With thanks to © Michael Gold for this sweet photo of a donkey peering out of a barn door. She's wondering, "What's going on out there?"
All you have to do, I tell myself, is keep your mouth shut and look stupid. It shouldn't be that hard.
- Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale
We're not going back.
-Vice President Kamala Harris
After I float out of the bardo and re-incarnate somewhere in Upstate NY deep in the majestic mountains, I'd like to return undercover as a man with a badge, a horse, wives and daughters to serve me, as needed, and entitlement up the kazoo. Let's flip The Handmaid's Tale, a fascist dystopia, which I am watching now for the first time—it's brilliant—and create a Handsome Man's Tale. Like June Osborne, Margaret Atwood's protagonist in the original novel, and again in the Hulu adaptation, I'm trying to keep my feminist shit together in the midst of virulent misogyny.
The charged, sexist language spewing out of the Trump campaign did not surface in a void; it is embedded in our culture, in our history, and in our literature. Trump is particularly adept at improvising tropes: a woman is nasty, or she is a bedbug, or not his type. In Richard Ford's masterful (note the male referent) 1986 novel, The Sportswriter, the protagonist Frank Bascombe, is lovable and clueless. He has no idea why he's not married any more even as he fantasizes a woman's "surrender." He feels so lonely late in the day after work that he drives up to the train station and watches the "Jewish lawyers" who work in DC debark. Apart from their suits and briefcases, how did Ford's protagonist know they were lawyers, much less Jewish lawyers? "Jewish lawyers," is an antisemitic trope. Might as well throw in one of those, too, into this otherwise wonderful novel. And, yes, of course, Richard Ford's novels are still on my shelves, but only because I perform a sleight of hand and brain: This is the character's voice, not the author's. Or, Ford is a man of his time. He was born in Mississippi, after all. And so on.
Years after reading the Bascombe novels, I spotted Richard Ford in a restaurant and decided I'd ask him about the antisemitic trope. I tried to hold myself back from approaching him knowing I might not be able to speak up. I told myself that the famous author was enjoying his meal and his privacy. Nice try; I was enraged. I walked up to his table, and told him how much I enjoyed his books, which is also true. And that freeze, that holding back, was more than politeness; it was abnegation. The moment passed, he mumbled, "thank you," and I walked away, abject, a consequence of abnegation. Then I went home and wrote to his agent: "Is Mr. Ford aware of the antisemitic trope 'Jewish lawyer'?" No reply.
Sometimes it's easier—and safer—to stay silent, but surrender hurts, too; we have to resist.
Which is what I am doing today by writing this blog post.