The Uncomfortable Truth: When Even Margaret Atwood Isn't 'Woke' Enough

It’s a peculiar thing, isn’t it, when an author whose work has become a literal symbol of modern feminist protest finds herself under fire not from the usual suspects on the political right, but from her own ostensible allies on the left. And yet, this is precisely the fascinating, somewhat ironic predicament in which Margaret Atwood, the visionary behind 'The Handmaid's Tale,' now finds herself. She recently confessed to Michael Coren on SiriusXM that, in truth, the more biting criticism, the real blowback, tends to emanate from those who expect her to preach a specific ideological sermon, a sermon she, quite frankly, isn't delivering.

Think about it for a moment: Atwood, whose dystopian vision of Gilead has galvanized countless women’s rights marches, is now, in some corners, being labeled a 'traitor.' Why? Not for deviating from her core beliefs, you see, but for not being pure enough, for failing to conform to an increasingly rigid litmus test of progressive thought. It's almost a scene from one of her own novels, this ideological purity test turning inward, devouring its own.

What it boils down to, really, is her refusal to let fiction be reduced to mere propaganda. Atwood, a seasoned observer of humanity and history, views her novels as explorations—deep, unsettling dives into human behavior and the complex, often terrifying, shifts in society. They are not, in her words, 'sermons.' They aren't meant to be neat, digestible manifestos designed to push a single political agenda, no matter how noble that agenda might seem. And honestly, isn't that the very essence of true art? To provoke, to question, to lay bare, rather than simply affirm?

She makes a rather potent point too, one that should give us all pause: this drive for ideological conformity, this rigid insistence on 'our side' being perfectly flawless and anyone who isn't 100% on board being an enemy, it’s a pattern she's seen before. She invoked historical echoes of McCarthyism and Soviet purges, suggesting that the underlying psychological structure of such purity tests remains unsettlingly similar, regardless of which banner they march under. It’s a stark reminder that rigidity, wherever it arises, stifles dissent and ultimately, freedom of thought.

So, while her iconic handmaids in their crimson cloaks continue to be powerful symbols at protests for reproductive rights, the woman who created them quietly reminds us of a deeper, perhaps more unsettling truth about the nature of ideological fervor. Maybe, just maybe, the greatest threat to progress isn't always the overt opposition, but the internal pressures to conform, to silence nuance, and to mistake complex human narratives for simple political bullet points. And that, you could say, is a story worth telling.