When Fiction Stops Feeling Fictional: Watching The Handmaid’s Tale in 2025

Preface:
At GOPocalypse Now, we usually bring the fire with sarcasm, satire, and a healthy dose of WTF. But some stories don’t need exaggeration—they’re already too real. This post is one of those moments.

When fiction mirrors our lived trauma, when rights are stripped and lives are targeted in the name of "faith" or "freedom," we trade the punchlines for truth.

This isn’t parody. This is personal.

Read on, rage with us—and rise up.
This June 14th, join us in celebrating No Kings Day. We don’t bow to bullies, preachers, or wannabe dictators.
👉 www.nokings.org

I don’t follow organized religion. I don’t believe in it. In fact, I hate it.

My recovery began in 1977, when my father died and my mother—drowning in grief—lost her faith and stopped dragging me to church. But the damage had already been done. I grew up soaked in Catholic guilt, taught that obedience was godliness, that suffering was sacred, and that being a gay boy meant being fundamentally wrong.

The Handmaid’s Tales doesn’t feel like dystopian fiction to me. It feels like the world I was raised in—just stripped of the polite disguises.

What terrifies me most isn’t the story—it’s how close it sits to reality. It’s the way religion is used like a weapon. Not to uplift. Not to comfort. But to dominate. To punish. To erase.

Look around: reproductive rights gutted. Trans people—especially trans kids—targeted and dehumanized. Books banned. Queer existence debated like it’s up for negotiation. And through it all, the same old scripture gets dragged out and waved like a sword, as if cruelty becomes holy when you slap a Bible verse on it.

They say it’s about “values.” But it’s not. It’s about control. It’s always been about control.

I don’t watch The Handmaid’s Tale for entertainment. I watch it because it keeps me alert. Because I know exactly how far people will go when they believe God is on their side and you don’t deserve to be here.

I’m not afraid anymore. I’m furious.

And I will rise up against this.

I will fight for the trans community, for women, for every queer person who’s been told they are unworthy, unholy, or unnatural. I will not stay quiet to make the pious comfortable.

Organized religion tried to break me. It failed.

Now I fight back.

And on June 14th, I celebrate No Kings Day. Because we don’t bow to bullies, preachers, or wannabe dictators.