The Handmaid's Fail

Margaret Atwood trashes her legacy

Here’s my theory as to what's happening with Margaret Atwood at the moment. She's got a trans-identified niece or granddaughter or great-niece or whatever. She's eighty years old, so a family tree with many branches is presumably spread out beneath her and if you’re middle-class, chances are you have at least one trans-identified relative. Even if that’s not the case, she’s certainly got lots of friends, and certainly lots of friends in the 100% ideologically-captured publishing industry.

So, my theory. She has this young person in her life—a sweet, passionate young woman who she dearly loves and trusts— and this person is telling her a load of hooey picked up from, and rehearsed and refined on, the Internet. You know, the kinds of things that politicians enjoy saying over and over again, like some sort of religious observance.

None of it is true, of course, but Margaret looks at this young girl she loves—and this young girl’s friends, and the ‘queer’ bloke with the steady girlfriend who works for her agent, and every third person in publishing who thinks a short haircut turns them into one of the X-Men—and thinks “Well, they all seem to know what they’re talking about”. These kids are bamboozling her in the same way that Fox News bamboozles the elderly; through sheer repetition and message consistency.

Leaving to one side, for the moment, her disgraceful "do it to Julia” move from last week, where she casually joined in the abuse meted out to Maya Forstater and JK Rowling, the place where her hapless credulity is going to do the most damage is on the bodies of those she believes she’s protecting.

Why are ‘trans-allied’ celebrities so blasé about the effects of testosterone on young women? A friend of mine has done the research and it’s not happy reading. “100% of female people who use testosterone will develop vaginal atrophy - which is a common consequence of menopause but not usually seen in younger women. It can be intensely uncomfortable and looks similar to dermatitis on the vulva.  It is linked with intense itching which disturbs sleep, urinary tract infections and sexual dysfunction.

NICE guidelines state that if a woman becomes menopausal under 45 years old she should be offered HRT because it is well established that premature loss of oestrogen increases the risk of osteoporosis, coronary heart disease and possibly dementia.”

My friend also wrote: “We know what will happen to female bodies who start cross-sex hormones at a young age because we have the example of female athletes who were doped with anabolic steroids by Eastern Bloc countries in the 70s and 80s. These women were masculinised by anabolic steroids and it seems a disproportionate number of them died prematurely.  I doubt that a human could get fitter than an Olympian, and yet, it appears that a number of them died suddenly of cardiac issues.

I am not aware that any data is being collected on trans men who die prematurely young - indeed, if the person has a GRC then their death will be recorded as if they were of the opposite sex.  But I do see on social media cases of sudden unexplained deaths of people in their 30s who have transitioned some 10 years or more earlier. “ 

There’s more. Much, much more.

“Female bone density is complex.  Women have until the age of 35 to lay down bone mass, it slowly reduces until menopause and then bone mass drops rapidly.  

Women who do not maximise bone mass by the age of 35, eg by not menstruating, lack of calcium in the diet, metabolic disorders or side effects from medication are at increased risk of serious fractures at an earlier age than a woman with maximal bone mass.

Hip fractures are significant injuries. If a woman is over 65 years old when she breaks her hip, she has a 50% increased risk of dying within a year.  This type of fracture affects mobility, and can lead directly to moving into residential care.

Quite the future for these young women.

Atwood’s recent betrayals have been particularly painful to those women who found feminism through her work. By participating in the harassment campaign directed against Maya Forstater and JK Rowling, she has severely undermined her legacy. But in the end, all this will shrink into insignificance next to the permanent damage she is doing to the health of her young, on-trend friend and the countless young women her friend represents. Young women who are escaping this present-day Gilead by marching over the edge of a cliff.