“Better never means better for everyone”: White feminist necropolitics and Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale

ABSTRACT

This article builds on those who have critiqued Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale along racial lines and calls into question the esteemed status the show holds as a rhetorical resource for contemporary feminist activism. By drawing attention to the parasitical relationship that the archetype of the vulnerable (but resilient) white woman has to Black pain and death, I argue that the series further calcifies the dominance of white feminism, enacting what I term “white feminist necropolitics.” To illuminate this theory, the essay presents a close analysis of The Handmaid's Tale. Specifically, I demonstrate how the show deploys post-racial logics to center a white feminist heroine whose story of saviorism relies on the cooptation of Black pain and the exploitation of Black death. Ultimately, this critical reading of the series points to the ways in which white feminism and necropolitics are intricately entangled.

KEYWORDS:

• White feminism
• necropolitics
• post-racial
• whiteness
• Handmaid’s Tale

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Stacey K. Sowards, Ashley McDonald, and the anonymous reviewers for their supportive feedback throughout the publication process. They have been models in intellectual generosity and kindness.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Television Academy, “The Handmaid's Tale,” https://www.emmys.com/shows/handmaids-tale (accessed December 21, 2021).

2 Brian Lowry, “‘The Handmaid's Tale’ Feels the Weight of Its Timeliness,” CNN, June 3, 2019, https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/03/entertainment/the-handmaids-tale-column/index.html.

3 Dana Feldman “‘The Handmaid's Tale’ Isn't an Easy Show to Watch, but It's One of the Most Important on TV,” Forbes, July 13, 2018, https://www.forbes.com/sites/danafeldman/2018/07/13/the-handmaids-tale-isnt-an-easy-show-to-watch-but-its-one-of-the-most-important-on-tv/?sh=6ed43a7a62a1.

4 Peabody Awards, “Award profile: The Handmaid's Tale,” http://www.peabodyawards.com/award-profile/the-handmaids-tale (accessed October 21, 2021).

5 Heather Hendershot, “The Handmaid's Tale as Ustopian Allegory: ‘Stars and Stripes Forever, Baby’” Film Quarterly 72, no. 1 (2018): 13, https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2018.72.1.13.

6 Suzie Gibson, “Familiar Nightmares: The Harrowing World of The Handmaid's Tale,” Screen Education 89 (2018): 42.

7 Stefania Marghitu and Kelsey Moore Johnson, “Feminist Online Responses Against the U.S. Alt-right: Using The Handmaid's Tale as a Symbol and Catalyst of Resistance,” Communication, Culture, & Critique 11, no. 1 (2018): 184, https://doi.org/10.1093/ccc/tcx008.

8 Stephanie Adams, “In Trump's America, The Handmaid's Tale Matters More Than Ever,” in Resist!: Protest Media and Popular Culture in the Brexit-Trump Era, ed. Giuliana Monteverde and Victoria McCollum (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield), 118.

9 Megan Bowler, “Nolite Te Bastardes Carborundorum,” Academus Education, March 15, 2021, https://www.academuseducation.co.uk/post/nolite-te-bastardes-carborundorum. “Dog Latin” is a term used to refer to “mock” Latin, in which a person invents words that look and sound Latin. Bowler argues that Atwood's use of Dog Latin is notable since the “distorting” of a language associated with “traditional, masculine intellectual authority” communicates “rebelliousness.”

10 Caroline N. Bayne, “#nolitetebastardescarborundorum: Self-Publishing, Hashtag Activism, and Feminist Resistance,” Communication, Culture, & Critique 11, no. 1 (2018): 201, https://doi.org/10.1093/ccc/tcx016.

11 Amanda Howell, “Breaking Silence, Bearing Witness, and Voicing Defiance: The Resistant Female Voice in the Transmedia Storyworld of The Handmaid's Tale,” Continuum 33, no. 2 (2019): 227, https://doi.org/10.1080/10304312.2019.1569392.

12 Amy Boyle, “‘They Should Have Never Given Us Uniforms If They Didn't Want Us to Be an Army’: The Handmaid's Tale as Transmedia Feminism,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 45, no. 4 (2020): 846, https://doi.org/10.1086/707798.

13 Ju Oak Kim, “Intersectionality in Quality Feminist Television: Rethinking Women's Solidarity in The Handmaid's Tale and Big Little Lies,” Feminist Media Studies, Published ahead of print (2021): 10-11, https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2021.1891447.

14 Aisha Phoenix, “From Text to Screen: Erasing Racialized Difference in The Handmaid's Tale,” Communication, Culture, & Critique 11, no. 1 (2018): 207-8, https://doi.org/10.1093/ccc/tcx018.

15 Karen Crawley, “Reproducing Whiteness: Feminist Genres, Legal Subjectivity and the Post-racial Dystopia of The Handmaid's Tale (2017-),” Law and Critique 29, no. 3 (2018): 341, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10978-018-9229-8.

16 Ibid., 345, 351.

17 Achille Mbembe, “Necropolitics,” trans. Libby Meintjes, Public Culture 15, no. 1 (2003): 11, https://muse.jhu.edu/article/39984.

18 Sarah Banet-Weiser, Empowered: Popular Feminism and Popular Misogyny (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018).

19 Ibid., 17.

20 Kristen Hoerl, “The Impossible Woman and Sexist Realism on NBC's Parks and Recreation,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 107, no. 4 (2021): 376, https://doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2021.1984552.

21 Banet-Weiser, Empowered, 13.

22 Ibid.

23 Hoerl, “The Impossible Woman,” 376.

24 See Tammie M. Kennedy, Joyce Irene Middleton, and Krista Ratcliffe, eds., Rhetorics of Whiteness: Postracial Hauntings in Popular Culture, Social Media, and Education (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2017).

25 Raka Shome, “Outing Whiteness,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 17, no. 3 (2000): 368, https://doi.org/10.1080/15295030009388402.

26 Richard Dyer, White: Essays on Race and Culture (London: Routledge, 1997): 9.

27 Ibid., 2-3.

28 Sara Ahmed, “Declarations of Whiteness: The Non-Performativity of Anti-Racism,” Borderlands 3, no. 2 (2004): http://www.borderlands.net.au/vol3no2_2004/ahmed_declarations.htm.

29 Robyn Wiegman, “Whiteness Studies and the Paradox of Particularity,” boundary 2 26, no. 3 (1999): 117-8, http://www.jstor.org/stable/303743.

30 bell hooks, Black Looks: Race and Representation (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1992): 168.

31 Ibid.

32 Ibid., 167.

33 Koa Beck, White Feminism: From the Suffragettes to Influencers and Who They Leave Behind (New York: Atria, 2021): xviii.

34 Razia Aziz, “Feminism and the Challenge of Racism: Deviance or Difference?” in Knowing Women: Feminism and Knowledge, eds. Helen Crowley and Susan Himmelweit (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1992): 296.

35 Banet-Weiser, Empowered, 14.

36 Aziz, “Feminism and the Challenge of Racism,” 297-8.

37 Brittney Cooper, Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2018), 172.

38 Audra K. Nuru and Colleen E. Arendt, “Not So Safe a Space: Women Activists of Color's Responses to Racial Microaggressions by White Women Allies,” Southern Communication Journal 84, no. 2 (2019): 86, https://doi.org/10.1080/1041794X.2018.1505940.

39 Dyer, White, 2.

40 Mia McKenzie, “‘How Can White Women Include Women of Color in Feminism?’ is a Bad Question. Here's Why,” Black Girl Dangerous, September 30, 2015, http://www.blackgirldangerous.com/2015/09/how-can-white-women-include-women-color/; See also Mikki Kendall, Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women a Movement Forgot (New York: Viking, 2020): 1-14.

41 Terese Jonsson, “White Feminist Stories,” Feminist Media Studies 14, no. 6 (2014): 1014-15, https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2014.903287.

42 Hoerl, “The Impossible Woman,” 392.

43 Dreama G. Moon and Michelle A. Holling, “‘White Supremacy in Heels’: (White) Feminism, White Supremacy, and Discursive Violence,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 17, no. 2 (2020): 257, https://doi.org/10.1080/14791420.2020.1770819

44 Jennifer Carlson, “The Equalizer? Crime, Vulnerability, and Gender in Pro-gun Discourse,” Feminist Criminology 9, no. 1 (2014): 61, https://doi.org/10.1177/1557085113502518.

45 Ibid., 78.

46 Wendy K. Z. Anderson, “Classifying Whiteness: Unmasking White Nationalist Women's Digital Design through an Intersectional Analysis of Contained Agency,” Communication Culture & Critique 11, no. 1 (2018): 118, https://doi.org/10.1093/ccc/tcy002.

47 Ien Ang, “I’m a Feminist But . . . ‘Other’ Women and Postnational Feminism,” in Transitions: New Australian Feminisms, ed. Barbara Caine and Rosemary Pringle (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995): 61.

48 bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (1984; repr., London: Pluto Press, 2000): 46.

49 Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Trumansburg, NY: Crossing Press, 1984): 125; See also, Cooper, Eloquent Rage, 171-200.

50 Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality, vol. 1, trans. Robert Hurley (1978; repr., New York: Vintage Books, 1990): 143.

51 Mbembe, “Necropolitics,” 12.

52 Ibid., 27, 11.

53 Jasbir K. Puar, Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007): 32-3.

54 Melissa W. Wright, “Necropolitics, Narcopolitics, and Femicide: Gendered Violence on the Mexico-U.S. Border,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 36, no. 3 (2011): 710, https://doi.org/10.1086/657496

55 See, for example: Sara L. McKinnon, “Necropolitical Voices and Bodies in the Rhetorical Reception of Iranian Women's Asylum Claims,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 13, no. 3 (2016): 215-231, https://doi.org/10.1080/14791420.2015.1136066; Nina Maria Lozano, Not One More! Feminicidio on the Border (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2019): 37-43.

56 Moon Charania, “Ethical Whiteness and the Death Drive: White Women as the New War Hero,” Camera Obscura 35, no. 1 (2020): 112, https://doi.org/10.1215/02705346-8085135.

57 Ibid., 126.

58 Ibid., 128.

59 For some examples of how white feminism and its assumptions are reflected and reinforced via popular culture see: Michelle Colpean and Meg Tully, “Not Just a Joke: Tina Fey, Amy Schumer, and the Weak Reflexivity of White Feminist Comedy,” Women's Studies in Communication 42, no. 2 (2019): 168-180, https://doi.org/10.1080/07491409.2019.1610924; David Chison Oh, “‘Opting Out of That’: White Feminism's Policing and Disavowal of Anti-racist Critique in The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 37, no. 1 (2020): 58-70, https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2019.1690666.

60 Bonnie J. Dow, Prime-Time Feminism: Television, Media Culture, and the Women's Movement Since 1970 (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996): 3, 7.

61 Charania, “Ethical Whiteness,” 130.

62 Influenced by the work of Bonnie J. Dow, who builds on John Fiske's concept of “secondary texts,” my definition of the series as a text includes not just the episodes of the show but also secondary texts, such as journalistic coverage. See: Dow, Prime-Time Feminism, 6-7.

63 Catherine R. Squires, The Post-Racial Mystique: Media and Race in the Twenty-First Century (New York: New York University Press, 2014): 8.

64 Achille Mbembe, Out of the Dark Night: Essays on Decolonization (New York: Columbia University Press, 2021): 108.

65 Stephanie L. Gomez and Megan D. McFarlane, “‘It's (Not) Handled’: Race, Gender, and Refraction in Scandal,” Feminist Media Studies 17, no. 3 (2017): 374, https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2016.1218352.

66 Byron B Craig and Stephen E. Rahko, “Visual Profiling as Biopolitics: Or, Notes on Policing in Post-Racial #AmeriKKKa,” Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies 16, no. 3 (2016): 293, https://doi.org/ 0.1177/1532708616634775.

67 Ibid.

68 Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale (Toronto, ON: O.W. Toad, Ltd., 1986; 1998 repr., New York: Anchor Books, 2017): 83-4.

69 Jessica M. Goldstein, “Hulu's ‘The Handmaid's Tale’ Shows How Diverse Casting Can Elevate a Classic,” ThinkProgress, April 25, 2017, https://archive.thinkprogress.org/making-dystopia-diverse-how-hulus-the-handmaid-s-tale-updates-the-classic-3e3f9f23401/.

70 Matt Webb Mitovich, “Handmaid's Tale Series EP Explains Removal of White Supremacy Elements,” TVLine, January 7, 2017, https://tvline.com/2017/01/07/the-handmaids-tale-hulu-series-black-moira/.

71 Goldstein, “Hulu's ‘The Handmaid's Tale’ Shows.”

72 Ibid.

73 Davi Johnson Thornton, “Psych's Comedic Tale of Black-White Friendship and the Lighthearted Affect of ‘Post-Race’ America,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 28, no. 5 (2011): 425, https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2010.518621.

74 Sadie Gennis, “The Handmaid's Tale Showrunner Explains Some of the Adaptation's Major Changes,” TV Guide, April 26, 2017, https://www.tvguide.com/news/the-handmaids-tale-bruce-miller-changes-ofglen/.

75 Jade Petermon, “Race (Lost and Found) in Shondaland: The Rise of Multiculturalism in Prime-Time Network Television,” in Adventures in Shondaland: Identity, Politics, and the Power of Representation, eds. Rachel Alicia Griffin and Michaela D. E. Meyer (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2018): 104.

76 Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Conciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, 2nd ed., rev. 10th anniversary ed. (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2000): 81.

77 Collins, Black Feminist Thought, 83.

78 The Handmaid's Tale, season 1, episode 8, “Jezebels,” aired May 31, 2017, Hulu, https://www.hulu.com/watch/1724ccff-8590-4855-9f4b-f316b067a5db.

79 Collins, Black Feminist Thought, 129, 69.

80 Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color,” Stanford Law Review 43, no. 6 (1991): 1245, https://doi.org/10.2307/1229039.

81 The Handmaid's Tale, season 1, episode 3, “Late,” aired April 26, 2017, Hulu, https://www.hulu.com/watch/fbc9149e-7ad8-4826-bb8e-7c27f342aa01.

82 The Handmaid's Tale, season 2, episode 9, “Smart Power,” aired June 13, 2018, Hulu, https://www.hulu.com/watch/cd8c5c36-b2e7-482b-aab4-d5985a546158.

83 The African American Policy Forum, “#SayHerName,” https://www.aapf.org/sayhername (accessed July 16, 2022).

84 Mitovich, “Handmaid's Tale Series EP Explains.”

85 Goldstein, “Hulu's ‘The Handmaid's Tale’ Shows.”

86 See Soraya Nadia McDonald, “In Handmaid's Tale, a Postracial, Patriarchal Hellscape,” The Undefeated, April 26, 2017, https://theundefeated.com/features/hulu-handmaids-tale/.

87 Gennis, “The Handmaid's Tale Showrunner Explains.”

88 Goldstein, “Hulu's ‘The Handmaid's Tale’ Shows.”

89 See George F. McHendry, Jr., “White Supremacy in the Age of Trump: An Introduction to a Special Issue of the Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric,” Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric 8, no. 1/2 (2018): 1-5, http://contemporaryrhetoric.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/McHendry8_1_2_1.pdf.

90 The Handmaid's Tale, season 1, episode 4, “Nolite Te Bastardes Carborundorum,” aired May 3, 2017, Hulu, https://www.hulu.com/watch/fbc9149e-7ad8-4826-bb8e-7c27f342aa01.

91 Miranda Green-Barteet and Alyssa MacLean, “Hulu's ‘The Handmaid's Tale’ Casts Canada as a Racial Utopia,” The Conversation, November 23, 2021, https://theconversation.com/hulus-the-handmaids-tale-casts-canada-as-a-racial-utopia-167766.

92 Oh, “‘Opting Out of That,’” 67.

93 Ellen E. Jones, “The Handmaid's Tale's Race Problem,” The Guardian, July 31, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/jul/31/the-handmaids-tales-race-problem.

94 Laura Bradley, “Handmaid's Tale Showrunner Breaks Down a Darkly Heroic Season Three Finale,” Vanity Fair, August 14, 2019, https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/08/the-handmaids-tale-season-3-finale-bruce-miller-interview.

95 The Handmaid's Tale, season 3, episode 8, “Unfit,” aired June 10, 2019, Hulu, https://www.hulu.com/watch/be1522cd-5553-4b3e-81bf-417005d04801.

96 Bradley, “Handmaid's Tale Showrunner.”

97 hooks, Feminist Theory, 53.

98 Colpean and Tully, “Not Just a Joke,” 168.

99 Jada Yuan, “How Reed Morano Created the Emmy-Winning Look for The Handmaid's Tale,” Vulture, September 21, 2017, https://www.vulture.com/2017/09/the-handmaids-tale-how-reed-morano-created-its-look.html.

100 Ibid.

101 Kathryn VanArendonk, “Why The Handmaid's Tale's Voice-over Works So Unusually Well,” Vulture, April 28, 2017, https://www.vulture.com/2017/04/the-handmaids-tale-voiceover-works-so-well.html.

102 Madison Feller, “The Handmaid's Tale's Elisabeth Moss on that Shocking Season Finale: ‘June Knows Who She Is Now,’” ELLE, June 17, 2021, https://www.elle.com/culture/movies-tv/a36710696/elisabeth-moss-handmaids-tale-season-4-finale-interview/.

103 Olga Idriss Davis, “A Black Woman as Rhetorical Critic: Validating Self and Violating the Space of Otherness,” Women's Studies in Communication 21, no. 1 (1998): 84, https://doi.org/10.1080/07491409.1998.10162414.

104 Angelica Jade Bastién, “In Its First Season, The Handmaid's Tale's Greatest Failing Is How It Handles Race,” Vulture, June 14, 2017, https://www.vulture.com/2017/06/the-handmaids-tale-greatest-failing-is-how-it-handles-race.html.

105 Saidiya V. Hartman, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997): 19-20.

106 Tarana Burke, “#MeToo was Started for Black and Brown Women and Girls. They’re Still Being Ignored,” Washington Post, November 9, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/11/09/the-waitress-who-works-in-the-diner-needs-to-know-that-the-issue-of-sexual-harassment-is-about-her-too/.

107 DiversityInc Staff, “TIME Magazine Excluding Tarana Burke from #MeToo Cover Speaks Volumes,” DiversityInc, December 11, 2017, https://www.diversityinc.com/time-magazine-excluding-tarana-burke-metoo-cover-speaks-volumes/.

108 In the series, Black actresses are often cast to portray Marthas, a role that is reminiscent of the “mammy” stereotype. See Kimberly Wallace-Sanders, Mammy: A Century of Race, Gender, and Southern Memory (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2008): 4.

109 The Handmaid's Tale, season 2, episode 9.

110 The Handmaid's Tale, season 1, episode 4.

111 The Handmaid's Tale, season 1, episode 8.

112 The Handmaid's Tale, season 1, episode 9, “The Bridge,” aired June 7, 2017, Hulu, https://www.hulu.com/watch/e3ff6bd0-b1f0-437e-acc0-72bef024ecfc.

113 The Handmaid's Tale, season 1, episode 8.

114 The Handmaid's Tale, season 3, episode 11, “Liars,” aired July 31, 2019, Hulu, https://www.hulu.com/watch/7aebf9a8-4272-486c-a7d6-2ec6fb87fca6.

115 The Handmaid's Tale, season 3, episode 13, “Mayday,” aired August 14, 2019, Hulu, https://www.hulu.com/watch/eb62b52a-9ef9-44ba-b9eb-4cbd952df32f.

116 Ibid.

117 Michael Cooper, “Review: The Handmaid's Tale Season 3 Finale Moved the Show Slowly Closer to Redemption,” LA Weekly, August 20, 2019, https://www.laweekly.com/review-the-handmaids-tale-season-3-finale-moved-the-show-slowly-closer-to-redemption/.

118 hooks, Feminist Theory, 54.

119 Handmaids are seldom referred to by their real names. Instead, they take on the name of the man of the household to which they are posted indicating their status as property. June, for instance, is called Offred, when she is placed with Fred Waterford.

120 Caroline E. Light, “‘What Real Empowerment Looks Like’: White Rage and the Necropolitics of Armed Womanhood,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 46, no. 4 (2021): 916, https://doi.org/10.1086/713302.

121 Puar, Terrorist Assemblages, 32.

122 Charania, “Ethical Whiteness,” 132.

123 Mbembe, “Necropolitics,” 39.

124 Christina Sharpe, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016).

125 The Handmaid's Tale, season 2, episode 3, “Baggage,” aired May 2, 2018, Hulu, https://www.hulu.com/watch/67517156-6a63-42ce-96d4-0d99b2ef4849.

126 The Handmaid's Tale, season 2, episode 4, “Other Women,” aired May 9, 2018, Hulu, https://www.hulu.com/watch/a98fa6ef-6916-4186-ad5a-983278b1e84f.

127 The Handmaid's Tale, season 2, episode 5, “Seeds,” aired May 16, 2018, Hulu, https://www.hulu.com/watch/b6c13e77-fa81-4d2b-93d8-7fa8a1452fcb.

128 Sharpe, In the Wake, 71.

129 For a discussion of how Muslim death on screen is commonly constructed for “white spectators,” see: Charania, “Ethical Whiteness,” 122.

130 The Handmaid's Tale, season 3, episode 2, “Mary and Martha,” aired June 5, 2019, Hulu, https://www.hulu.com/watch/1b0f7082-a0d5-4001-8aaa-bd34bcb97e60.

131 The Handmaid's Tale, season 3, episode 5, “Unknown Caller,” aired June 19, 2019, Hulu, https://www.hulu.com/watch/406aa7da-379d-4841-b1a7-cc4b9e0fa64f.

132 The Handmaid's Tale, season 3, episode 7, “Under his Eye,” aired July 3, 2019, Hulu, https://www.hulu.com/watch/2ba02a7e-8e28-4eea-b497-56afde060b73.

133 Ibid.

134 Ibid.

135 The Handmaid's Tale, season 3, episode 8.

136 Sharpe, In the Wake, 81, 27.

137 The Handmaid's Tale, season 3, episode 9, “Heroic,” aired July 17, 2019, Hulu, https://www.hulu.com/watch/a1eba78e-32e2-4c40-aa78-ad7dd9402187.

138 Karrin Vasby Anderson, “The Centennial of (White) Woman Suffrage: Gender and Democratic Engagement at the Intersections,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 106, no. 3 (2020): 225-233, https://doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2020.1786638.

139 Ibid., 231.

140 Peter Beaumont and Amanda Holpuch, “How The Handmaid's Tale Dressed Protests Across the World,” The Guardian, August 3, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/03/how-the-handmaids-tale-dressed-protests-across-the-world.

141 Harper's Bazaar Staff, “The Cast of The Handmaid's Tale Has a Message for America: ‘Abortion Care Is Healthcare,’” Harper's Bazaar, June 12, 2019, https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/film-tv/a27917483/handmaids-tale-planned-parenthood-abortion-psa/.

142 Catherine Helen Palczewski, “Commemorating a Whole Story of Woman Suffrage,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 106, no. 3 (2020): 237-8, https://doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2020.1785633.

143 Mbembe, “Necropolitics,” 12.

144 The Handmaid's Tale, season 1, episode 5, “Faithful,” aired March 10, 2017, Hulu, https://www.hulu.com/watch/ebae93e6-dd44-40e7-9c2f-57177a4e31f3.

145 Edward Luce, “Hillary Clinton: ‘We Are Standing on the Precipice of Losing our Democracy,’” Financial Times, June 17, 2022, https://www.ft.com/content/2e667c3f-954d-49fa-8024-2c869789e32f.

146 Margaret Atwood (@MargaretAtwood), “In Nova Scotia with appropriately sloganed coffee mug … ,” Twitter, June 11, 2022, 9:23 am, https://twitter.com/MargaretAtwood/status/1546500429185486849.

147 G. Mitchell Reyes and Kundai Chirindo, “Theorizing Race and Gender in the Anthropocene,” Women Studies in Communication 43, no. 4 (2020): 430, https://doi.org/10.1080/07491409.2020.1824519.

148 Charnessa Ridley, “Where Are the Pink Pussy Hats When Black Women Are Dying?” NC Policy Watch, June 8, 2020, https://ncpolicywatch.com/2020/06/08/where-are-the-pink-pussy-hats-when-black-women-are-dying/.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a summer fellowship grant from the Center for Communication Research at the University of Arkansas.

Notes on contributors

Meredith Neville-Shepard

Meredith Neville-Shepard (Ph.D., University of Kansas) is a Teaching Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Arkansas. Her work in rhetoric, political culture, and feminism has appeared in outlets such as Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Women's Studies in Communication, Feminist Media Studies, and American Behavioral Scientist.