#aplit16aunt

[eduu-22]

Divide and Conquer

In order for Gilead to control women, they had to divide the women  create a class system. 

This idea of power is completely twisted. For this to work, some women had to have more control over other women.  I guess that power can get to the Aunt’s head and feel that they can do anything that pleases them. The immediately become selfish and only focus on bettering themselves rather than helping out those that are below them. No wonder why it works in Gilead...

Anyway, by having the women in a constant struggle for power, the men of Gilead are continuing what they are doing knowing that no one can stop them

[omgrachellewalker-blog]

See here’s my thing with the aunts, they’re just like the police. Like I didn’t want to say anything in class because arguing? I don’t have any time for that anymore. I’m just trying to live my life over here. Anyway, I think the aunts are just trying to live their lives and do their jobs. Like if you had the job of putting down dogs you’d have to do it. Like lol no you don’t want to kill creatures that are just there to be happy but you’d do it because that’s your job. Like it has nothing to do with humanity after a hot sec. Honestly I hate showing up to school everyday but that’s apart of my job so I’m gonna do it. It makes me want to pull my hair out and punch like ten people but I can’t so I just do what I need to do. I feel like that’s all the aunts are trying to do. They straight chillin. Stay in line, shut your mouth, and you won’t get beat. Don’t try to be a hero because if I’ve learned anything from movies? It’s that two people finish last, hero’s and nice guys. (Just kidding please be a nice guy lots of girls now a days deserve those.) Anyway yeah just do you and let the aunts do them and everything will be okay.

[alissasmith5]

Aunts

In the discussion, we talked about how the aunts actually enjoy hurting the Handmaids. They argued that the punishment is "just part of the system". They are held to a certain standard and forced to follow it. Although, they sometimes feel sympathetic for the Handmaids because the aunts view the punishment as training the Handmaids for their job. The aunts also enjoy hurting the Handmaids because it gives them a sense of power. This relates to the Stanford Prison Experiment because the guards purposely beat the prisoners because it was what they were told to do and it gave them a sense of power. Basically, total power trumps all and is contagious.

[cheyennewestover]

“Aunt”

In daily life, women oppress each other instead of oppressing their oppressor. Men are women’s constant oppressor. Yet, we fight each other. This was brought to my attention by a book called “The Handmaids Tale” by Margret Atwood. In the book the author separates women into groups. A women’s group called the Aunts are the “woman oppressors.” They train other woman to abide by the society they believe in. If the trainees do not abide by the rules the Aunts punish them by beating their hands and feet with steel cables. 

In today’s society the physical aspect would send women into a frenzy. But that doesn’t mean that women don’t oppress other women. Women claw their way up the ladder of life pulling down other women to get further ahead. Thinking of high school there’s the popular group and other non popular groups. But when a non-popular has the chance to be friends with the popular’s they’ll be friends with them because their association with them gives them more status. That’s why women marry doctors, lawyers, and rich old men. Their names and titles give women a leg up in society in a utterly oppressive world. 

It’s hard for a woman to get up in a high in society. The only way for a woman to get up there is to work her ass off and pull other people down as she goes up. There really isn’t a whole lot of nice ways to get up in society. Think of Snooki, How did she get to be as well off as she is? She’s on a TV show where they basically start drama and put each other down. Think of Dance Mom’s, How did they get where they are? They use their daughters for fame. They fight the other mothers and their children so their daughter can get a dance solo. They fight each other to stay on top of they pyramid. In order to get to the top and stay on top women fight. They fight each other because they believe that’s who their competition is. But their real competition is men. Fight Men. Lift Each other Up. Don’t push them Down. 

[kyranwilson]

Aunts

During the discussion yesterday in class we talked a lot about what we would do in that situation or if we were in a position of power? This theme of power constantly came up and it made me recognize that girl groups turn against each other to fight for this power. Instead of thinking we could all do well together and lift each other up, we as women think that we should push others down to get ahead. This is a cruel way of thinking once you put it to a bigger scale like in Handmaids Tale. I think that Atwood put theses girls groups in place and put them against each other just to exemplify how we treat each other as women now.

[alexaaalonso]

Today we talked about how Atwood clearly separates the women into distinct groups and pits them against each other. The women are all against each other, yet their real enemy is the men!! As we were discussing this in class, I immediately thought of the show "The Bachelor." On the show, the women are all fighting for the same guy. They mad at each other for having relationships with the bachelor, but they never seem to be angry with the guy himself. I think Atwood is showing how easy it is for girls to turn on each other instead of taking a step back and thinking about who the REAL enemy. Although I would not consider the bachelor an "enemy," it is pretty dumb that the girls get so jealous of the relationships the other girls have with the guy, when it clearly takes two people to make a relationship...the bachelor is at just as much of a fault (if you would even consider it a fault).

[zahraaalfashkhi]

I feel like this quote really explains the Aunts dilemma in the story and what we discussed in class today, about whether the Aunts really have freedom, and how selfish it is for them to try and keep that freedom by keeping others from theirs.

The Aunts are doing their job and beating and hurting other women to keep their “power”, which is essentially just a higher status than the handmaids and mart has. They’re giving themselves purpose in justifying how they must keep doing this to survive, because essentially, if they refuse to do what they’re supposed to do, they’ll lose their power and gain nothing in return- they can't really make change as much as the handmaids in class seemed to assume so. The Aunts are completely powerless when it comes to the men in the story, and Atwood brilliantly found a way to portray the real life events of how women are finding other women to blame for their inequalities in life, when really those women with a higher status don’t have much when compared to men. 

Maybe Atwood is just trying to show us, women, how easy it is for us to turn against each other and get side tracked by problems within our own gender to actually move forward and realize that it’s men who we’re trying to get even with.. 

I personally don’t think women are as oppressed by men as most seem to think so ( don’t come at me, I will seriously break you all off..lol just kidding). Yes we are oppressed, yes men are superior to women in society..but honestly, if you really think about it, if we didn’t try so hard to sexualize ourselves for men, if we didn’t slut shame the next girl that had sex, if we didn’t look at bigger girls like they’re gross, if we didn’t judge the next girl who decides to wear really thick eyeliner and completely fuck it up, etc, maybe the guys wouldn’t think it’s so easy to come at us too. The guys don’t really care about that stuff as much as we think they do. 

We’re really our worst enemies, and Atwood seems to really show that but doing something as simple as sectionalizing the women into different groups, and giving different groups a higher/lower status in society. 

[im-andyjiang]

#aplit16aunt

It’s very obvious that The Handmaid’s Tale is meant to divide. Atwood stratifies the characters into their own social groups, and in turn, divided us as class during our Harkness’s. Atwood does this by showing us Offred’s psychological processes, but not any other characters, so we are left to process and in turn get frustrated. We can see that Offred doesn’t believe in the system, and that she wants to do something, but we can’t see that in the aunts. All we see is what they express to the Handmaids, making us very agitated that they’re a part of the system, even though they are all women. By giving us a limited window into the various character, Atwood leaves a lot of interpretation up to the reader, and gets them engaged in the characters.