Savage Indignation
Margaret Atwood imagines a conversation with George Orwell.
Tonight, I took myself out to dinner with a book. Eating a delicious meal while reading in a restaurant is one of my favorite things to do, and I felt like treating myself. I chose Margaret Atwoods’ Old Babes in the Wood, a collection of 15 short stories, for the occasion. I scored a seat at the bar, ordered an old fashioned and an assortment of small plates, and had a terrific couple of hours hanging out with Atwood and her assembly of strange old babes.
In one story, “The Dead Interview,” Atwood imagines a conversation with George Orwell, who she’s summoned via a medium so she can tell him about the influence he’s had on her work. Orwell tells her he’s delighted to speak with someone who is still in their “meat envelope.” There are different ways of being alive, he says. She tells him about women writers, of whom he knows nothing (she points out that, ahem, they were writing when he was alive), and they agree that all writers are lazy, haha.
Atwood fills Orwell in about the current spread of disinformation, and the ongoing attempt by people in power to rewrite history. She tells him that when she first read Animal Farm as a young girl, she didn’t understand that it was an allegory for the demonization of Leon Trotsky by Stalin. “You were very brave,” she says to Orwell of his writing. He responds with a pleased murmur — and then, he tells her why he kept going, despite being maligned and censored throughout his career:
It was unfairnesses that drove me on the most, I suppose. The false accusations, the human sacrifices. More than anything, the injustices impelled me to write. Savage indignation, inflamed by the betrayal of common human decencies. The betrayal of ordinary humanity.
Reading this, I teared up over my dinner. Atwood channeling Orwell was just what I needed. This week, an IVF clinic was bombed, the head of the Department of Homeland Security tweeted that illegally deported immigrants can “suck it,” and we learned that a brain-dead woman in Georgia is being used as an incubator while a Texas woman spent five months in prison for miscarrying, to name just a few injustices. The ghouls are in charge. It’s tough to keep our chins up — but, as Atwood wrote in 40 years ago in The Handmaid’s Tale, “Nolite te bastardes carborundorum,” a made-up phrase that means “Don’t let the bastards grind you down.”
When I started making sandwich videos a couple of years ago, I was unprepared for what we’d be staring down in 2025. I’d written an essay about sexism, and got a wild amount of comments from men telling me sexism was a myth and that I should shut up and make them a sandwich, so I started making myself sandwiches and talking about shit that matters to me. Things have gotten exponentially worse since then. It’s depressing; it can feel hard to function if you have eyes, and a working brain. Here’s a vid I posted this week about the prison for a miscarriage story:
Reading Atwood reminded me that, even though I feel hopeless and depressed because of what’s happening to women like Mallori Patrice Strait, I’m doing fine. I gave up my apartment in Los Angeles, and I’m going to spend the next few months in the woods and on the water. I have the world’s greatest dog as my road companion. I finished the biggest story I’ve ever worked on, which will come out this summer. I threw myself a birthday party with friends, family, and a full band who rocked our fucking socks off. I’m comfortable with who I am, I believe in myself, and I’m letting the world reveal itself to me for this next chapter. But I’m also driven by savage indignation, so I’m going to keep writing, and making videos, while doinks emboldened by the manosphere fart in my general direction. If anything, I enjoy goading the chodes by replying to their comments with things like “use your words, poops! whaddaya mean ‘her eyes are a dead giveaway’? 👀”
As Kristen Stewart said in a recent interview, “Having a female body is an overtly political act if you can get out of bed in the morning and not hate yourself.” With that firmly in mind, I’m going to go to bed, get up tomorrow, not hate myself, tend to the fires of my savage indignation, and keep calling ignorant dudes “poops.”
Thank heavens for Kristen Stewart… and thank the universe for
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Love, MJ ❤️ xo
I just want to thank you for existing and for writing. You give me hope!