For those unfamiliar with Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale, I’ll give you a quick primer on one of the main characters, conservative activist tradwife (in today’s parlance), Serena Joy Waterford. There have been comparisons made between this fictional portrayal of a conservative woman advocating for strict gender roles and patriarchal Christianity, and figures on the right such a Erika Kirk, Amy Coney Barrett, Phyllis Schlafly and others. Atwood wrote the original story during the Reagan administration, so the character of Serena Joy was meant to explore why a woman of faith would deliberately side with her oppressors.

In the novel, Serena Joy is a former anti-feminist crusader who helped architect the rise of the Gilead regime–a Christian nationalist group who gains control of the nuclear arsenal and takes over the majority of the US government, stripping women of rights (immediately siezing bank accounts and redistributing them to their closest male relation) and forcing women into strictly enforced roles:

  • Marthas – older or infertile women who work as cooks or domestic servants
  • Handmaids – fertile women forced into sexual servitude to bear children for Commanders and their wives. When they are assigned (usually as a reward to high-ranking Commanders), their name is changed to “Of” and the man’s name to indicate his ownership of her.
  • Wives – Women married to high-ranking Commanders who oversee households and hold the highest possible status for women. They are also prevented from reading, barred from all decision-making roles, and are largely confined to their homes. In Gilead, Serena Joy who was previously a highly paid speaker and author, now holds this role.
  • Aunts – Women who train and supervise Handmaids, using violence to enforce Gilead’s ideology
  • Jezebels – Handmaids trafficked into prostitution in secret clubs by a subset of Commanders who are unsatisfied by raping Handmaids while their dour wives look on
  • Unwomen – Rebels, activists, lesbians or unproductive women sent to the “Colonies” (places decimated by toxic nuclear fallout) to die doing forced labor
  • Econowives – (not featured in the TV series) wives of low-ranking men who must perform all household duties without domestic help

In both the novel and the TV series, Serena Joy is a complex character who becomes the prisoner of her own creation, losing her voice and power within a system she helped promote. She is often cruel, desperate for a child (like most women in post-nuclear Gilead, she is infertile), and frustrated with the way she is treated by the men she has brought to power. Her key characteristics include:

  • Architect of Her Own Captivity: Before Gilead, she was a famous public speaker promoting traditional roles for women. Her irony lies in her being trapped by the very ideology she helped create.
  • Cruel and Calculating: She often treats Handmaids (specifically Offred/June) with harsh cruelty, jealousy, and emotional abuse, fueled by her desperate desire for a child.
  • Extremely Intelligent and Ambitious: Serena is strong-willed and intelligent, frequently grasping for power within the limited scope allowed to wives in Gilead.
  • Bitterly Narcissistic: She displays signs of narcissism and intense bitterness, often unable to show empathy for others’ suffering while focusing solely on her own longing for a baby.
  • Complex and Paradoxical: While she is an antagonist, she is also a tragic character who evokes sympathy for her loneliness and servitude, only to switch to acting maliciously again when her position is threatened

So, what (if any) parallels do we see between the fictional Serena Joy, and the women who use their power to uphold patriarchy and fight against feminist goals like equal pay and reproductive rights? Serena Joy publicly supports a system centered on limiting women to domestic roles, while she is politically engaged, strategic and influential outside of the domestic sphere. This is a similar tension when politically powerful women promote roles that they do not allow to limit themselves. This is a core contradiction that we also see in today’s political climate when some conservative women advocate for “traditional” gender roles while they do not operate within the constraints they advocate for others.

Women advocating traditional gender roles while holding public power. As we see in the roles available to women in Gilead, most women are servants to the regime, but some are enforcers (Aunts, Wives).

Moral language tied to political hierarchy. Whether directly or indirectly, these narratives offer a critique of modernity, progress, and diversity.

Female participation in male-led movements. Women who advocate for these systems may have mixed motives: some may expect to have a voice in these groups. Serena Joy in Atwood’s novel doesn’t have a particularly good outcome, but in the series, she has a more mixed trajectory.

Politics of grievance and restoration. This includes a yearning for a nostalgic past that is often idealized and imaginary while avoiding reckoning for how oppressive the past often was to minorities, women, and children

How does this relate to the LDS church?

Recently, there has been some chatter about women with prominent careers being elevated to leadership roles (over women only, hold your horses). Women who felt that they were limited from pursuing careers based on following male leaders’ advice and the role models of prior women leaders have complained about these changes in which these “disobedient” women are being rewarded with leadership roles. I’ve been hearing this for a couple decades now at least,[1] but it is a complaint that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere in a patriarchal church culture that tells women it values one thing (being a feminine, sweet-tempered stay at home mom) but shows that it really values another thing (being well educated with a highly successful career and leadership experience).

Additionally, the online “mom-fluencer” space is largely dominated by LDS women who create “tradwife” content, promoting the idea that being a full-time mother is fulfilling and wonderful, Instagram-worthy even. Their content is very popular…and lucrative for the creators. In other words, they are advocating to other women that they should forgo the accolades of the “world” and careers while using that same messaging to have a highly successful career (or at least to try). Whether they succeed or not, they create a very performative relationship to the ideals of feminine domestic labor espoused by a patriarchal system. It’s truly not a realistic portrait of motherhood, cooking, parenting, or marriage. It’s curated to sell products and even more to sell an ideology that limits women’s choices rather than making them more educated and free to choose what works for them.

It seems to me, at least as I consider most of the “conservative” women I know (not those who are strongly politically engaged–just the ones who assume they are aligned with conservative ideals), that they are not really at all conservative in how they view gender roles or women. They might be a stay at home mom, but they don’t necessarily think everyone should have to choose the same thing they did. I do find they are often poorly informed about the history of women’s rights, which party has done what to protect women’s rights (including from rape, abuse, or financial control of men), and that they have the privilege of ignoring those things because they have a fairly acceptable husband / family situation that shields them from worrying about it too much. Obviously that’s just anecdotal based on my own conversations with (mostly LDS) women I know. They don’t generally self-describe as feminists, but they also agree with pretty much everything if you actually talk about the things feminists want.

Aside from how these contradictions play out in the LDS church, there are many conservative women in the MAGA movement whose role seems to conflict with the messages they are supporting and the systems they are advocating for.

  • Do you see these paradoxes in the Mormon church and/or conservative politics?
  • How do you square the role of women in supporting patriarchal cultures or ideas?
  • Are the Mormon women you know proudly anti-feminist, feminist, or something else?

Discuss.

[1] During the “I’m a Mormon” campaign was when I first realized just how many women resented that they gave up careers only to find that women who had successful careers were considered valid Mormons too.