The Testaments & the Dangerous Idea of ‘Protecting Girls’

Added: 2026-05-13

[00:00:00]Who are we actually trying to protect?

[00:00:02]Because The Testaments is being framed as a story about saving girls the wrong way. But historically, protecting girls has often meant controlling them. And as a queer, disabled woman and the mother of two daughters, that's a question I can't stop thinking about. Who gets saved? The Testaments, girlhood, and the politics of protection. This isn't just about a book or TV show, though. The Handmaid's Tale and now the Testaments don't just imagine the future. They reflect what we're already afraid of.

[00:00:29]And more importantly, they reflect what we think is worth saving, which is where it gets uncomfortable. Because when they say we're protecting girls, they're not talking about all girls, they're talking about a very specific idea of girlhood, innocent, compliant, heterosexual, abledied, and anyone outside of that.

[00:00:48]Oh, it just gets complicated. But I really like complicated. So, in this video, let's look at the Testament through a slightly different lens. Not just as a dystopian story, but as part of a much bigger cultural problem.

[00:01:00]Because where are the queer girls in those future? What happens to disabled bodies and survival stories? Oh, I'm dying. No question. And why does protection so often come with conditions? As a parent who experienced being a girl in the 2000s, that's not a theoretical question. Why the Testaments matters right now? For those of you who don't know, and a special gold star to you actually. I I really love it when people watch videos without knowing anything about the topic. That's my favorite way to watch YouTube. The Testaments is originally a book written by Margaret Atwood, published in 2019, and the follow-up to her award-winning and best-selling novel, The Handmaid's Tale, which was written in 1982.

[00:01:39]I pulled that off the top of my head.

[00:01:41]1982, 1985. One of those is correct. Her novels are set in a near future New England in a patriarchal tertitarian religious state known as the Republic of Gilead, which has overthrown the United States government. Although I do love at the start of the Testament TV series that it has overthrown the United States government for a time. Don't worry, it gets better. The future is dystopian, but then it gets better. The regime reorganized the society using very literal interpretations of some Old Testament ideas and a new militarized hierarchical model of social and religious theonomy is established amongst its very delineated social classes. They even use colors to point out who's who. One of the most significant changes is the limitation of women's rights. Women are denied the right to own property, read and write, or have control over their own reproductive functions. The women we see in the Handmaid's Tale all experienced the before. They knew what life was like before Gilead and how different it is now, whether they agree with it or not.

[00:02:42]But the characters of the Testaments have all grown up within the system. The Handmaid's Tale was first published in 1985. But let's be honest, it's uniquely timeless. The world of The Handmaid's Tale has always been framed as speculative. It's a warning, a whatif.

[00:02:57]But what makes it powerful is that it never feels entirely fictional. Gosh, themes of powerless women in a patriarchal society. The loss of female agency and individuality. The various ways in which we bound together to resist an attempt to gain individuality and independence. Absolutely never had her before, which that's not a dig Margaret Atwood. Not at all. She has famously said she didn't include anything in the Handmaid's Tale that hadn't already happened somewhere in history. So, the story isn't really one of a dystopian future. It's just one that talks about the dystopian possibilities of the world we live in right now. Our current anxieties about control, safety, and gender. The Testaments shifts the focus from adult women navigating oppression to girls growing up inside it. And that shift matters because as we've talked about before, girlhood isn't just a life stage, it's a political category. You can watch a whole video about why social media is currently aggressing to girlhood by clicking the link up here.

[00:03:57]Girlhood as politics. When we talk about protecting girls, it sounds straightforward, kind, necessary, obvious. Those poor little girls, they don't have the strength to fight for themselves. We need to look after them.

[00:04:12]You do? Can you not just teach them self-defense or something? That feels like slapping a band-aid on a wound. It isn't really going to help the problem.

[00:04:21]No, I guess not. But historically, that idea has always come with condition.

[00:04:26]Girls are often expected to be pure, obedient, and in need of guidance. In exchange for protection, they're asked to give up autonomy. It's a bit like being handed a very pretty cage. Stay sweet, and we'll help you if you get into trouble. Thanks.

[00:04:41]But good girls don't get into trouble.

[00:04:44]And this isn't just historical. We still see it now in conversations about safety, modesty, and behavior. We still teach our daughters how to dress so that they aren't seen as targets. But we aren't teaching our boys to just not target them. Well, I am, but I have one boy and two girls, so I'm really outnumbered when it comes to changing the world here. The idea is that girls must be protected, but only if they behave correctly. So, when the Testament centers on girlhood, it makes us ask, "What kind of girlhood?" Now, admittedly, I love a girl school setting. I really do. But this one hits a little differently because the girls here are the extreme. not just in the way they look. And actually, this TV show at least is carefully diverse where the book just has a few awkward lines about non-white people being moved somewhere else. But the saving girls narrative here centers innocence in a way that they can't even reach out for help when that's threatened. Agnes wakes up after being sedated at the dentist to find that her undergarments have been retied incorrectly. But she can't tell anyone or she'll risk being seen as tarnished and how she punished for it.

[00:05:48]Her innocence doesn't help her. The girls are rewarded for their conformity with a strict system that is designed ostensibly to protect them, but their ability to stay within those lines is sometimes outside of their control. If your father does something bad, you will be punished. Obedience to the system should lead to the highest level of protection. But if the way they're kept in line is dangerous to their person, then it isn't really a safety worth having. Women aren't allowed to read, for instance, because their minds will become infected with things they wouldn't know. Yet, as Serena experiences, punishment for doing so is having a finger cut off. I can't help but think, what does it mean to raise daughters in a world obsessed with protecting them? Being able to express herself in even small ways can feel incredibly empowering. Take nail varnish. What started as simple decoration has blossomed into a way for us to wear our personalities, moods, and even cultural identities on our fingertips. And as we know from the universe of the testaments, color can really matter, as can having the freedom to paint your nails whenever you want and however you want. But not all nail varnish is actually good for you or the environment. Which is where the sponsor of today's video, Manicurist, comes in.

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[00:08:11]So, give yourself the gift of some self-care and personal expression. Where are the queer girls? Let's talk about queerness. Because in Gilead, queer people are not exactly centered, unless it's for terrible reasons. They're often erased, punished, or forced into invisibility. That absence isn't accidental. It reflects a long-standing narrative pattern where survival, especially in dystopian worlds, is tied to heterosexuality. You're just a tiny little girl. You need a big man to come in and fight the zombies. I choose the zombies.

[00:08:45]After all, it's survival of the species that society is worried about, not actual survival of you. But the Testaments gives us something slightly different. Within it, we see a relationship that feels quietly significant for its inclusion within the narrative, not so much for it actually being, you know, accepted within the dystopia. Becca and Agnes' relationship is never so far loudly or explicitly labeled, but it is emotionally intimate, protective, devoted. There's a tenderness there, a sense of chosen closeness. Importantly, there's also a kind of emotional priority that sits outside of the rigid structures around them. Both have been brought up knowing only Gilead, a place where girls are not given an opportunity to find sisterhood due to the strict rules around them. The aunts have created a system where the girls cannot trust each other. Every tattle on another girl is a point in their favor. Yet, Becca and Agnes have found reprieve within each other.

[00:09:42]Despite the devastating trauma they enjoy each day, they love each other.

[00:09:45]It's a beautiful friendship in the book and in the show, it is charged in a way that queer viewers have immediately recognized. We all know the looks, the tenderness, the closeness you feel for your best friend that you then realize is not what other people are feeling when they say they love their best friend. You know, classic queer girl coming of age story. Only it's in a brutal regime where just being queer could have you killed. You don't sound upset enough about that.

[00:10:20]Now, you could read it as friendship, but when Becca confesses that she doesn't actually want one of the commanders to choose her and be her husband, that she doesn't even want them touching her, and that she prays for the world to end, Daisy comforts her by saying that Becca will be okay because her best friend Agnes is there and and loves her not the way I love her, replies Becca incredibly sappically.

[00:10:42]Historically, queerness and restrictive societies, both fictional and real, often exists in this in between space.

[00:10:48]Just because it isn't fully spoken doesn't mean it isn't there. It's deeply felt. And for those of us who can see it, we can see it. And for many viewers, that recognition matters. Now, it is worth saying the television adaptation of The Handmaid's Tale does go further in terms of representation, but it also has a lot of flashbacks to the before time from Gilead. We do see explicitly queer characters, Moira, Emily, their romantic partnership, relationships that are named, visible, undeniable. And that visibility, particularly in dystopian fiction, is important. It pushes back against total erasia. It isn't inclusion just for the sake of ticking diversity boxes, as some people might like to complain. Instead, it is a reminder that even in the most oppressive regimes, even the ones that exist today, even real life, even when you try to grind us down, queer people endure. Having said that, even here, queerness is framed through suffering, through loss, through escape, through survival against overwhelming odds. Crucially though, not through future building. Queer theorist Jose Esteban Munos talks about the idea of queer futurity in his book Cruising utopia. The idea that normative or straight futures center around ideas of marriage, reproduction, nuclear family, and death, but that since those aren't all available to queer people, that queerness shouldn't be just about surviving the present, but instead imagining a future that actually includes you. And this is where stories like the Testaments become really interesting because even when queerness is present, it's often subtle, ambiguous, or secondary to heterosexual structures. So when a story is about saving girls, we have to ask, are queer girls included in that vision? Is the story making a comment about whether they're included in our vision now? And wait, how are you defining girl exactly?

[00:12:45]How are you defining female? Well, it's if you're saving girls, then are we all going? It's just What about the girls who weren't known as girl at birth?

[00:12:55]Okay, you're just making it too complicated now in our future dystopian worlds where we have to save these innocent little girls, are queer girls included, or are they hidden or else quietly written out of the future altogether? It's a wellestablished idea in queer and childhood studies that the dominant culture treats children as naturally innocent and any association with sexuality or gender variance is seen as a kind of contamination that strips them of that status. As Katherine Bontoton writes in the queer child or growing sideways in the 20th century, the child is not only innocent but also not innocent, a figure saturated with sexuality even as culture insists on its purity. The core argument there being that society projects innocence onto children with heterosexuality being easy to ignore. Every little girl dreams her prince will come.

[00:13:45]Every little girl likes to watch the prince kiss the princess.

[00:13:50]Yet from when queerness appears that illusion collapses, often leading to discomfort, exclusion or moral panic.

[00:13:56]You want to see two princesses kissing.

[00:13:59]Disgusting. James Concaid also supports this idea of the myth of innocence in his work erotic innocence. The innocent child, he argues, is less a reality than a cultural construction, one that depends on the strict denial of the child's sexuality. Merely acknowledging sexuality into which gender variation is also unfortunately dumped, disrupts the social value assigned to the child. To be protected, you must be legible. And historically, queerness has not always been seen as legible or acceptable or worth preserving. Which means that even when queer girls are present, they're not always ones the story is trying to save. I am sorry, but if she seems queer, don't get too attached because the narrative will kill her pretty quickly or do something equally awful.

[00:14:44]If Grey's Anatomy has taught me one thing, and if your existence only fits into a story subtext, you're not exactly the main character. Just remember, why is representation important? Because if you can't imagine queer futures, you can't build them. Disability and desirable survival. Now, let's talk about disability because dystopian stories, including the Testaments, are often built around one central idea, survival. Who survives? Who adapts?

[00:15:12]Who's seen as necessary to the future?

[00:15:14]And that might sound neutral, but it isn't. Because survival in these narratives is rarely just about staying alive. It's about being considered valuable enough to keep alive. Most dystopian worlds quietly assume a default body, one that is physically fit, mentally stable, reproductively viable, independent. Guys, I can't lift things or bear children. I I don't think I'm making it noted. Don't write that down. And that default shapes everything. Who is scented? Who is protected? Who is even imagined to exist within this narrative? Disabled people don't just get excluded from these futures. We often just aren't imagined into film at all. Although, props to the quiet place for realizing that disabled people can have real benefits in survival dramas. Wait, I have a deaf parent. They're the noisiest person I know. Our neighbors across the road can hear them making breakfast in the morning.

[00:16:09]I didn't say it was a perfect movie.

[00:16:11]Disability scholar Allison Keer talks about this more in feminist queer She argues that the way we understand disability in the present shapes how we imagine disability in the future. And of course, those imagined futures affect political choices we make now. So here's the key idea. Many dominant visions of the future assume that disability will either be cured, prevented, or eliminated entirely. Yes. Right. So in other words, a better future is often imagined as one without disabled people in it. Like a parent, you'll have to say goodbye.

[00:16:45]That's not always said explicitly, but it's built into the logic of so many stories. Again, when a story is about saving humanity, we have to ask which version of humanity. Because when survival narratives prioritize those useful, productive, and reproductive bodies, they're creating a hierarchy where some lives are framed as essential and others as optional, burdened, expendable. This connects to a broader idea in disability theory, sometimes called compulsory able-bodiedness. It's like compulsory heterosexuality but with fewer awkward dates. Same amount of awkward eye contact though. The expectation to be normal. The assumption that the ideal body is an able one and that everyone should aspire to that standard. And in dystopian world, that assumption becomes even sharper because scarcity intensifies judgment. If resources are limited, it just makes sense. But I make really good chili. I can heat my own tin of beans. Where are you finding tins? What's striking about stories like the Testaments isn't just what we see, it's what we don't. Absence can itself be a form of storytelling.

[00:17:51]Disabled characters are often missing, unnamed, quietly written out of the future altogether. Introduced in season 5, The Handmaid's Tale is Rose Blaine, the new wife of key character Nick. She is a rare example of a character with a visible disability believed to be congenital hip dysplasia requiring a cane who is allowed to exist in highranking Gilead society. Her sudden presence reminds us of the absence up to that point of people with disabilities who according to Gilead law are handled through the lens of extreme state sanctioned abbleism. Individuals deemed imperfect are discarded by the regime, either killed outright or being sent to the colonies where they will briefly work and then die. Rose's survival is likely due to her high privilege as the daughter of a highranking commander, highlighting Gilead's hypocrisy in its application of perfection rules.

[00:18:37]However, Rose is old enough to have not been born in Gilead, which is another layer of protection. She was a potentially fertile girl who just had some trouble walking. They weren't going to discard a possible baby maker when they're so desperate for them. But what will happen to Rose's children if she has a baby who shares her condition?

[00:18:53]Will the baby also be allowed to live?

[00:18:56]Or will it become like the other disabled babies born there, a shredder?

[00:19:00]A what? The ones we don't keep, dear. I thought you were one of those all lives matter types. Of course, all good lives matter. Oh, no. Absolutely not. No, no.

[00:19:10]But disability theory doesn't just critique this. It offers an alternative.

[00:19:13]And yes, this is clearly a different day now that I'm filming. Hi, still ill.

[00:19:18]Allison Gayer pushes us to imagine what she calls futures. Futures where disability isn't erased, but recognized as a part of human diversity. Rather than the goal being to make disabled people as fiercely independent as we can be, these futures instead are built around interdependence, access, and care, not breaking your own back for independence at all costs. Which brings us back to the Testaments. Because if we're talking about protecting girls, we have to ask, are disabled girls included in that protection or are they quietly excluded from the future altogether?

[00:19:49]Because you can't protect someone if you don't imagine them being there in the first place. Protection versus control.

[00:19:55]So let's come back to that word protection. Protection sounds safe, comforting, necessary. But historically, it's also been used to justify control.

[00:20:03]Across different countries and time periods, laws introduced to protect women and girls have often ended up restricting their autonomy. Restrictions around reproductive rights are frequently framed as safeguarding women's health or morality, whilst limiting access to care and decision-making. The criminalizing of abortion care can have devastating impacts on women who are having a miscarriage that requires medical intervention, forcing doctors to wait until the last moment in her near death to act, which can then impact her future fertility anyway, if that's what they're so hot about. Similarly, policies around who can access certain female only public spaces like bathrooms or sports are often justified through the lens of protecting girls. But in practice, they can exclude and endanger trans people, including trans girls. Oh, and of course, any sis woman who might look like she just might not be the most feminine. So again, we see the same pattern. Protection, but only for some.

[00:21:00]Or dress codes at work, for example, in schools or even entire countries. Rules about how girls and women should dress are often framed as being for their own protection, to keep them safe, to prevent harm, to maintain respectability. Those rules also place responsibility on girls themselves, to not attract attention, to not be distracting, to not invite risk, and that shifts the focus away from harm and onto behavior. Even in digital spaces, we see this tension. Young people, especially girls, are often told they need to be protected online. They can't just post fun pictures with their friends and have fun. They need to self police. I'm not covered up and up in this picture. Oh, this one is the back of my little sister's shoulder in it. I don't want some per creeping on her. And while safety is important, it raises questions about autonomy, privacy, and who gets to make those decisions. But of course, every protection is not applied equally. Disabled girls are often underprotected and non-white girls not so much of a consideration. And for people who exist at those intersections, the message can be deeply confusing. You are vulnerable, but not the kind of vulnerable we prioritize. Feminist scholars have long discussed this dynamic, the idea that protection can function as a form of governance, a way of shaping behavior rather than simply ensuring safety. And when we bring this back to the testaments, we can see how this plays out. Girls are protected, but only within strict boundaries. They are safe as long as they comply, as long as they become what they are expected to be. It's less, we want you to be safe, and more we want you to be safe in the way we've decided is acceptable. Because protection in these contexts isn't just about preventing harm. It's about defining who you're allowed to be. The marketability of feminist dystopia and resistance becomes aesthetic. There's one more layer to this because the handmaid's tail isn't just a story anymore. It's an aesthetic. The red cloak has become instantly recognizable as a protest symbol, a visual shorthand, a cultural reference point, a cheap Halloween costume. And that visibility can be powerful. People have used that imagery in protests around reproductive rights, around bodily autonomy to make something visible that might otherwise be ignored. Visibility can be resistance. But there's also a tension here because when something becomes widely recognizable, it can also become marketable. Media scholar Sarah Banadiser writes about how political ideas, particularly feminist ones, are increasingly shaped by what she calls popular feminism. A version of feminism that is highly visible, easily sharable and often deeply tied to branding.

[00:23:33]Visibility is not the same as structural change. In other words, something can look political without necessarily challenging power. Oh, another political metgal look. So brave and dystopian aesthetics are particularly vulnerable to this. Cultural theorist Teodoro Adono argues that when culture is mass- prodduced, even critique can be absorbed into the system it's critiquing. So a story that was originally a warning can become something we consume. Style, imagery, mood. And once something becomes aesthetic, it can start to feel distant, almost abstract, even when it's about very real harm. Of course, social media accelerates this because platforms reward clear visuals, strong symbols, and quick emotional recognition. You don't have to say anything with that picture of a handmade. Just pop it up in your story, and everyone knows you're one of the good ones. Yes, sir. I am looking at you. Stop telling me you're a feminist and actually do something. What we lose is nuance. The complexity of the story, the specificity of who is affected, the uncomfortable questions it raises. A symbol will often be simplified. Marilyn Monroe without the trauma, Audrey Hepburn without fighting the Nazis, Chapel Ran without the fact she's a human being and not everything is her fault all of the time. And that simplification can reinforce the same patterns we've been talking about. Queer experiences often not part of the image.

[00:24:53]Disabled bodies rarely visible in the aesthetic. So even a story about oppression could end up centering a very narrow version of what the oppressed looks like. Scholar Angela McRoy talks about how contemporary culture often reframes political issues as individual choices. Feminism is taken into account only to be undone. So instead of asking structural questions, we're encouraged to engage at the level of aesthetic identity, personal expression. If identity is the problem, why do you keep mentioning queer people and disabled people? Personal expression and identity are important, but they're not the whole picture. This is not a person byperson issue. This is systemwide. When resistance becomes aesthetic, it becomes easier to wear than to act. And this matters for how we engage with the testaments. Because if we focus only on the imagery, the symbolism, the beautiful clothes, the feeling of resistance, we might miss the deeper question that the story itself is not just about what the story shows us, but what it leaves out. As Daisy says in the show, "Gilead was so beautiful sometimes I could forget where I was." Many online viewers are annoyed that the Testaments is so gorgeous. Unlike the Handmaid's Tale, we don't see much of the dirt, grime, and ugliness that Gilead is made up of. But the Testaments is from the viewpoint of girls who have been brought up cherished within the system, not women who were stripped of everything and then forced into it. Of course, the idea that beauty equals righteousness is a cornerstone of fascist ideology, as Nazi propagandist Lenny Rufferson's work exemplifies, or the rights weird obsession with beautiful blonde woman exists, must be one of us. That is sometimes true though tragically. In conclusion, so where does that leave us?

[00:26:33]There's a line in the Testaments that one girl says to another in an effort to make her feel better. Your worth has already been decided for you. As Glamour magazine points out, that's firstly not the most comforting thing. And then secondly, there's an unfortunate parallel with our current society there.

[00:26:47]Manosphere influencer Myron Gaines asserts in Louis Thu's latest Netflix documentary that a woman is already born with her value her genitals as if her ability to be funny or kind or loving is nothing. As someone raising two daughters, I understand the instinct to protect deeply. But I also know that protection can become limitation. And I don't want a world where my children are safe because they fit a narrow definition of who they're allowed to be.

[00:27:15]I want a world where more people are included in the idea of worth protecting, not fewer. Because the question isn't just how do we protect girls, it's how do we define who we believe deserves to be protected in the first place. Thank you so much for watching this video and I hope you take something from it. Let me know in the comments your own thoughts about that thin line of protection. And if you're looking for a way to cheer yourself up right now, I am after making this video, then I definitely recommend clicking the link in the description for Manicurist and using the promo code Jessica Nails for 15% off sitewide worldwide until the 7th of June on their range of incredible and sustainable nail polishes and nail care products, so you can represent who you are and share that with the world.

[00:28:00]Remember to subscribe if you haven't already, and I will see you in my next video. Bye-bye.