Bloodbags and Walking Wombs

In Hulu's "The Handmaid's Tale", Offred, the heroine, is forbidden to use her real name, "June". Instead, Offred, the Handmaid, is forced to use her new name in this dystopian territory seized and renamed "Gilead" -- formerly the United States. Like all stolen American women in the show, June is forced to use her Master's name, Fred Attwood, with "Of" attached to the front as a sign of possession -- she is "OF" Fred Attwood, now.

In Gilead, fertile women are forced to become Handmaids and stripped of their identities in every possible way and clothed from top to bottom in all red to symbolize “the colour of blood, which defines us” as Fred Attwood, illustrates. Offred offers the title "Walking Wombs" to the audience in one earlier episode to epitomize her dehumanized existence.

The most heartbreaking abasement to her new forced reality in Gilead, as well as all other Handmaids, was the annexation of her child who, like all other children, has been repurposed as someone else's child -- someone more important and worthy than June, than the child's mother and father (who has also been repurposed as a slave or killed).

Essentially, these women were Mothers and now...they are "Walking Wombs."

In protest to former President Trump's pro-life policies, American women have dressed up as Handmaids to walk in silence through the hallways of their state legislatures across the United States. These "activists", often from Planned Parenthood and the National Institute for Reproductive Health, lobby for their right to having an abortion and free contraceptives, and in America, that is their God-given right -- more power to them!

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However, what these activists fail to acknowledge as the most devastating part of being a Handmaid wasn't being forced to have a child, it was being ripped from your child after you gave birth. What is more, they were only defined by their Master -- "OF" [Insert Master's name] who had complete control over them.

An individual's identity is a complex and beautiful thing. It encompasses the memories, experiences, relationships, and values that create one’s sense of self. This amalgamation creates a steady sense of who one is over time, even as new facets are developed and incorporated into one's identity.

In the Mad Max universe, the term 'Bloodbag' refers to a person of perfect health who is forced to donate their blood to a person who has fallen ill. In Mad Max: Fury Road, Max Rockatansky is taken by the Warlord, Immortan Joe, as a prisoner of the "Citadel" in order to give blood to a Citidel soldier, "Nux", who was dying from a blood-borne disease. Max was chained to Nux's car with the IV tube still attached to him.

Eventually, on Fury Road, Max meets the young slave brides who are on the run from their tyrannical homicidal maniac warlord of a "husband", Immortan Joe. Like the Handmaids, these women were dehumanized and impregnated to provide a steady source of lactated milk -- like livestock. One of which is very pregnant and on a mission to save her child and be a mother, not a breeder! Many want to interpret these cinematic dramas as a personification of feminism with a sign hanging around their necks saying "our bodies our choice". However, the most impressive theme is their desire to escape and protect their children from being taken away from them, to be a mother and not reduced to a vessel, walking womb, breeder, or birthing person.

Dehumanization is undoubtedly an important theme throughout both "The Handmaid's Tale" and "Mad Max: Fury Road" that illustrated how individuals can be stripped of their human qualities -- physically and emotionally. If you want to control someone, one of the best ways to accomplish this demonic task is to dehumanize them. In the military, in prison, in slavery, and in the systematic oppression of people, taking away an individual's identity like being a mother, or their name, their hair, their clothes, their identity, their rights, their voice, etc., an individual will lose their sense of self and become more submissive & easier to control from the humiliation.

Unfortunately, some people accept this given status.

Terror of the Woods, Resource, previously published article, Build Birthing Better, we exposed the pathetic use of the "woke" term “birthing person” as having hijacked one of the best parts of being a woman who is blessed with being able to give life -- a "mother". This blatant "rip and replace" is in the recently published Budget of the U.S. Government: Office of Management and Budget brought to you by the Biden Administration, is vile, to say the least.

As it reads: "...maternal mortality rate...and race-based disparities in outcomes among 'birthing people'—and in addition to the investment in maternal health included in the American Families Plan."

A historical reminder...during slavery, black women were referred to as breeders. As a method to dehumanize women and reduce them into nothing more than holes and body parts. This sorry excuse of a "Presidential" Budget is regressive, not progressive.

Terror of the Woods has no words to leave you with a question...the point has been made and the line has been drawn.