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Notes -
The Islamic Republic of Iran, if I remember correctly. It was written in 1985 and Taliban didn't exist yet.
Neverthless, it's true that Atwood's book never makes the sex seem appealing at all, and there's only a couple of instances of "sex scenes", if you can call them that. I haven't seen the show, either, but all the publicity makes it seem rather more culture-warrish than the book which, if I remember correctly, only contains one line about abortion (offhand remark by Offred that she can't even remember why everyone cared about legal abortion so much since in the book's present-day society everyone wants, more than anything, to be fertile) and scarcely more than that about gays or lesbians. It's really more of a personalized "what would I do if enslaved by a tyrannical society" thing than about the exact details of the society itself.
Atwood seems to have leaned into the narrative about it being modern-day anti-GOP commentary in recent interviews, but then again, she has just received quite a bit more of publicity than she had before and that sort of a thing creates an easy need to cater to your new audiences.
You're right, my bad (memory).
I am not surprised that Atwood today is more willing to have it read as an allegory about the Republican Right, but at least when I read it in the 80s, it was more nuanced and less overtly contemporary culture war.
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