Hello from the UK!

Hi everyone. I’m the UK Maiden and I am extremely excited to have been invited onto this blog. As my US counterpart has just said, we need to keep talking, and we need to talk across borders. The US and the UK is, to my mind, a very interesting comparison. In so many ways, we have so much in common – our cultural world as defined by TV, film, popular music is extremely similar. And our debates concerning feminism are couched in the same terms – equality, bodily autonomy, discussions over rape and abortion. But I believe there are lots of differences as well and it will, hopefully, be interesting to examine and compare the different issues across the Atlantic.

            I had been thinking of writing a blog for a while, and came up with what I thought was a wonderful, original name that summed up everything I wanted my blog to stand for. Notahandmaid!!! Just so happened that another wonderful blogger had already come up with that idea, and that is how I stumbled across this blog. Very kindly, I was invited to contribute. I feel very strongly about the name of this blog as the Handmaid’s Tale is relevant to our struggle in so many ways, increasingly so since Margaret Atwood wrote the book in 1985. Firstly, as it says in the sub-heading to this blog, women are not objects. We have to fight to be fully seen in society as more than our reproductive capacities. But to my mind, the more important lesson from the Handmaid’s Tale is to not be passive. It is our duty not to just sit back and accept our situation; it is our duty to fight; it is our duty to be heard. This is the mistake made by the majority of the population in the Handmaid’s Tale – it is a mistake we must not make.

I’ll be posting about British political stories that affect UK women specifically. There are sure to be issues on which my thoughts aren’t fully formed and I am always open to debate and challenge (as long as it is framed politely and nicely!!!)

I’m really excited to have been given the opportunity to join this blog – first real post coming soon!