handmaiden

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 poet Margaret Atwood's novel The Handmaid's Tale (1985), in which "handmaids" are women who serve the male commanders in a patriarchal dystopia.

• Audio (US):

  (file)

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, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2023-11-13:

     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.

3. (gender-critical slang, derogatory) A feminist 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:

     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.

   • 2022 February 4, Marie Le Conte, “Feminism has been reduced to the transgender debate”, in The New Statesman:

     I have been called a handmaiden, a “pick me” girl, and been accused of vying for male attention.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:handmaiden.