#canada is a fucking racist and xenophobic country and has always been so

[yuri-for-businesswomen]

I honestly wouldn't be complaining about Europeans so much if it weren't for the fact that I've been drowning in European hypocrisy nearly on a daily basis for more than half a decade now.

But most of my classmates are from mainland European countries like France, Belgium, Germany, Poland, or Sweden, and then there's the Icelanders I work with. And half the time when I say I'm from the U.S. they immediately make some really inappropriate remark like "haha at least I'm not from bang bang shooty gun land, I'm from a REAL country that has healthcare and gun control 🤣" with no regard for how rude and deranged that is to say to someone they barely know.

And I always get the feeling that they expect me to start self flagellating and going "haha yes you're so right!! I'm from the country of inbred hillbillies and we all willfully choose to go without healthcare and to die in school shootings because we're such dumb backwards hillbillies! 😌" Because they always look a little shocked when I don't do that and actually push back or even tell them they're being rude.

And the thing is I've spoken with other Americans who live in Northern or Western Europe, and they've all had similar experiences.

And often the same exact Europeans who do this will later say the most nauseatingly racist/xenophobic/ECT. remarks and expect me to still see them as superior and more progressive.

I would be very happy to stay in my own lane and not say a word on European racism and xenophobia. But the hypocrisy I drown in every day is driving me insane and if I stay quiet I'll fucking lose it.

ah i see maybe i misunderstood. it was about how europeans talk about the usa, not about others? to be fair as a german when i was meeting foreigners from the uk or australia for example they would make nazi/hitler jokes to me as well sometimes. didnt find it appropriate or liked it either but i think thats just different levels of sensitivity. i wouldnt think its racist/xenophobic because westerners joking about westerners even if its bad/insensitive/inappropriate jokes is not kicking downwards (the hitler jokes are often mocking the holocaust though which is blatantly antisemitic). but i understand where you are coming from now.

generally i think that usamericans are the most adament about political correctness, and that yall dont deal well with bluntness. i agree though its very inappropriate to mock someone for their countries lack of healthcare or gun violence. i think it has kind of become a „meme“ online as well to slam school shootings into any usamerican persons face. thats not okay. i think many are sick of usamerican hegemony and falsely think its okay to attack usamericans for it when you are also suffering from usamerican politics. so yeah i wouldnt say europeans have more (or less) issues with xenophobia and racism than the usa and canada but its possible some people are more blatant and blunt with it here.

also, the european union (which is not all of europe) is self-advertising as this progressive and peaceful organisation when they spend billions to let people drown in the ocean who just want a better life, for example, and people who are either centrist or apolitical believe this shit, and think they live in progressiveland without reflecting on their own biases. the right-wing is very critical of the european union and want it gone, and theyre the most unhinged when it comes to racism. and i think the european left is just very usa-critical, which i could see leading to misguided comments.

[serenagaywaterford]

Who's the new commander/wife in s3? And yes, please give me s3 spoilers! Also, do you have any thoughts about mayday? How I wish we got to see more of it

OKAY ERRYBODY IN THE CLUB GET TIPSY. SPOILERS AHEAD.

EDIT: added in the Mayday stuff cos I forgot the first time around.

Like the actors? Christopher Meloni and Elizabeth Reaser, and they’re playing the Winslows who host the Waterfords in DC. (Which I’m not sure if you’ve seen all the hubbub about the DC trip but there are loads of pics of them shooting one of those scenes. You’ve probably seen them. Like with the Handmaids’ mouths stapled shut? Fred looking all Evil Supreme Leader-y with Serena and June alongside him.). Meloni is “powerful and magnetic” and Reaser is supposedly a “friend and inspiration” to Serena. Whatever the fuck all that means. It could be good, it could be bad. (Personally, I can’t stand either of those actors but meh. Maybe they’ll be okay.) And DC, not Boston, is Gilead central… and so Fred’s not really as important as he thinks. 

Off-topic: To be honest, I find this odd. We see frequently that all the dudes responsible for the rise/creation of Gilead are in Boston and it was formed IN Boston (Putnam, Pryce, Waterford, Cushing?, Lawrence, (Nick), etc.) so how there is a ANOTHER HIGHER level group of SOJ in DC is a little stupid, imo. It doesn’t make sense how that core group (the literal architects of the entire system) are off in Boston while the other guys (who we’ve literally never seen nor heard of before, even in flashbacks–bad storytelling, show) are top dogs in DC. Seems like yet another plot contrivance. Now, fair enough, that I think it’s sort of funny that Fred is still in Boston rather than with the big brass in DC cos he THINKS he’s so much smarter/better/etc than all these other guys but the fact he’s not there just shows that as much as he was one of the Gilead OGs, he’s too incompetent to be trusted at the highest level of government. HA HA FRED. Ya moron. I get that there’s never a guarantee that the evil people that come up with a totalitarian society are in charge of said society when it comes to fruition, but it’s a general trend throughout history. The fact all these guys would give up top billing of the SOJ to some punks from DC seems… a bit off. But then, hey, maybe said punks were the other part of the SOJ that Fred was talking about to Serena when he suggested bombing congress.

As for a few more, June flips out at one point, turning on other Handmaids (Brianna is holding her back.) It’s against a Handmaid who is a “true believer” in Gilead. I’m going to take an educated guess (based on where they’re filming) this is the lead up to the mass hanging. I guess I should mention: the Handmaids are gonna have to hang a bunch of people. Like a salvaging, but with hanging instead of stoning or beating.

June gets dressed up like a Martha.

June apparently works with Lawrence. It’s assumed she’ll be his Handmaid although the production, especially the DC scene, seem to imply she’s back with the Waterfords.

Serena’s mother shows up.

Luke & Moira are fighting against Gileadean ideology in Canada. Cos obviously it would come up here too. I always thought it was too happy-happy that Canada wasn’t experiencing ANY fallout from a worldwide birthrate crisis. Like, we may be more liberal than the US, but what happens there, spreads here fairly quickly. Like we have some Trumpian/Tea Party-esque politicians and racist/homophobic/xenophobic/misogynistic activist groups too, with a lot of power. And a lot of ignorant regular people to boot. The fact Canada was portrayed as like this utopia free from Gilead’s evilness just seemed unrealistic to me. While I do believe it would take a bit longer to take root here, the building blocks are already here and ripe for the pickin’. 

(I also have a huge issue with how unrealistically and healthy they portrayed the economy in Canada without their main US trading partner. We’d collapse if the US economy collapsed, at least for a time until we figured a way around it. Oil alone would go crazy. It wouldn’t be all life as normal. What Serena saw in 2x09 was literally what I see everyday here and I find it super hard to swallow that our lives would just go on as if nothing happened if the USA fell into massive civil war and was overthrown by a theocratic “republic”. 

And I also have a HUGE issue with how rosy they portrayed refugee and asylum seeking here. It’s just as bad as elsewhere, with all the same struggles that European countries (for example) are facing right now. Like if Gilead was an actual thing, Canada would be having a fucking mASSIVE humanitarian crisis along the border. We had a taste of it when Trump was elected and loads of people fled across the border. We could barely handle THAT, let alone hundreds of thousands of Americans swarming in to safety.) So, yeah, that’s a really long way of saying THANK FUCK the show is going to start to deal with some of the reality of the situation north of the border. They already showed Mexico breaking down and there’s no reason Canada wouldn’t too if the birthrate crisis is indeed as catastrophic as it’s presented by Serena/Fred/Gilead.

Emily makes it to Canada with Nichole. It’s all happy families. At least from the set photos the whole gang is there: Luke, Moira, Emily, Sylvia, Nichole. Not sure about Oliver or Erin. Now, the photo was likely taken when they weren’t filming which is why they’re all so fucking smiley and happy laughing together. That’s probably just the actors. But it could be shooting. I didn’t actually save the photos and I’m not sure where they are now. I think reddit?

Aunt Lydia is alive and will get some backstory and her character is gonna change. Somehow, somewhat, unclear how much. All cos of what Emily did to her.

Lots of stuff about Nichole, the whole Gilead vs. Canada thing, etc etc. 

____

I totally forgot to add about Mayday!

Personally… and first off: I much prefer the name “Mayday” to that weirdass co-opted “female railroad” or whatever shit they called it in the show when Moira was getting out. That was just in poor taste and completely uncreative. You don’t have to call it a railroad at all, tbh. It could be an extension of Mayday, or it could be called something entirely different. Sometimes the THT writers really drop the ball.

As for Mayday… I am not even convinced it exists as such? When I was reading the book, I liked the theory that Emily was sort of … not crazy, but misinformed or exaggerating. The only we really hear about Mayday in the book is through her and there’s no real evidence it exists as a cohesive organization. 

In the show, it’s like we’ve been fed this Mayday idea… but again, not seen anything particularly solid in terms of evidence it exists as a large organized resistance effort. 

We see Emily talk about it but she never seems to get anything from it and everything she does is through her own agency. Mayday never helps her.

We see June ask Alma about it. But Alma doesn’t really say much.

We see Nick, kind of doing his own thing and organizing shit for June, specifically. (We never see him do anything for any other woman except the one he’s banging. Snerk.) 

We see Lillie somehow get a complex explosive and blow shit up. Obviously that came from somewhere and it’s not the sort of thing a Handmaid can just make herself. There has to be a “terrorist cell” (as Gilead would consider it) within Gilead that siphons off weapons to a small rebel faction and passed it to her.

We know there’s a war still going on because Fred talks about the front so there are obviously large pockets that are actively and violently resisting Gilead within the continental US. IIRC the map they showed, the fighting tends to be along international borders and in the west and Florida? I can’t really remember the map exactly. There’s no real evidence that these people at war are also running an underground resistance network within Gilead strongholds like Boston. But other than sympathetic Guardians, Eyes, Angels, they could be the ones supplying weapons.

We see the butcher hand June the package from Moira. Somehow there is a network that passed this along.

We see the Guardian give June the way out of the hospital to the butcher’s truck. This could be Nick’s doing alone, not a network.

We see the butcher/delivery dude who brings June to the Globe. Again, this could solely be Nick as well, but we don’t know.

We see there’s Omar, who seems more like someone who accidentally fell into it rather than an active participant. We also learn that “Mayday” has supposedly safe houses within Gilead, but we never see them.

We see the pilot who helps people escape to Canada.

We hear of “Rachel” often, especially wrt Jezebels. I don’t think we ever see Rachel however. It could be code, it could be a person, it could be a group of people. Considering the gravity of the name Rachel in Gilead, I would put my money on this being a code name cos the writers don’t just throw little things like that around. Especially since Moira, who lived and worked at Jezebels, claims she doesn’t know a “Rachel”. Sure, she could just be protecting June or she could actually be telling the truth. I find it really interesting that the consulate worker in Toronto is called Rachel as well. While I don’t think the two are connected, I’m just surprised at all the references to Rachels in THT, esp with the story of Rachel & Leah (+ Bilhah, Zilpah, etc.) being such a massive cornerstone to the entire society.

We see the Marthas have a very complex network that is referenced multiple times and is known to Commanders, and they’ve done very little to address it for some reason.

We see Serena get both cigarettes and a pregnancy test, both of which are illegal technically although nobody seems to take issue with Serena’s smoking. I would assume this is unrelated to Mayday and more akin to Jezebels (and its sex trafficking) as the illegal underbelly of Gilead that everyone knows exists and everyone uses but nobody talks about. The black market likely has no connection. But it’s still something that requires a large chain of procurement and distribution, and secret knowledge of how to access it.

I’ve probably missed some other examples…

None of this really speaks to a larger web, imo. I can easily see these as individual cells, sometimes connected, rather than ruled by some grand master command somewhere nonspecific and so far unseen. Resistance usually doesn’t begin with a cohesive structure but small cells that see a need to rebel or at least protect/assist victims. It’s also MUCH safer that way and harder to dismantle the entire thing if cells are independent. (I used to be fascinated with the so-called “eco-terrorist” culture.) 

And I would say Mayday, if it exists, relies on Econopeople, specifically Economen and Guardians who have “normal” jobs and freedom of movement within Gilead. But we’ve been shown SO VERY LITTLE about the lives of Econopeople (the majority). I mean, it makes sense since this is the Handmaid’s Tale, not the Economan’s Tale… still, it’s very abrupt to build a giant resistance network suddenly and not have shown anything of real substance about it in 2 seasons.

Other than Lawrence, there’s no indication that any other Commanders or Wives are involved in any resistance but I think we’re supposed to believe some are. So it’ll be curious what side these new characters fall on, whether Mrs. Winslow is an “inspiration” in terms of resistance or compliance. I think we all assume she’ll be on the side of resistance and inspire Serena to take that path (although I think June and Nichole and her own awful husband should be inspo enough lol). I’m not so sure since this is THT and I am absolutely terrible at predicting anything, lol. I can see THT going the opposite direction just as easily. I hope not, but hey.

I think for simplicity within a TV show, they’ll flatten it to a single resistance organisation. 

Quite frankly, I wish we had already seen more of Mayday, if it exists. I feel a bit annoyed that it’s been 23 episodes and other than a few hints, we’ve never seen a significant exploration of any of it. Like how on earth June is supposed to just be a Martha…? I just… I don’t know. Who knows.

Since we know this season is going to be all about Team Resistance, obviously they’ll go into more detail. I just wish we had seen more ahead of time. Although to be perfectly frank, I also really enjoyed the “Emily is sorta crazy and Mayday doesn’t quite exist” theory too.