I applaud Margaret Atwood for bringing the question of queerness into A Handmaid’s Tale. So often in fictional worlds, I see queerness scraped under the table. It is as if queer people cease to exist once we enter the world of speculative fiction. Books like The Left Hand of Darkness are often cited as the best examples, even though there is no intentional representation, and any form of queerness is “alien” or “non-human”.

But in A Handmaid’s Tale, the character of Moria is gay. You get to see how she has navigated such a heterosexual-based world. Because all of her values so strongly clash with this world, she becomes the rebel, the fighter, of the story. She is one of the only characters to make multiple escape attempts. In her eventual capture and acceptance of her situation, the dystopian tone of the world becomes all the more final and defined.

You also get to see those queer people who were not as lucky as she was, who were hung at the wall. In A Handmaiden’s Tale, it seems queerness is punishable only by death (not even the colonies), unless you are lucky enough to have that special brand of feminine queerness that straight men deem “ok”. In this way, male heterosexuality defines an even larger scope of the world than originally thought, touching people usually outside its realm (such as gay men and lesbians).

This makes the book much more real for me, as a queer person. I am able to understand what my place and experience might be in such a world, which is usually harder in fiction. I am sure that this world is terrifying enough for straight women. Every part of them, from the spiritual, to the mental, to the emotional, to the physical is owned. They are told what religion to follow and exactly how to follow it. Any form of self-expression or self-intention, from how you wear your hair, to your style of clothing, to the books you choose to read is taken away. Your ability to care for and define your own body is taken away. The handmaidens can’t even use lotion. The women become objects, acquired with status.

As a trans guy, it literally becomes my worst nightmare. Offred had to make a choice between 1) having to be shoe-boxed into a tiny facet of “womanhood” warped through the male gaze into something based only upon female reproductive organs, and 2) basically, death. I know that if I were faced with such a choice, I’d choose death, every time. Control over my own body is already something that I’m just barley grasping at, and to have that taken away and replaced with a genitalia-based identity would be truly awful.