Is The Handmaid’s Tale Really So Far Removed from Our Reality?

Júlia Saraiva

Gilead did not emerge when women lost all their rights. Gilead emerged much earlier: when certain ideas began to seem reasonable.

When Margaret Atwood published The Handmaid’s Tale in 1985, she created one of the most disturbing dystopias in contemporary literature. In Gilead, the United States is transformed into an authoritarian theocracy in which men concentrate political, economic, and religious power, while women are assigned roles determined by gender. Wives manage the household; Marthas serve; Handmaids reproduce.

What is most disturbing, however, is not merely the regime’s violence. It is the way that violence is justified.

In Gilead, institutionalized rape is presented as a religious ceremony. Reproduction ceases to be an individual decision and becomes a necessity of the state. Female submission is transformed into a virtue. Religion provides the language necessary to turn a structure of domination into something that appears morally legitimate.

That is precisely why The Handmaid’s Tale remains relevant.

The novel does not need to be read as a literal prediction of a future in which all women lose their rights at once. Its power lies elsewhere: in showing how a society can gradually construct justifications for controlling bodies, restricting autonomy, and reorganizing power relations in the name of order, family, and morality.

And when we look at contemporary politics, some of these discourses no longer seem so distant.

Serena Joy and the Woman Who Believes in Her Own Submission

Serena Joy may be the character who best reveals this contradiction.

Before Gilead was consolidated, Serena publicly advocated for a society in which women should return to the home and embrace traditional roles. She believed she was defending a particular conception of family and society. When that order is finally established, however, she discovers that the very structure she helped legitimize also places her under control.

Serena can be a Wife. She can have a home, status, and privileges in relation to other women. But she does not possess full autonomy. She cannot freely read, work, or make decisions about her own body.

The contradiction is fundamental: defending a patriarchal structure does not mean controlling that structure once it becomes institutionalized.

And this leads us to a contemporary question: why do some women reject feminism precisely when struggles over gender equality become increasingly central to politics?

The answer cannot simply be that these women “do not understand” their own interests. They possess political agency and make conscious ideological choices. What we need to understand is why antifeminism has become a political identity capable of producing belonging, recognition, and, now, votes.

The case of Eduarda Campopiano makes this question impossible to ignore.

In 2026, at the age of 23, Campopiano was elected as a state representative in São Paulo with 1,956,238 votes, becoming the most-voted candidate for the state Legislative Assembly. Her campaign was built around a conservative and explicitly antifeminist discourse. She presents herself as an “enemy of feminists” and, after the election, stated that “the war” against them was only beginning.

Regarding abortion, she stated: “I don’t want abortion to be prohibited; I want abortion to be unthinkable,” advocating awareness campaigns aimed at persuading pregnant women to abandon the procedure. She also questioned the existence of femicide as a specific category.

Campopiano is not Serena Joy. A literal comparison would be superficial.

But her case helps reveal something important: antifeminism is not merely an individual reaction or a discourse restricted to male groups. It can be embraced by a woman, transformed into a public identity, and converted into electoral capital.

And if antifeminism can mobilize votes, we need to ask where this demand comes from. This is where we enter a discussion that goes beyond Brazil.

When Equality Begins to Look Like Loss

This phenomenon can be understood through the concept of cultural backlash, developed by Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart. The central idea is that profound social transformations — changes in gender roles, the expansion of women’s rights, new forms of family, and cultural transformations — can provoke a reaction among those who perceive these changes as a threat to the social order they once knew. The most important point in this theory is that the reaction does not need to be directed against a concrete material loss; it can be a reaction to the perception of a loss of status. This distinction helps explain why apparently different discourses begin to converge.

When women enter universities, labor markets, political spaces, and positions of authority in greater numbers, men do not necessarily lose rights. But some people may interpret this transformation as a loss of centrality.

And this perception is not restricted to Brazilian politics. Brexit offers an interesting example. A study by Jane Green and Rosalind Shorrocks, based on approximately 17,000 respondents from the British Election Study, found an association between the perception of discrimination against men and support for the United Kingdom leaving the European Union. Among men, this perception showed a particularly significant relationship with voting Leave.

This does not mean that Brexit was caused by antifeminism, nor that all Leave voters shared this sentiment. What the study shows is something more specific: gender-related resentments can become integrated into a broader cultural backlash against social and economic transformations.

And here the next question emerges: if there is a perception that men are losing their place, what place is that?

The Crisis of Masculinity Is Also a Crisis of Power

This is where the theory of hegemonic masculinity, developed by Raewyn Connell, allows us to go further. Masculinity is not merely an individual characteristic. It is also constructed within relations of social power. There are socially valued forms of masculinity that establish expectations regarding authority, strength, family, sexuality, and behavior. When these expectations are challenged, two responses are possible: adaptation or backlash.

The so-called “crisis of masculinity” can, in certain contexts, be understood as a reaction to the transformation of these relationships. This is where discourses such as “men can no longer be men,” “women have gained privileges,” “feminism destroyed the family,” or “society needs to restore male authority” emerge. The discourse appears to be about identity. But, at its core, it is also about social position.

The question ceases to be “what does it mean to be a man?” and becomes: what position do some men believe they should occupy again?

If the answer involves authority over women, control over their sexuality, male centrality within the family, and rejection of gender equality, then we are facing something greater than a debate about masculinity. We are facing a struggle over the preservation of a hierarchy. And this is precisely where the example of Gilead becomes meaningful again: Gilead offers men not only power, but certainty about their place in society.

The Commander knows that he commands. The Wife knows that she must obey. The Handmaid knows what she is for. A profoundly unequal order can, paradoxically, be presented as a stable order. But stability for whom?

This question leads us directly to the next element of this mechanism: religion.

When Hierarchy Is Presented as the Will of God

If inequality needs to be politically defended, it must also be legitimized.

In Gilead, this legitimization is religious. It is not simply said that men should rule; it is said that this is the will of God. It is not said that Handmaids will be subjected to compulsory reproduction; it is said that this is necessary to save a society in crisis. Religion, therefore, does not appear merely as belief. It is incorporated into the very architecture of power.

This is precisely where the discussion reaches Brazil. The presence of religion in Brazilian politics is not new, and there is no inherent contradiction between religious faith and democracy. Millions of Brazilians are religious and participate legitimately in political life.

The problem begins when a specific religious interpretation is presented as sufficient grounds for determining the rights and behavior of an entire society.

And we know that religion has a real capacity to mobilize voters. A study published in the Revista Brasileira de Ciência Política in 2025 analyzed the effect of religious leaders’ support on voting for Jair Bolsonaro in 2022. The authors found influence from both evangelical and Catholic leaders on the votes of their followers and argued that, in a context of low partisanship, religious leaders can function as important political intermediaries.

This helps explain why religious language has become so important to Bolsonarism. “God,” “family,” “fatherland,” “freedom,” “traditional values.”

When these words enter a campaign, they are not merely expressions of faith. They can also construct a particular vision of society. And this is the point at which religion ceases to be merely religion and begins to operate as a political language.

From Religious Discourse to Control over the Body

This transition is fundamental. Because if “family” is presented as a central political value, someone has to define what constitutes a legitimate family. If “morality” is presented as a political principle, someone has to define what is moral. And if “life” is used to justify public policies, someone has to decide who has authority over reproduction.

This is when the discussion ceases to be abstract and reaches the female body. In Gilead, this is taken to the extreme. A fertility crisis transforms women’s reproductive capacity into a state resource. Handmaids are reduced to their reproductive capacity; the body ceases to be private and becomes a matter of state.

In Brazil, we do not live under such a regime. But the conflict surrounding abortion shows that the female body remains one of the main territories of dispute among the state, religion, morality, and individual autonomy.

And Campopiano’s discourse is revealing precisely because of this. By stating that she does not simply want to prohibit abortion, but to make it “unthinkable,” she shifts the discussion from legislation to the construction of a particular moral conception of women’s choices.

The question, therefore, is not merely whether abortion should or should not be permitted.

The deeper political question is: who should have the final say over a woman’s body?

The woman herself? The state? Religion? The legislator? The family?

The answer reveals where we draw the boundary between moral conviction and individual autonomy. And that boundary is precisely what Gilead eliminates.

When Violence Ceases to Be an Exception

The struggle over the female body also appears in another issue: violence against women.

Campopiano questioned the very existence of femicide as a specific category, arguing that these killings should be understood as crimes of passion related to possessiveness.

This position is important to the discussion because the concept of femicide begins from a different premise: certain killings of women cannot be understood merely as individual crimes disconnected from gender relations.

There is a social structure that helps explain why certain forms of violence occur in certain ways. When the category of femicide is questioned, therefore, what is at stake is not merely the name of a crime.

What is at stake is the very interpretation of the relationship between violence and gender inequality. And this is where we return once again to Gilead. Because in that regime, violence against women is not a failure of the structure. It is the structure.

Rape is not a clandestine crime committed despite the state; it is incorporated into the state ritual. Compulsory reproduction is not a deviation from the system; it is its purpose. Submission is not an undesirable consequence; it is a virtue.

This is the most disturbing point in Atwood’s work: when inequality is transformed into a norm, the violence required to maintain it can also cease to be perceived as violence.

From Discourse to Politics

This is where all the examples begin to connect. Serena Joy shows how a woman can defend a structure that later also restricts her own autonomy.

Campopiano shows that antifeminism can move beyond the realm of individual opinions and become a political identity and electoral capital. Cultural backlash helps explain why social transformations can generate a reaction based on the perception of status loss. The theory of hegemonic masculinity shows that this reaction can also be a struggle to preserve positions of power.

Religion can provide the moral language capable of transforming this political struggle into a battle between “values” and “threats.” And the female body is where this struggle ultimately materializes: in abortion, reproduction, violence, and autonomy.

These are not isolated phenomena. They are different dimensions of the same struggle: who has the authority to define each person’s place in society.

That is why Campopiano’s election needs to be observed beyond the number of votes. She received nearly two million votes. This does not mean that nearly two million people are antifeminist, nor that all of them voted exclusively because of her positions on gender. Elections are complex and multidimensional phenomena. But it does mean something that deserves attention: an explicitly antifeminist discourse found a massive electoral audience.

And this changes the question. We do not need to ask only why someone supports this discourse. We need to ask why this discourse has become politically attractive.

The Danger Lies Before Gilead

Perhaps this is The Handmaid’s Tale’s main contribution to thinking about the present. Atwood does not merely force us to imagine what would happen after an authoritarian rupture. She forces us to look at what comes before. At the moment when certain ideas still appear to be merely opinions.

When someone says that women should return to their “natural role.” When men are convinced that their emancipation depends on female submission. When religion is used to close political debates and control over the female body is presented as protection. When gender-based violence is reduced to individual cases and all of this begins to be presented as merely “conservative values.”

None of these elements, in isolation, is Gilead. But perhaps that is precisely the point.

Gilead does not need to appear in its entirety for its logic to begin to be recognizable.

Authoritarian regimes do not necessarily begin with the simultaneous removal of all rights. They can begin with small changes in what a society considers acceptable to say, defend, and do.

The question, therefore, should not simply be whether we are living in Gilead.

Perhaps the question is how many of the ideas that sustained Gilead we have already learned to call “just political opinion.”

Because Atwood’s real warning is not about the day when a society wakes up and discovers that it has lost its freedom. It is about the days before that. The days when losing a little freedom seemed, to someone, a reasonable price to pay for restoring order.

REFERENCES

ATWOOD, Margaret. O conto da aia. Tradução de Ana Deiró. Rio de Janeiro: Rocco, 2017.

CONNELL, R. W.; MESSERSCHMIDT, James W. Hegemonic masculinity: rethinking the concept. Gender & Society, v. 19, n. 6, p. 829–859, 2005. DOI: 10.1177/0891243205278639.

FERREIRA, Matheus Gomes Mendonça; FUKS, Mario. Lideranças religiosas e o voto em Bolsonaro em 2022. Revista Brasileira de Ciência Política, Brasília, n. 44, 2025, e290090. DOI: 10.1590/0103-3352.2025.44.290090.

GREEN, Jane; SHORROCKS, Rosalind. The gender backlash in the vote for Brexit. Political Behavior, v. 45, n. 1, p. 347–371, 2023. DOI: 10.1007/s11109-021-09704-y.

NORRIS, Pippa; INGLEHART, Ronald. Cultural backlash: Trump, Brexit, and authoritarian populism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019.

SÁ, Bárbara. “‘Inimiga das feministas’, Eduarda Campopiano é a deputada mais votada para Alesp.” Folha de S.Paulo, São Paulo, 4 out. 2026. Atualizado em 5 out. 2026.

UOL. “Deputados estaduais do PL eleitos em SP 2026: veja lista completa.” UOL, São Paulo, 5 out. 2026.

UOL. “Eduarda Campopiano: segredo do sucesso é falar o que pensa, doa a quem doer.” UOL, São Paulo, 5 out. 2026.

Júlia Saraiva, holds a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations from UniLaSalle-RJ and is currently pursuing a postgraduate degree in Political Science and International Relations at FAAP. Her academic research focuses on U.S. and Middle Eastern policies, with an emphasis on the influence of lobbying groups, military strategies, and diplomatic relations in the region. She is a researcher at the Center for International Relations Studies (CERES) and works as an international business consultant specializing in corporate internationalization.