Sarah Lane, Contributor

LANCASTER, PENNSYLVANIA – No longer able to ignore such misguided comparisons, Amish elder Ezekiel Renfrew released a public statement on Tuesday refuting the misconception that the Amish are “The Handmaid’s Tale” characters but in real life.

“Though we don plain dress and eschew trappings of modern life like electricity and engine-powered vehicles, our lifestyle is not an uncanny manifestation of Margaret Atwood’s dystopic fantasy,” said Renfrew, stressing that the Amish do not maul rapists to death or assign fertile women to male authorities for forced breeding.

“Our one-room schoolhouses feature no sadistic matriarchs who indoctrinate women into accepting their subjugation, and punishments come in the form of farm labor rather than state-sanctioned psychological terror.”  Renfrew suggested that the public redirect their scrutiny towards Mormons, whose insistence on regulating women’s reproductive capacities always seemed weird to him.