handmaiden - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (original) (raw)

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

From Middle English hande mayden, handmaiden, hand mayden, hand-mayden, handmayden, hondemaiden, hond maydyn, hoondmaydyn. By surface analysis, hand +‎ maiden.

Sense 2 is an allusion to Canadian writer Margaret Atwood's novel The Handmaid's Tale (1985), in which "handmaids" are women who serve the male commanders in a patriarchal dystopia.

handmaiden (plural handmaidens)

  1. Alternative form of handmaid.
    • 2019 November 21, Benjamin Mueller, “At Odds With Labour, Britain's Jews Are Feeling Politically Homeless”, in The New York Times‎[1], New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 13 November 2023:
      Online and over Shabbat dinners, arguments about the election have grown bitter. Those grudgingly planning to vote for Labour have been called traitors to the community and self-hating Jews. Anti-Corbyn die-hards, on the other hand, have been branded the handmaidens of a hard Brexit.
    • 2026 May 3, Ezra Klein, “Why the A.I. Job Apocalypse (Probably) Won’t Happen”, in The New York Times‎[2], →ISSN:
      About a quarter of Gen Z-ers report that they haven’t had sex in the last year. A.I. could be a handmaiden of this social dissolution, offering a digital simulacrum of friendships and relationships without opening people to the beauty and agony of real relationships, in which we learn to relate to other people who are truly other people, and whose desires are not simply extensions of our own.
  2. (derogatory) A cisgender woman who supports transgender rights.
    • 2020 July 22, Julie Bindel, “Trans activists risk falling for misogyny”, in The Spectator:
      The fact that it is not possible to be seen as a supporter of trans people's human rights, as all feminists are or at least should be, unless we fully capitulate and take the metaphorical – and sometimes literal – boot in the face shows how extreme trans activists, enabled by their handmaiden allies, are nothing but a misogynistic men’s rights movement.
    • 2021 November 10, Rebecca Chandler (@RachelWilde13), Twitter‎[3]:
      Solidarity with trans people but not women[,] I note[,] Angela. Especially the boring ones who fought for rights that you now enjoy. Enjoy being a handmaiden.
    • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:handmaiden.