In The Handmaid's Tale, Women are the ones who are oppressed by the men, and thus, the men are able to take over them however they want. This applies in both Hook's Talking Back and Thao's Sins of Silence. In Talking Back, Hooks are born in to the world where women are "craving to speak, to have a voice" in order to have individuality or independence from men- in order to be identified as "belonging" of self rather than as possession of men. For women to speak is to make "soliloquy". However, it is not the medium to distinguish themselves as a belonging of self. It is nothing more than just talking to the plain air and is nothing more than just talking where no one listens. In Sins of Silence, the author communicates about women's internal torture because they cannot express what they really have in their mind. In the society she has grown up where patriarchy still dominates, women only live to serve men. They always have to be "good, obedient, and smile silently" as they swallow the bitterness that men give them. One painful example is when Thao smiles to elder men giving her kisses on cheek. From her perspective, it is more like a "wet, slow licks".
Unfortunately, though not as extreme as before, the gap between men and women still exists today. One instance is within the teenagers. There are many boys whistling to "chicks" who walk past by. However, girls do not- let me fix the phrase- girls cannot respond in a same way as the boys do. Another prime example is evident in workforces. There are so many rights reserved for women but barely any for men. Again, what does this suggest? It suggests women are still not free from men to the extent that they sometimes feel unsafe surrounded by men in the labour force. We still hear news about men sexually or physically harrassing women. We still live in a society where women is still > men, instead of women being = to men.
I like how you related the two articles to the discrimination towards women today, but you can relate this to Handmaids Tale as well. They way you described Sins of Silence, I see a lot of connections between the two. You stated that “women only serve men. They always have to be “good, obedient, and smile silently” as they swallow the bitterness that men give them.” This relates to the Handmaids Tale in the way that the women in the novel are made to only serve certain purposes, like Handmaids are only used to get pregnant. The women in the novel are also made to obey the men and people in higher positions, but all the women are treated as “lower” than the men.
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