Margaret Atwood claims she may be “imprisoned” if she enters the United States—an absurd suggestion from one of the most celebrated progressive writers alive, and a striking example of how elites weaponize language to smear their opponents.
In a recent award acceptance speech, Atwood said: “Unlike so many writers, publishers and booksellers … I have never been imprisoned—though I may have to revise that statistic if I attempt to cross into the United States in the near future.” Coverage of the event does not record gales of laughter in response.
Atwood’s talent for gaslighting is genuinely impressive. She will, of course, be just fine the next time she visits the United States—not only because she is famous, but because she is deliberately abusing language to lie about what is happening there. Her references to “book-banning” and “censorship,” for example, are calculated to persuade her audience that America is engaged in practices akin to Nazi-style book burnings and Soviet censorship. Writers choose their words carefully, and Atwood is deliberately evoking the evils of past totalitarian regimes.
She is lying. Books are not being banned in the United States. School boards and other levels of government are engaged in a debate about which books are appropriate for children. Some educators and parents have concluded that graphic novels depicting homosexual acts or books with explicit sexual content should not be part of the curriculum or in the school library. This is not a “ban.” Nor is it “censorship.” Every school curates their curriculum and library, and authors like Atwood, contrary to what their inflated egos tell them, do not have a right to have their work purchased with taxpayer dollars and supplied to schoolchildren.
Every single book that Atwood and her fellow ideologues claim is “banned” or “censored” can be purchased online and delivered to your front door within 24 hours. If you order the “banned” pornographic book Genderqueer, for example, it will arrive promptly and without a single explicit illustration blacked out or censored. Atwood claims words are under threat. She is correct, and her acceptance speech was a perfect example of how elites are manipulating language to deliberately demonize their ideological opponents by lying about what is actually happening.
Atwood, of course, has spent much time in the US, especially as The Handmaid’s Tale has been adapted into a six-season TV show. The book and the show are set in the “Republic of Gilead,” a theocratic dictatorship in the former United States in the not-so-distant future. Religious zealots have overthrown democracy; women stripped of their rights; fertility has cratered due to environmental catastrophe, and thus those still capable of childbearing are assigned to be sex slaves to the ruling class.
The show is a lurid progressive fever dream in which the enslaved women of Gilead are subjected to horrors so routinely that even liberal publications like The Atlanticcondemned the constant “trauma porn” depictions of rape. Atwood, who is both a consulting and executive producer on the show, boasted to the press that the show is “timely,” and, predictably compared Gilead to Trump’s America. When Roe v. Wade was overturned, Atwood penned an essay for The Atlantictitled: “I invented Gilead. The Supreme Court is Making It Real.” Apparently, America prior to 1973 was “Gilead.”
According to Atwood, she cannot recall another point in her lifetime “when words themselves have felt under such threat.” Atwood is right. She is wrong, however, about the source of the threat. In fact, she has been an enthusiastic participant in the attack on language.
Atwood has de facto endorsed the most significant attack on language of our time, insisting publicly that “trans women”—men who identify as women—are women. She has endorsed the use of preferred pronouns and stated, in a 2020 interview with the Guardian, that: “If someone wants to be called ‘they,’ I’m not going to argue.” Writers like J.K. Rowling have rallied to the barricades and faced a barrage of vile rape and death threats to oppose compelled speech and fight for clarity in language. Atwood’s statements put her on the other side.
