"You've heard one thing about him!"

"He hit you! You were pregnant five times and-- okay, so the way we would have solved this in Great Tang is probably frowned upon in Gilead, but-- Mrrm."

"I mean, a Handmaid is basically a concubine, minus some implementation details. It's what the term 'handmaid' is a reference to."

"The-- stability you get, being a concubine, matters."

"Right, because having another man's child ruins you for other men. But Gileadites like ex-Handmaids who had kids. Proven fertility. --God, my husband was pissed that he got damaged goods."

"It's not-- just that. You get to raise your own child. They don't get sent off and then you have to hope you'll be able to have another. ...as I said before, everything you say about your husband makes me like him less."

"A lot of the Cascadians seem fine with selling them, as long as they get to meet the kid afterward. Which is-- often a thing for Handmaids, you stick around in the household and help with the baby, and then you move out when you get married but you'll still visit."

"...I don't really approve selling babies, either, but I do... trust that the Cascadian government has thought about how people actually are, with their system."

"Well, lots of people will just have abortions if they're not paid, pregnancies are awful. Or they'll use contraception. It's a lot easier to go 'eh, condoms suck and the pill makes me break out, I'll have sex without them and if I have a kid I'll carry it to term and get eighty thousand dollars. Not a big deal.'"

He has any idea of the value of a dollar now! He can parse that statement.

"See, that system is strange to me, but it's not completely horrifying."

"The idea behind Handmaids is that-- it's what you're doing if you have kids anyway. You have them and then they're adopted by God. You give them over for someone else to be their Father, no matter what. So it's just... enacting the spiritual truth on Earth, to give up your baby to someone else."

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

No! No no no no!

"I-- very much would not want my children to be adopting by a God as-- like that as he seems?"

"Well, you know, God is the definition of Goodness. Which is why I don't believe in being good anymore."

Excuse him, he's going to need more time to deal with children being metaphorically nonconensually adopted by deities.

"I would too if I had to deal with Him regularly!"

"I don't think it would have done any good if we'd had a Handmaid anyway, my husband... did not especially believe I had a right to refuse sex."

"The bar is in the floor and yet he still digs under it. If you ever need someone to go to Gilead and hit him with something, let me know."

"I'm glad to know Great Tang has a more progressive attitude towards women's rights."

"I mean we have terrible husbands too, I have room in my heart to intensely dislike multiple people."

"I mean it's not so much a concept I had before I got here that-- I might be allowed to object to my husband asserting his marital right."

"I, uh-- there has to be some concessions to circumstances. And, you know, presumably liking your spouse?"

"Well, I liked him well enough when we got married, it's just... you can't leave."

"Which is all the more reason to treat you well. When you're tied together like that-- you have to keep being a good person."

"I mean, I was a bad wife, was the problem. Can't keep a clean house even if I have nothing else to do all day, tended to spend a lot of time in bed reading Tumblr, wasn't sweet to my husband when he got home, kept being a sexual pervert even though I was supposed to be cured, kept refusing sex. Cut myself. You know."

"You not doing well at your end of the relationship doesn't mean your husband got to not hold up his end."

"Well, he was trying to fix me so I'd be better. --And then I ran off to Cascadia and I can be as terrible a wife as I please, Lev and Asher don't care."