The Real Handmaid's Tale.
- 1 day ago
- 6 min read
A couple of years ago my daughter and I binge watched The Handmaid's Tale. When we got to the episodes that depicted the fall of America she asked me,
"Was this written after January 6?" I laughed and replied, "I read the book when I was your age!"
Which is ironic considering Margaret Atwood almost stopped writing because she feared the concept was too unbelievable for a modern audience despite every concept she wrote being sourced from history.
"I'd definitely be a handmaid, but what about you?" I laughed, "Oh, they'd have taken me out years before!"
That's because I'd have done what I'm doing now. Questioning the religion behind so much that is wrong with the world.
Women losing their rights overnight has actually happened before.
In early Sumerian society, women could own land, engage in business, and act as heads of households. Then in 1752 BCE Hammurabi created the first successful empire. In the centre of every city he conquered he erected a 7 foot tall black stele (a penis shaped slab of black granite) etched with 282 laws that made women the property of men, created a caste system and rewrote the entire justice system from one of compensation to one of retribution.
"An eye for an eye" doesn't come from the bible. It comes from the sun god Samash who beamed the laws down to Hammurabi.
A playbook that has been in operation ever since.
Polybius the Greek historian wrote, "superstition... maintains the cohesion of the Roman State". He argued that the Roman elite used religious pageantry and "invisible terrors" to control the unruly masses, because a state "composed of wise men" was impossible.
Polybus pinpointed the major flaw in the patriarchal experiment 2,000 years ago.
Of course you can't run an empire composed of wise men, but you double your chances if you increase your search to cover the other 51% of the population.
In the Hand Maid's Tale, the characters barely criticised the teachings. Atwood deliberately didn't write about how religion is dangerous. She wrote about how power is dangerous — and how power will always steal the most trusted language available to justify itself. Across the globe the predominant language used to justify war today is from the Abrahamic religions.
Anyone who has read the pre-release copy of my book 'The Gospel Of A Mad Woman' knows, I am a true believer, and throughout my life I have had too much proof of something far greater then myself to be sceptical in any way.
But the teachings of these religions never spoke to me or my relationship with the divine.
And I am not alone.
Only 55% of the world's population follows one of the Abrahamic religions. That means almost half of us have zero investment in their stories.
And about 22% of us don't follow any organised, institutionalised religion.
That's a lot of voices that should be amplified.
Because I can assure you that when those big black penises shot up all over the world's first successful empire, a revolution started and it has never stopped. For over 4,000 years patient women have kept ancient women's history alive ready for the day when we can all shout it from the rooftops.
Because facts can be dismissed, a sad reality of our modern times. But stories have the ability to change minds. And the more of us who talk about the path to western civilisation being created by women working side by side with men to develop advanced cultures based on creation rather than destruction - the more likely we are to experience it again.
It would be easy to get angry (actually knowing the truth it's almost impossible not to!) but there were myriad reasons why women were suppressed and that's exactly where we find our strength to speak up and actually make change.
We have to use our unique powers that could never be confiscated or suppressed: intuitive clarity, social dexterity, sexual choice, the capacity to give birth, profound emotional intelligence, and the ability to create and organise life itself.
Since these gifts couldn't be stolen, they had to be defiled. They were reframed as volatile, senseless, tainted, and threatening. Female insight was pathologised as frenzied hysteria; female longing, branded as corrupting shame; female high standards, twisted into cold-hearted malice; and the sacred act of creation, reduced to mundane, thankless duty.
Religion has played a central, institutional role in systematically redefining women's innate gifts as unstable, irrational, dirty, and dangerous. It has provided the theological justification, the institutional machinery, and the cultural narrative to make patriarchy feel not just normal, but sacred.
Nevertheless enlightened women persisted. Throughout history, women have found power within religious traditions — as mystics, prophets, abbesses, and scholars. Figures like Hildegard of Bingen, Julian of Norwich, and the Beguines carved out spiritual authority despite the system. They are the Aunt Lydia's of their time unable to change the system but clever enough to collect the receipts.
One group did get special mention in The Handmaid's Tale, the Quakers who were a major part of the resistance helping women escape. But they are one of the few offshoots of the Abrahamic traditions that ignored the words inserted by kings and clergy that prohibited women from preaching and leading.
And then there are the hundreds of anonymous scribes who hid women's business in the illuminated letters of books hoping centuries later there would still be eyes that understood their message.
But the patriarchy invented a false cult to hide the true meaning (and crazy members) of the illuminati.
Don't believe me? Here's a photo from speech at the Unlikeable Women™ Summit, It was held in a the Crypt On The Green, a church first built by nuns in the 12th century. Look at the writing behind me "This do in remembrance of me" Then look at the illuminations above it. Look familiar?
She works in mysterious ways, that's why so many of us were burned at the stake!
Even though most of us don't relate to religion's stories, the framework they built persists outside the temple walls.
The word "hysteria" comes from the Greek for "womb" — it literally means "wandering uterus." The idea that women are biologically prone to irrationality is baked into the language.
The "emotional woman" vs. "rational man" binary survives in workplaces, politics, and everyday life — even among people who have never set foot in a church.
Which is why we have to go back to a time before men with powerful armies took over and imagine what it was like for a woman to lose all her rights overnight.
Because they would have resisted like hell. And they did!
In ancient Sumer one in eight women died in childbirth and the infant mortality rate was astronomical. The temples to the goddess were not places of bowing to an invisible force, they were where women (and the men who loved them) went when she looked death directly in the face. She was met with solace, hope, and a team of women trained in pharmacology with advanced medical knowledge. Because before the patriarchy children didn't belong to men, they belonged to all of us.
(You know, that village they keep banging on about, the benefits of which most of us have ever experienced!)
Even today the argument for preserving life and protecting our children is the greatest argument against a world designed by men who believe they have divine rights.
Last year there were approximately 5.2 million natural maternal and child deaths in the world.
Which makes the 37,000 civilians killed across 20 armed conflicts in 2025 pale in comparison.
Nearly one in five victims were women and civilian casualties among women and children quadrupled compared to the previous two-year period. And that's before we add today's total in Gaza, Iran, Lebanon, Ukraine, Russia, Sudan...
How many tears do they add to the mothers who have brought the human race to this very point?
It's time for us to design the world the way it was supposed the be for all of us.
"That was the worst ending to any series. EVER!" my daughter stormed out of the room as the credits rolled on the Handmaid's Tale finale. Whilst waiting for the final series she had read the book and Margaret Atwood's follow up 'The Testaments', so she was keen to see how they wrapped it all up. SPOILER: The finalé basically spends most of it's time watching June stare into the distance with everyone telling her to write a book.
But were the writers talking to June or us?
We have 4,000 years of men telling stories about men to other men. Women have only started regaining what was stolen from us in the last 100 years. It's time for us to get the world back to rights.
I've written a book. It's the rawest, most revealing thing I have ever said about myself and my life. What have you got to say? Is it a book? A blog? A social post? A white paper? A letter to your MP? A DM to someone you admire or disagree with?
Because a matriarch will always tell anyone struggling to explain what's going on or what's happening will always say, "Use your words".
You can pre-order a copy of The Gospel Of A Mad Woman below:
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