The religious movement at the heart of The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood’s classic work of speculative fiction, is terrifying—a misogynistic, totalitarian, inquisitorial nightmare that manages to swallow the American government with astonishing ease.

The religious movement in her new novel, The Year of the Flood, is decidedly more benign. They’re a relatively marginal sect of eco-freaks called “God’s Gardeners,” who sing gentle hymns about animals and vegetables as they tend their urban rooftop gardens. They wear drab clothes, make their own soap, and get “composted” when they die. The Gardeners have been prophesying a “Waterless Flood” for years now, and when it finally comes—in the form of a plague, nestled within a cleverly-engineered contraceptive pill—two of their former members find themselves stranded, each of them unsure whether anyone else has survived.

If you’re not normally a fan of futuristic fiction, don’t be turned off by the goofy phrases in the flap copy. (“Bioartist?” “Eco-fighter?” “Painballers?” Don’t even get me started on the animal-themed sex club, “Scales and Tails.”) Like The Handmaid’s Tale before it, The Year of the Flood is ultimately the story of tough, solitary women fighting to survive a hostile world. It’s also richer and more textured than Oryx and Crake, Atwood’s 2003 novel, with which it shares a setting and many of the same characters. Eerie and slightly chilly, it’s the perfect novel for the start of fall.

NB: As part of her book tour, Atwood has put together a performance piece that includes dramatic readings from the novel, plus musical performances of God’s Gardeners’ hymns. And, lest you think that sustainability is purely a literary conceit for Atwood, her blog promises that in each city, “local singers and actors will take part, which will lower the carbon footprint.”

The U.S. leg of Atwood’s tour begins Oct. 4, in Denver.

Tags: DoubleX Book of the Week, margaret atwood, oryx and crake, the handmaid's tale, the year of the flood

A week and some change after President Barack Obama's widely praised speech to Congress on health care reform, Michelle Obama is making it a double feature. By overtly bringing the first lady into the contentious policy debate, the White House is upping the ante—but with a smart bet. The FLOTUS, as a former administrator at the University of Chicago hospitals, knows her way around the U.S. health care delivery system just as well her Democratic predecessor, Hillary Clinton. The strategy, as told to Politico's Nia Hederson, is to float like a butterfly and sting like a bee:

She will do things that fit in with what she cares about, like health care reform and the implications it has for family and kids,” said Camille Johnston, Obama’s director of communications. “She will spend her time focusing on where policy and people intersect.”

That's a smart play. After a hard-fought battle to reclaim her image as "Mom-in-Chief," Michelle's everywoman caché may well be her strongest asset in winning over the mildly engaged, gently Republican "soccer moms," whose tacit support could speed the health care debate to its conclusion.

And so Michelle kicked off this autumn drive of advocacy (she'll also showcase her negotiating skills at the G20 conference next week and the International Olympic Committee meeting in October) with an address to some 140 women of all ages at the Executive Office Building this morning. Her remarks, while focused on the intricacies of reform—"a marketplace with a variety of options that will let you compare prices and benefits"—still went heavy on the Lifetime theatrics:

Eight in 10 women, mothers, report that they're the ones responsible for choosing their children's doctor, for getting them to their checkups, for managing that follow-up care. Women are the ones to do it. Mothers are the ones that do it. And many women find themselves doing the same thing for their spouses. (Laughter.) And more than 10 percent of women in this country are currently caring for a sick or elderly relative. It's often a parent, but it could a grandparent, or a mother -- or a relative of some sort -- but it's often a parent. So they're making critical health care decisions for those family members as well. In other words, being part of the sandwich generation, is what we are now finding, raising kids while caring for a sick or elderly parent, that's not just a work/family balance issue anymore. It's not just an economic issue anymore. More and more it is a health care issue. It's something that I have thought a great deal about as a mother.

In the rest of her speech, Obama dropped "mother" seven times, "family" 15 times, and "women" 35 times.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. Women are getting slammed with not just decisionmaking but disparities in the provision of health care in America. Obama even referenced the subject of my post earlier this week on female victims of domestic violence being denied coverage for the "preexisting condition" of having been beaten up. And she had plenty of other smart examples which, though targeted at women, offered a case for health insurance reform based more on economic and social equity than on touchy-feeliness (though, my goodness, there was a lot of that):

[A] recent study showed that 25-year-old women are charged up to 45 percent more for insurance than 25-year-old men for the exact same coverage. And as the age goes up, you get to 40, that disparity increases to 48 percent -- 48 percent difference for women for the exact same coverage in this country. ...

Just think about it. Many women are being charged more in health care coverage, but as we all know, women are earning less. We all know that women earn 78 cents on the dollar to every men -- to a man. So it's not exactly surprising when we hear statistics that more than half of women report putting off needed medical care simply because they can't afford it. ...

I think it's clear that health insurance reform and what it means for our families is very much a women's issue. It is very much a women's issue.

And if we want to achieve true equality for women, if that is our goal; if we want to ensure that women have opportunities that they deserve, if that is our goal; if we want women to be able to care for their families and pursue things that they could never imagine, then we have to reform the system. We have to reform the system. The status quo is unacceptable. It is holding women and families back, and we know it.

This hybrid argumentation is really novel, and was quite effective for the crowd in attendance. According to the East Wing, the first lady plans to do much more of this gentle, reasoned nudging as the days creep closer to Oct. 15—the be-all, end-all deadline for passing a health care bill out of Congress.

Tags: health reform, Michelle Obama, Michelle Obama and policy, politics, women's health, women's health reform

Hmm, Matt. As commenter GemmaM points out, I did open myself up to the "what women want" game. And I thought for a minute I might have to concede that you've figured us out. Because, of course, you're right that I don't want my emotions governed by the courts or Feminist Theory 101 or, worse, 403. Does anyone, really?

But you're also arguing that women watch Mad Men because they yearn for men like Don Draper and Roger Sterling. To marry or have a relationship with, as well as to adore on TV. And there, I can't go. Don't get me wrong, I'm as crushy about Don as the girl in the next cubicle. (Though my heart still goes first to Tim Riggins on FNL, as you do like to remind me.) But even if I weren't as devoted to my husband as you are to your wonderful wife, I wouldn't want to have a relationship with anyone like Don. (And forget about Roger entirely. You won't believe me, but I didn't remember that pony ride scene until you mentioned it. Guess I won't be writing to Daniel Bergner about that for his project about sex and passion for DoubleX.) I mean, why would I, when if I imagine myself single for just a second, I'd have so many better flavors of man to choose from? You're offering me only two: The henpecked, effeminized, sensitized guy with a bad haircut, and raffish, sexy, cheating, perfectly groomed Don. What about all the men in the far more interesting in-between, the ones who are "free to be men" (Have you thought of launching a clothing line? Or a Lance Armstrong bracelet?) and who also take women seriously, intellectually and emotionally and otherwise. I'm with Loth and some of the other commenters: We've moved beyond the place to which Mad Men reels us back, and I don't want to go back. Not even for a pony ride. Though thanks for asking. I feel like you're really looking out for me.

Tags: DOn Draper, mad men, roger sterling

If you’re a woman, then the cause to legalize marijuana wants you. Most activists working with the Marijuana Policy Project are men, Laura Greenback writes in High Times. But they want to change that. So Greenback is doing some soul searching about why women aren’t gunning for ganja. She offers the theory that women “feel the pressure to be seen as strong workers and perfect mothers, so we shy away from getting behind something our coworkers and PTA members might see as ‘out there.’ ”

Another possibility: We just don’t have any strong pot-loving women role models. Stoner flicks are notoriously dudes only, save a stray female friend here and there, like Charlyne Yi in Knocked Up. Perhaps Peggy’s foray into to reefer on Mad Men will make pot as cool as well-defined waistlines, but until then, we’re struggling to think of strong female role models who do the dope. We’ve been kicking it around over e-mail, and here’s what we’ve got so far:

Noreen offers Jennifer Aniston in Friends with Money, but points out that “she's not having very much fun.”

Ellen says “Annie Hall in Annie Hall, but the point was quite different ... It was more like she needed pot to have sex with him because she was losing interest in the relationship. It was more about him being neurotic.”

Rachael brings up Weeds, which she says has “a feminist angle” because Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker) deals drugs but “stays sober while the buffoonish men around her smoke pot and act like children.”

June’s response: “And when former neighbor Celia Hodes, who started out as a clamp-down-on-crime puritan got her taste of drugs, she immediately became a full-on, falling-down, whoring-herself-out-to-score addict. Hell, you know she had it bad—she even lost a front tooth. It's hard to see a message here other than women and drugs don't mix.”

Dana says Smiley Face is “a great female stoner odyssey.” And there’s also just about everyone from That '70s Show.

Still a pretty anemic list, compared to the full catalog of pothead dudes prancing around—or, sprawling out lethargically—on the big screen these days. If there were a truly awesome, hilarious film about lovable, relatable pothead girls, would that change things? Or is Greenback right that women’s hesitance to be strong weed supporters is more rooted in our need to be perfect overachiever types, which runs so counter to the pothead ethos of lounging around and eating Cheetos?

Tags: legalizing marijuana, movies, pot

In an essay from Your Comeback earlier this week, Melba Simons Brown wrote about how losing her husband strengthened her faith. If a major life event has altered your religiosity, Emma Gilbey Keller wants to hear from you at emma@thecomebackbook.com.

Tags: faith, life changes, Religion, widows

This is perhaps the least surprising finding of social science to date: "Rates of births to teenage mothers are strongly predicted by conservative religious beliefs, even after controlling for differences in income and rates of abortion." In 2008 the larger public got a taste of what watchers of the social conservative movement have known for a long time, which is that they've quietly started to celebrate teenage motherhood, albeit while falling short of openly encouraging it. When Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston were trotted out as American heroes for the Big Knock-Up during the Republican National Convention, that was a wink and a nod to this growing enthusiasm in the Christian right.

Another example of the trend comes from the deliberately misnamed Feminists For Life, which sponsors a college lecture series that exhibits young women explaining why having a baby in college was the best thing that ever happened to them. Wild promises are implied: The boyfriend will make a romantic proposal straight out of a storybook, parents will be ecstatic, studies will be manageable, life will be darn near perfect. Perhaps Bristol Palin's lack of a storybook ending, which cannot be covered up with any number of People magazine covers, will help expose this lie that's been building within this subculture.

Don't think that the Christian right wanted it this way. It's in response to the impossible situation they've put their young people in. Mark Regnerus—himself an evangelical Christian, but one who takes his academic fealty to the truth seriously—wrote a book demonstrating that all the admonishments to evangelical youth to wait for marriage not only didn't cause them to wait longer to have sex, but that evangelical teenagers have sex at even younger ages than pretty much all other groups of teenagers. (He theorizes that their fear that stopgap behavior like oral sex and mutual masturbation is perverse drives them to intercourse sooner.) Add to that the levels of misinformation about contraception fed to them in an attempt to trick them out of having sex, and what you have is a situation where, to quote the researcher on this most recent study, "religious communities in the U.S. are more successful in discouraging the use of contraception among their teenagers than they are in discouraging sexual intercourse itself." Nature beats God most of the time.

There's only one solution, and evangelicals such as Regnerus or Michael Gerson have started to promote it strongly: early marriage. Of course, what that means is up in the air. Regnerus suggests 19-20, Gerson plays it safe by suggesting one's early 20s. This cynic points out that both are still many years past the average age of sexual debut, which is close to 17 (though younger for evangelicals).

The on-the-ground compromise that evangelical Christians seem to be coming around to is quietly encouraging—or at least, not discouraging—sexually active teenagers to get pregnant quickly, so they "have" to marry, because they know that just asking kids to marry young won't fly when their kids, like most kids, have college and career goals that marriage could interfere with. Getting pregnant and married young will never be as well-regarded as abstaining for a decade plus after puberty before marrying, but teenage motherhood is quietly becoming a way of life for evangelicals, and a compromise position between the sexual needs of actual human beings, and the strongly anti-sex attitudes pushed by the Christian right.

Tags: Bristol Palin, christian right, evangelical christianity, teenage pregnancy