulsi Gabbard. Do you have some links?

I’d like to bookmark them, as I did with the research on Tulsi.

Edit: Hortensis provides links below, so you’re off the hook.

[Elessar Zappa]

2. She was in a religious group

where she carried the title of “handmaid”. I think that’s why people use that word with her.

[boston bean]

3. I do recall that, but I think people are confusing it with Handmaids Tale.

[FBaggins]

6. Could be... but HT is fiction

The label has been applied in real life. In the Catholic Church, it’s an honorific for Mary.

[pnwmom]

18. The author of the Handmaid's tale was aware of Catholic cults and adopted the term for her novel. nt

[Hortensis]

15. "The title of handmaid was adopted by People of Praise in reference to

the biblical description of Mary as “the handmaid of the Lord,” according to the group.

Former members including Art Wang, a member from the late 1980s until 2015, told The Post that handmaids, now known as “women leaders,” give advice to other women on issues such as child rearing and marriage."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/amy-coney-barrett-people-of-praise/2020/10/06/5f497d8c-0781-11eb-859b-f9c27abe638d_story.html

People of Praise are Coney Barrett's group. A different one, People of Hope, is still more extreme.

...when Margaret Atwood explained her Handmaid’s Tale inspirations to the New York Times in 1987, she described one of them as “a Catholic charismatic spinoff sect, which calls the women handmaids.” Atwood did not at the time name the sect, ...

Asked about her inspiration for The Handmaid’s Tale by Politico as the controversy heated up, Atwood said she wasn’t sure which group she was talking about in 1987. Her archive of work and research is at the University of Toronto, where she can’t currently access it due to Covid-19 restrictions. But she’s on the record as going through her Handmaid’s Tale archives for journalists plenty of times in the past, and during those interviews, she’s always cited People of Hope, a different Catholic charismatic spinoff that calls women handmaids.

Specifically, People of Hope is a fundamentalist group in New Jersey that some former members have said behaves like a cult and which has allegedly arranged marriages between teenagers. The People of Hope call wives “handmaids,”...

... Atwood was drawing from the cultural norms of lots of different North American charismatic Christian groups at the time, including harmless ones. The reason there’s so much confusion about exactly where she took the word handmaid from is that handmaid is the kind of word a lot of North American charismatic Christian groups were into in 1984: suggestive of purity, duty, and feminine obedience to divine will. (Me:
Biblical roles for women.) Again, that does not mean these groups were practicing sexual slavery. It means they were working with a very specific vocabulary, and the way Atwood made her dystopia feel real was by skillfully mimicking them.

https://www.vox.com/culture/21453103/amy-coney-barrett-handmaids-tale-supreme-court

Good article on "handmaid." Not to be mistaken for a defense of her. She doesn't belong on our high court, I believe for many very serious reasons.

[boston bean]

20. Thank you for the information.

However, in Handmaids Tale, handmaid was a protagonist and a sexual slave.

I know you are not defending her. Atwood may have used the word, but the meaning she assigned does not fit Amy Coney Barrett.

[Hekate]

36. Thank you, Hortensis

For both the quotes and links. Bookmarking.

[mnhtnbb]

17. She is a member of the People of Praise

Last edited Mon Sep 6, 2021, 10:46 AM - Edit history (1)

right wing religious group. She was raised in it and her husband was raised in it.

There's a good review of the group here https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/08/us/people-of-praise-amy-coney-barrett.html

In my view, she's a real threat to the autonomy, independence, and rights of any group which is considered inferior by her right wing religious group. People who are that extreme are very self-righteous and she belongs to a group that is all about being up in everyone's business. On top of that, she was a "leader" (name changed from handmaid) authorized to give advice to other women in the group.

She's a zealot. She's on a mission. She undoubtedly thinks she's been chosen by her God to bring about the changes which her group deems appropriate.

The Republicans did the same thing with her, in giving her RBG's seat, that they did when they replaced Thurgood Marshall with Clarence Thomas. They took the seats of legends, of ground breakers, and replaced them with someone of the same sex or skin color who would be dedicated to undoing the great work of the person they replaced.

[paleotn]

25. Yep. I remember that article...

It's a cult. Ironic thing is 400 years ago, by borrowing unorthodox nuttiness from charismatic protestants, they'd have felt the wrath of the inquisition and probably have been burned. To be honest, I'm not sure how I feel about that.

[FoxNewsSucks]

28. More people are familiar with the series than Phoney Barrett's church/cult affiliation

so that's the first thing that often comes to mind with the word 'handmaid'.

The actual handmaid thing from her church is equally scary.

[wnylib]

30. The description of closeness and

the intertwining of people's lives sounds similar to the social structure of Amish communities, but with modern technology and without the 19th century clothing.

[rickyhall]

4. She may be a fanatic & fanatics have no place in American government.

[Wounded Bear]

7. She may be a fanatic & fanatics have no place in American jurisprudence...

FIFY - though I'm not sure "may be" is applicable.

[Walleye]

5. She knows she's above the law. She's not gonna be subject to her own rulings.

These laws against abortion or for poor women only and we all know it

[jimfields33]

9. They haven't ruled yet. It's still going through the courts

I think that’s what the justices should have said. “Wait for the process to go through”. Instead they basically opened themselves to criticsm. Dumb!

[onlyadream]

8. She's more like an Aunt Lydia. Nt

[radical noodle]

23. Yes.

Aunt Lydia was an enforcer of the Gilead cult for their sex slaves. That's the part that ACB plays in our society.

[onlyadream]

38. The difference is that

Aunt Lydia was a lawyer who went into survival mode. Amy B. is just another Christian who wants to impose her religion on everyone else.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

10. Also, mapping the HT universe onto current events erases the reality of a lot of people who aren't

represented in the novel at all. It's lazy White Feminism.

[radical noodle]

29. Can you explain what you mean?

I have seen THT used as more of a warning about how things evolved into Gilead vs what could happen if women just sit back and let their rights be eroded away.

Gilead was developed after years (decades?) of creeping fundamentalism that became militaristic and violent enough to assassinate those who didn't agree with them. I don't see this as simply feminism but also as a fight against the takeover of our government by religion. The two go hand in hand as most religions in their fundamentalist form believe in the subjugation of women.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

32. THT focuses on the experience of white women and posits a dystopian future,

when reproductive coercion has been used as a weapon against BIPOC for decades. It implies it’s not scary until it happens to white cis women.

[radical noodle]

33. Thank you...

Yes, that makes sense. I appreciate your input. White women didn't seem to notice (or in many cases even took advantage of it) until it happened to them.

[milestogo]

11. If she votes the wrong way, Beer Bong Boy will cut her finger off.

[boston bean]

13. I didn't want to laugh at that, but I did!

[Progressive Jones]

12. She's a conservative Irish-Catholic extremist.

The Chicago area is rife with them, and there are many phonies among them. I attended HS with many future Kavanaugh- types.

[turbinetree]

14. She should be impeached

[CrispyQ]

19. All three justices Trump appointed should be, for different reasons.

To think I have friends who said a Trump presidency wouldn't be that bad. These are democratic friends. They aren't very political, but they didn't think one man could do so much damage. SMH.

[GB_RN]

22. While I'd Like To See Her Gone...

On what grounds would you propose that she be impeached (even assuming we could get a conviction)?

The only one of Dolt45’s unqualified appointments that we would have an honest shot at legitimate impeachment charges on would be Kavanaugh. Those might be lying to Congress and perjury. Even then, we still have no hope of actually convicting his ass, even if we had overwhelming evidence, because getting his and Barrett’s appointment have been the ultimate goals of the Reichwing’s power grab.

Our only hope is to counterbalance these clowns with court packing, and/or stripping the court of its appellate authority (and create a specific appellate court), and/or nullifying its decisions (super hard, since a lot of these require constitutional amendments).

[FoxNewsSucks]

26. It's not just MF45's corrupt appointments,

Alito and Roberts both lied in their confirmation hearings, under oath. Thomas has so many conflicts of interest, and a corrupt wife. Not to mention, he's been pretty worthless other than his vote. Just sitting there taking the pay and doing next to nothing but vote how Scalia told him to vote.

[paleotn]

21. While wives and aunts did have certain privilages...

the real distance between them and Martha's, Handmaids and Jezebels was small and primarily functional. All existed at the whim and mercy of men.

[boston bean]

24. True. But when it comes to forced rape pregnancy of a handmaid, she is the enforcer of rape and

Pregnancy. Not a handmaid at all.

[FoxNewsSucks]

27. Serena certainly found that out.

I haven't watched Season 4 yet. I can't imagine how much worse it will be getting.

[radical noodle]

31. Season 4

has a real shock waiting for you in the final episode.

[Pachamama]

34. Thank you....been trying to explain that here and to others saying that in conversations

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=15822748

She should be called Justice Serena Joy

[Hekate]

37. Good point. It's a reference to Amy's religious upbringing, tho now she's all grown up & in position

… Justice Serena Joy fits.