'The Handmaid's Tale' revealed the huge lie at the heart of Gilead and it might not even matter at all

To watch The Handmaid’s Tale as a conscious member of a free society is to be keyed in to every injustice the Republic of Gilead commits against women.

Ostensibly, each of the institutionalized violations of women’s rights — the ban on reading, the forced marriages, the entire concept of Handmaids, and countless others — stem from Gilead’s core purpose, which is to ensure the future of the human race in the face of a worldwide fertility crisis.

Government-approved rape and wife assignments are Gilead's answer to a world where the “wickedness” of women caused millions of them to fall barren. But in Episode 9 of Season 2, the lie behind that logic is finally exposed: the world’s fertility crisis was an issue of inert sperm, not eggs. Women were never the problem.

To which I would like to say both “holy shit” and “duh.”

The holy shit part stands for my internal scream during this episode when Serena Joy’s itinerary for the Canada visit was outlined with pictures instead of words, out of sensitivity for Gilead’s anti-reading policy. This despite my refusal to accept Serena Joy as a victim in her own system.

That scream was for how entirely unfair the system of Gilead is. That unfairness only compounds with the fertility reveal. Every lynching victim, every slaughtered dissident, every rape victim and PTSD-cowed citizen has suffered for a concrete scientific untruth. The grain of logic at the center of Gilead’s endless silo of atrocities is fake news.

The duh stands for duh. As in, of course. Of course it’s not surprising that the penis-wielders of Gilead are the real problem; June’s doctor straight up admitted as such in Season 1. Of course the fertility crisis is something that can be solved with science and not, I don’t know, fascism, because to ground Gilead in a semi-legitimate biological imperative gives its leaders too much credit for their solution.

And of course in the end, the truth doesn’t matter a single bit. Fertility was always just an excuse for the men of Gilead’s movement to treat women as property, the way all misogynists desire to, with varying degrees of transparency.

What is important about the reveal is that Serena Joy, the person who needed to hear it most, finally has the information needed to properly assess exactly how badly she screwed over every woman and member of the American LGBT community.

If anyone was holding out hope that the realization that her crusade was a pointless murderfest would sway Serena Joy away from being a complicit piece of garbage, the scene where she burns the matchbook should disabuse them of those notions. But there’s narrative weight to at least one other person in the house knowing the extent to which Gilead effed up.

As the final four episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale Season 2 arrive over the next month, the mounting tension that threatens to break Gilead’s foundations will hopefully pay off in a way that restores some form of justice to the fictional future.

Canada is increasingly pissed at Gilead. The world now understands the true plight of the Handmaids, Marthas, Jezebels, and Unwomen under its regime. And now the sexist lie behind its wimpy justification is out there, waiting to be disseminated by someone if not Serena.

Good luck, Gilead. You’re gonna need it.