handmaiden

noun

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

1. Alternative form of handmaid.

   “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.”

   “About a quarter of Gen Z-ers report that they haven’t had sex in the last year. A.I. could be a handmaiden of this social dissolution, offering a digital simulacrum of friendships and relationships without opening people to the beauty and agony of real relationships, in which we learn to relate to other people who are truly other people, and whose desires are not simply extensions of our own.”

2. A cisgender woman who supports transgender rights.

   “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.”

   “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.”