Are you ready to watch The Handmaid's Tale? No, really, are you? Are you ready to find out that there's no casual way to watch this show?
Are you ready to think about a near future where women have no rights? Where they're nothing but "two-legged wombs"? Where they have no names except those of the men they serve?
Are you ready to watch women like you discover that their bank accounts have been frozen, their jobs taken away, called "sluts," and ushered home under armed guard?
Is there any way to prepare for that?
Are you ready to watch a grown woman treated like a child? As just a body?
To see religion used as a tool of oppression and control?
Are you ready to face the possibility that, when the shit hits the fan, maybe you wouldn't be one of the ones to step up?
Are you ready to feel helpless? To see history repeating? To watch women turned against one another?
Are you ready to see a woman sentenced to death because she is gay?
To watch a woman blamed for her own rape?
To see white, blonde women elevated above all others?
Do you wonder if the men you know will understand why you're so upset about it? Or will they think the show is just "weird"? Or just too much—not believable?
Are you ready to immediately want to compare our lives now to what you see on the screen and be haunted by the similarities?
Are you ready to be shaken up, by a TV show, for crying out loud?
Are you ready to be angry all over again, at the injustices we see every day, and their sheer number?
Are you ready?
I don't know if any of us are. But we should be.
The Handmaid's Tale is screening now on Hulu.
