Via Estelle’s conversation with her coworkers about rape and rape fantasies, the short story explores how culture can dictate women’s ability to interact with one another. In the scene where Estelle and her coworkers Chrissy, Darlene, Sondra, and Greta talk about their rape fantasies, their dialogue is driven by the media’s representation of the topic. The women are physically sharing space; they’re eating lunch and playing cards together on their break from work. The scene is innately intimate and communal. However, the women’s conversation is violent, repellant, and divisive. Instead of sharing their fears of sexual violence or their frustrations with the media’s representations of it, the women express embarrassment over their own alleged fantasies. Therefore, Atwood suggests, the media has taught them what they are allowed to talk about and how they are allowed to discuss it. Because the magazine articles and television reports they’ve encountered paint rape as a mere fantasy of domination, the women experience shame, discomfort, disgust, or even giddy delight. This dynamic highlights how patriarchal media actively erodes solidarity among women by framing their fears as titillating rather than valid.

Estelle’s narrative attention to her coworkers’ body language throughout the lunchroom scene enacts how society has taught women to regard each other and to think about sex. For example, when Chrissy first broaches the topic, Sondra’s “head went round like it was on ball bearings” (164). Darlene acts disgusted, insisting she doesn’t want to talk about this while “eating an egg sandwich” (164). The other women chomp nervously on their food with thoughtful expressions, scold each other for going out at night alone, turn their backs to the table to dismiss themselves from the conversation, or interrupt and correct each other. These behaviors convey notions of shock, horror, anxiety, embarrassment, and/or competition. The women feel as if they are discussing something illicit, although they have done nothing wrong. They also behave as if the others’ stories (or fantasies) are upsetting, crude, invalid, or worthy of scorn. Their physical and speech mannerisms convey their fear of discussing issues of sexual violence. The story’s subtext implies that their discomfort is the result of their cultural context; they’ve been taught that sex, desire, rape, and violence are shameful. They thus can’t have a productive discourse about this social issue without minimizing each other or self-flagellating. Atwood uses this discomfort to demonstrate how silence around rape isolates women rather than protecting them, preventing them from supporting one another or speaking truthfully about harm.

The way that Estelle regards and interacts with her coworkers also conveys how her relationships with other women have been impacted by the media. For example, when Darlene says that women should avoid going out after dark and looks at Estelle, or insists she doesn’t have rape fantasies, Estelle privately recalls what she’s read about Darlene in her personnel file. Specifically, she remembers that Darlene is 41 and divorced. This data implies that Estelle sees Darlene as old, pitiful, and lacking in sexual imagination. Later, she dismisses all of her coworkers’ rape fantasies, insisting that they aren’t in fact about rape at all. She is thus trying to assert herself over her peers instead of relating to them about a social issue that’s relevant to the group. The story thus suggests that the culture actively attacks women’s relationships, precluding women from connecting and conversing in healthy and productive ways. This fractured dynamic reinforces how patriarchal systems distort even intimate spaces, turning potential allies into critics and mutual vulnerability into rivalry.