Explore how second-wave feminism is presented in 'The Handmaid's Tale' by Margaret Atwood

Second-wave feminism began in the 1960s with a theme of advocating sexual liberty and gender equality outside suffrage, which had been achieved in some countries due to the efforts of first-wave feminist campaigners. It was during this time that oral contraception was introduced, giving women more control over their sex life - abortion was also legalised in 1967. Offred’s narrative reflects on the rise of second-wave feminism in the late 1960s when she remembers her mother, an archetypal second-wave feminist. Another character who can be described as a second-wave feminist is Moira, who, on page 47, tells Offred that she has written her latest university assignment on date rape. Offred, in response, calls her “trendy”, which indicates that feminism was a popular movement at the time and is proof that issues regarding femalesexuality, such as rape, were very topical for the movement. Offred’s memory of this is also ironic, because the Ceremony - despite Offred explaining that “rape [doesn’t] cover [the Ceremony]” - is essentially state-sanctioned rape. Another example of second-wave feminism is on page 48 where Offred’s mother takes a young Offred to burn pornographic magazines in the local park. “Good riddance to bad rubbish,” another protestor said about the magazines, one of which was described as having “a pretty woman on it, with no clothes on, hanging from the ceiling by a chain wound around her hands”. Such magazines were burned during the height of the second wave because they used female sexuality to objectify women rather than empower them. Pornographic material was also destroyed in Gilead, but for different reasons; masturbation is forbidden by the Bible, and the purpose of Gilead’s regime was to control sexuality for reproductive purposes only, to which sexual pleasure is deemed irrelevant and undesirable. Abortion (legalised during the second wave) was also banned by the regime as it went against the pro-reproduction values of Gilead; doctors who had performed abortions “when such things were legal” were executed and hung publicly (page 42) with a placard showing “a drawing ofa human foetus” in order to make an example of them. Such policies show that Gilead undid a lot of the work that second-wave feminists had achieved.