Years ago, my friends spent months urging me to watch a new show on Channel 4 called The Handmaid’s Tale. I resisted with complete confidence. I won’t like it, I insisted. Not only that, but I was unequivocal in my opinion that it would be too dark, too bleak, too depressing. I couldn’t imagine voluntarily watching something that seemed designed to unsettle me. I didn’t want to watch it. I was avoiding feeling uncomfortable.

Fast forward to the spring of 2020. We found ourselves locked in our homes as the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the world, and my husband and I finally decided to “give it a whirl.” Within days, hours, even – we were hooked. I was obsessed and terrified.

As a woman in her forties, a wife and a mother, Gilead struck me as both horrifyingly plausible and strangely empowering. After reading The Handmaid’s Tale, then The Testaments, and watching all six seasons of the show (more than once), I can say without hesitation that it changed me forever. It changed my conversations, my friendships, my sense of the world. My friends and I, over the years, have spoken endlessly about women’s rights, human rights, and how lucky we are to live in a time that recognises them. I feel fiercely protective towards women, and I cherish the women in my life with a passion. We celebrated the #MeToo movement, the easy availability of the morning-after pill, and the increasing visibility of women in leadership. But The Handmaid’s Tale also made us acutely aware of how fragile those gains really are and how quickly progress can unravel. The Handmaid’s Tale is both a masterpiece as a visual experience, but also an education.

It’s November 2025 – a full year since Donald Trump returned to the White House, and hardly a day goes by that I don’t see something in the news that echoes Gilead. Not exact replicas, of course, but… shadows. Rhymes. Patterns. The Handmaid’s Tale altered the way I interpret the world; the comparisons arrive uninvited. They feel disturbing.

This morning, while scrolling absently through Bluesky, I stumbled on a thread filled with stories of American women planning to leave the United States. Some had already gone. Parents were sharing that their daughters had chosen to study in Berlin, Switzerland, Ontario—anywhere with stability and rights. Young women spoke openly about wanting to build new lives abroad; they needed hope. The sheer volume of these stories was staggering, but I couldn’t tear myself away.

And immediately I thought of The Handmaid’s Tale: crowds fleeing airports, edging toward borders, desperately trying to escape before the gates closed. Emily Malek (Ofglen) being stopped at the airport because her same-sex marriage was invalid under Gilead law. Her wife and child allowed to flee to Canada while she is left behind to face a future stripped of dignity, identity, and freedom. Such a heartbreaking scene. Let’s remember that before she was Ofglen, she was Dr Emily Malek, a professor at a university and a scholar of cellular biology who held a Ph.d before she was sent away for a life of servitude and punishment. That scene was haunting then. It’s haunting in new ways now.

It’s important to remember that when Margaret Atwood wrote the original novel in 1985, she intentionally included nothing that hadn’t happened somewhere in real history. Gilead may be fictional, but its cruelty has real precedents.

Life in Gilead is built on subjugation. Women are stripped of their possessions, families, identities, and autonomy. They serve men, their bodies reduced to functions: womb, labour, obedience. They are replaceable. Objectified. Categorised. Controlled. Of course, people fled. Who wouldn’t want to escape such a miserable existence?

And yet today, in the real world, the desire to leave the United States is rising too, particularly among young women. Gallup’s data shows an uptick from Trump’s first term that climbed to around 40-44% by 2024-25. Their reasons? Reproductive rights. Political instability. Fear of losing freedoms. Misogyny is woven into public discourse. Desire does not equal action, of course, but the sentiment itself is telling. When nearly half of young women want to leave their country, something is deeply wrong.

In The Handmaid’s Tale, the Sons of Jacob rise to power through a coup, blaming the “radicals.” That word feels familiar these days. We hear it day in and day out. Yet unlike Gilead, America’s 2024 election was legitimate. And today, there are still women in high-ranking positions – Karoline Leavitt as White House Press Secretary, Pam Bondi as Attorney General. At the same time, reports of women losing roles in the U.S. military echo a different kind of regression.

More troubling is the cultural shift. The “manosphere” amplifies messages that openly demean women. Nick Fuentes’ “Your body, my choice” post amassed tens of millions of views. Andrew Tate boasts online about not stopping for a woman crossing the road because she has no rights. This is not fringe anymore, it’s uncomfortably mainstream. It is truly sickening to see. And then there are the images we’ve all seen: armed, masked men detaining families without due process. People disappearing. Children separated from parents. The scenes could have been lifted from Gilead’s streets.

Peaceful protestors have been violently handled in several U.S. cities throughout 2025. It’s impossible not to recall the flashback in “Late” (Season 1, Episode 3), when June and Moira join a demonstration only to face police gunfire. That moment illustrates how a democracy’s collapse begins – not with a single event, but with the silencing of voices. This is scary stuff.

Another flashback sticks with me: Moira trying to buy coffee, suddenly invisible to the barista. Her card declined. Her identity evaporating in real time. She was invisible and insignificant to the man running the coffee shop. A small scene, but devastatingbecause financial autonomy is one of the first freedoms authoritarian systems target.

Real-world misogyny rarely arrives with banners and uniforms or fanfare. It seeps out slowly from online rhetoric into daily life. I’ve felt it myself. A tradesman recently suggested I “check the quote with my husband” before making a decision. My husband and I are equals. It’s 2025, not the 1950s. That remark may seem trivial, but these are the cracks through which larger injustices can grow.

Reproductive rights are the most glaring comparison. After Roe v. Wade’s overturning, many U.S. states now severely restrict abortion, creating real danger for women needing emergency care. Gilead’s attitude toward pregnancy was chillingly clear. Natalie (OfMatthew) is kept alive in a vegetative state just long enough to deliver her baby, her own life irrelevant. Another handmaid bleeds to death in Season 5 because saving the mother is deemed less important than the infant’s survival. Women become vessels. Their deaths are acceptable losses.

Earlier this year, the Trump administration floated the idea of $5,000 “baby bonuses,” part of a growing pronatalist push. Critics argue such policies prioritise population growth over women’s wellbeing, especially when paired with restrictions on reproductive choice. The message echoes Gilead’s logic: more babies at any cost. Who cares what the women want?

Perhaps what feels most dispiriting is the hypocrisy, leaders praising policies they once condemned, draping themselves in morality while inflicting harm on their own citizens. It’s hard not to think of Commander Lawrence, Commander Waterford or the other men of Gilead who justify cruelty in the name of order, faith, or “the greater good.”

In the show’s penultimate episode, after boarding the plane, Nick tells Lawrence, “Guess you decided to join the winners.” It’s a line that hits hard today. How many modern leaders have aligned themselves not out of conviction, but self-preservation? Maybe, like Nick, they feel safer and are able to survive on the winning side? How many will eventually realise, just like Aunt Lydiathat they were on the wrong side of history all along? Time will tell.

In the meantime, on the difficult days, when current world events all feel too much, my sister and I channel June Osborne. She’s fictional, but her resilience is real to us.
                          “Don’t let the bastards grind you down”

The Handmaid’s Tale is available on Prime Video in the UK and Disney+ elsewhere.