Many of you have probably read The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood or watched its television adaptation. Perhaps you thought: What a cruel and exaggerated world. Perhaps you even felt relieved that you do not live in a state like that. But what if I told you that countries with such bizarre, oppressive laws strikingly similar to those found in dystopian fiction actually exist?
Would it surprise you to learn that, even in the twenty-first century, there are still women who are treated not as second-class citizens, but as less than human? That there are places where those in power—much like the Commanders in Gilead—believe they are God’s representatives on Earth, convinced that the god they worship has granted them the right to treat human beings, especially women and children, in extremely inhumane ways?
In one of these lands, just as in Gilead, women are forbidden to read, write, or attend school because knowledge inevitably gives them awareness and power. Women are denied careers, social status, and independence, and are forced to remain at home, raise children, and serve their husbands. Women are not allowed to leave their homes or travel alone—that is, without a “male guardian.” In its neighbouring country, where I come from, married women need their husband’s legal permission to obtain a passport, and even if they do obtain one, their husband can legally ban them from leaving the country whenever he feels like it.
In these countries, girls as young as ten or twelve can be forced into marriage, often to men old enough to be their fathers—or even grandfathers. They are robbed of their education, their dreams, their freedom, and of any chance to experience a normal childhood. Worse still, the state-controlled media actively promotes child marriage and glorifies young mothers as heroes tasked with reversing the country’s declining birth rate.
The country needs more babies; thus, abortion is illegal, contraception is scarce—some methods prohibited altogether—and access to prenatal screening is restricted. Sound familiar? Here’s a hint: Gilead. In this land, and all over the world, countless women die every year from unsafe abortion while policymakers keep chanting: More babies.
In these lands, men murder their wives, daughters, or sisters under the pretext of preserving their honor in the eyes of their relatives, acquaintances, or community. They are rarely held accountable. It is the perpetrators—not their victims—who receive protection. Sometimes this protection comes through laws rooted in Islamic jurisprudence that, under paternal guardianship, treat children as the property of their fathers. Other times it comes through the so-called honor culture that casually disregards the lives of women and their autonomy. The victims disappear into silence, while their killers, with blood on their hands, walk freely with heads held high.
In the country I come from, green-and-white patrol vans roam the streets, stopping women at random. Their occupants scan the crowds like hunters searching for prey. Their target? Women who defy hijab. If they decide that a girl’s clothing is “too short” or that a few strands of her hair are visible beneath her headscarf, they order her into the vehicle. If she resists, she is beaten, humiliated, or even hauled into the van with a dog-catcher’s pole. Consequences come in various colors: from arrests, forced attendance at morality and religious obedience classes, fines, vehicle confiscation, bans on leaving the country, to the red color of blood, like Mahsa Jina Amini and Armita Geravand.
In one episode of The Handmaid’s Tale, a Handmaid is punished for trying to see her child and loses one of her eyes. In my country, many protesters permanently lost their eyesight after regime forces shot them with shotguns, sniper rifles, and other military-grade weapons. Among them are Ghazal Ranjkesh, Kimia Zand, Kosar Eftekhari, and many others. You think that’s wild? About a decade ago, women had acid thrown in their faces to terrorize them into covering their hair. The attackers are still walking free to this day.
Remember the wall in Gilead, the one Ofglen and Offred almost always walk by? The one used to display the bodies of executed? We don’t have that in our country; we have squares, cranes, and morning Azan. One is the place, one is the tool, and one is the time.
In Gilead, tokens were used to purchase goods. In my country, years of economic crisis have also forced families to rely on government-issued ration coupons for essential goods. Yet the coupon credit the regime offers is not only scarce but often worth less than the price of a single bottle of cooking oil. Slowly, life’s small joys disappear. Foods like ice cream and chocolate vanish from family budgets, and even the simplest pleasures that once brightened everyday life become luxuries beyond reach. “I look at the oranges, longing for one,” Offred said. I see the same longing in the eyes of my people, in their nervous looks when they grab an item, check its price, and silently put it back.
This is not a script.
This is not a dystopian novel.
This is not an exaggeration.
We do not wear color-coded uniforms that transform us into a cinematic revolutionary army. We have no sweeping orchestral soundtrack, no carefully scripted plot twists, and no Hollywood campaign amplifying our voice. We are not actors with golden hair and piercing blue eyes destined to become the heroes of a fictional narrative.
But we are real.
We exist.
And today, more than ever, we need the support of those who live outside Gilead. We need our reality to be seen, to be heard, to be spoken of. We need governments to be pressured into taking meaningful action to defend our freedom and our human dignity, just as viewers wished someone would intervene to save the people of Gilead. We need genuine help—not organizations with impressive names whose greatest achievements are holding a few conferences each year, expressing concerns, delivering speeches about humanity, human rights, women’s rights, and children’s rights, and then lobbying for laws that accomplish little to nothing in practice. Laws that do far more to polish the tarnished reputations of those organizations than to protect the people who are suffering, allowing them to continue speaking proudly about human values while taking virtually no meaningful action to defend the victims of oppression.
Gilead existed for only a few seasons on television. Our reality has endured for decades. Just as Gilead served as a warning to its audience, our reality must become a warning to women, activists, and indeed to all people around the world: When religion and state merge, freedom disappears. Our resistance, our struggle, and the deaths of so many among us should stand as a reminder of what happens when a nation falls into the hands of authoritarian rulers driven by dangerous, fanatical beliefs. It starts slow, with the rights of women, with the rights of the LGBT+ community, with the rights of the ones so oppressed, nobody really cares. That’s only the beginning. In the end, every member of society is forced to pay the price, clinging only to the hope that one day they might enjoy the most basic human rights.
So, dear reader, don’t ignore the real Gileads of our time. Don’t excuse them as “cultural differences” or “religious traditions”. Oppression is not culture, and theocracy is always terrible, no matter where.
