Canada: Feminist-sponsored "fictional drivel" in schools decried

Article here. Excerpt:

'Monday's front page news contained an unprecedented case of literary lese majeste. A parent of a Grade 12 Toronto high school student petitioned for the removal from the school's reading list of The Handmaid's Tale, a 1986 novel by the queen of Canadian literature, Margaret Atwood.
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The Handmaid's Tale isn't drivel because of the sex and violence that concerned the parent. It is drivel because it is a paranoiac fantasy whose principal purpose and effect is to stir up hatred of men.
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Dystopian fiction deserves critical respect when its premises are grounded in psychological or historical reality. That sexual relations in the West on a collective scale ever did or ever could descend into Ms. Atwood's ideologically self-indulgent nightmare is -- well, fictional drivel.
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Mass eugenics coincides historically with anti-religious collectivist visions run amok. The Chinese program of forced abortions came from the atheist, utopian left. The Nazi Lebensborn program, which seems to have been Ms. Atwood's inspiration, in which fertile young women were lodged at breeding farms, there to be impregnated by SS officers in order to improve Germany's Aryan stock, grew out of anti-religious paganism allied with fascism.
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But in Ms. Atwood's conspiracy-theorist feminist universe, women are victims, men masters of their fates. Women cannot be seen as opportunistic or exploitative, and men cannot be seen as themselves victims or objects of pity. Theory demands that her fictional women emerge as innocent dupes of warring control freaks.
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It is not a "cautionary tale," as one Atwood admirer characterized it in Monday's news story. For here we are 23 years later. Forced-breeding camps? Hardly. Politically and culturally, women's issues rule; abortion is rampant; fatherlessness is pandemic. It is men--insofar as their traditional roles as providers, progenitors and protectors are concerned -- who are the endangered social species.'

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Comments

I have read this writer before.
She hits accurately, and hard.

oregon dad

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Your right oregon dad she is one of the good ones.
A lot of her comment pieces point out rampant misandry.

Badger

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"A lot of her comment pieces point out rampant misandry" Depending on your objectivity, so does reading the regular news, ZING! sry, yeah good article as always, do youself a favor and do a search on the National Post for her and you will find some good reads.

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I'm proud to say that she is my favourite journalist, and I'm also proud to say she's Canadian (obviously, the National Post is a Canadian newspaper). What really astounds me is the fact that she is neither male, nor Christian, nor Conservative, and she took the time to point out the fact that this story is hate literature against all three of these groups. That really speaks to her character. God bless that woman!

Evan AKA X-TRNL
Real Men Don't Take Abuse!

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"nor Christian"

"God bless that woman!"

doh, hehe, just found that funny although most likely she has a monotheistical belief of somekind, christianity and God just generally go hand in hand in casual conversation.

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It is somewhat ironic. Actually, Barbara has told me in an email that she is Jewish. So, you're right, she does have a monotheist belief system.

Though, as a religious person, I say stuff like that without even really thinking about it.

Evan AKA X-TRNL
Real Men Don't Take Abuse!

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the problem is it's already been published, so at least in the U.S. we'ed get up in arms over "book burning".
-ax

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Look, The Handmaid's Tale shows that both men and women took part in bringing society to the state it had come to. Look at the character of Serena Joy, look at her husband. Both equally responsible.

What needs to be realized is that some women do have a, somewhat justified, fear of this kind of future. In some places, their bodies aren't their own anymore. In some places, they are covered head to toe. And there are some women, like Phyllis Schlafly, and Ann Coulter, who have made it their mission to create further gender divides in our world. Then again, there are some men (Rush Limbaugh, Don Imus) who have done it too. All of them EXTREMES.

Let's learn to RESPECT each other and promote EQUALITY, not get all pissed at everything that makes you feel somewhat guilty. We are all guilty. Let's learn to repent.

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