Linkage

Racism is foundational to reproductive control, and the United States eugenics movement shared and inspired much of the Nazi philosophy of “racial hygiene” that sought to maintain the dominance and “purity” of the white race. Today’s conservative reproductive agenda is little more than racial hygiene’s modern iteration.

Transgender people pose a grave threat to this agenda, because they resist the idea that women are defined by an innate female essence rooted in reproductive biology, and that being mothers is, therefore, their nature and destiny. If someone born with ovaries and a uterus can escape the call of motherhood and if someone born without can be a woman, the white supremacist message falls apart. If gender is “just a feeling,” as some conservatives put it, then how can we say that women’s purpose is to bear and raise children? If people can “mess with” their reproductive organs, how can reproduction be the pinnacle of human life? Gender-affirming care poses a challenge to the reproductive imperative. It must be suppressed to sustain white supremacy, or, in the words of Conservative Political Action Conference speaker Michael Knowles: “For the good of society … transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely.”

By rigidly policing gender norms and sexuality, anti-trans legislation reinforces the message that the proper and natural role of women is to bear children within a nuclear, heterosexual marriage. That is why the same bills that would ban gender-affirming care expressly allow nonconsensual surgeries on intersex newborns, because those interventions reinforce rather than undermine gender essentialism.

To white conservatives, womanhood is rooted in the reproductive body, and its achievement is motherhood. That message, in turn, serves to encourage reproduction with the aim of maintaining white demographic dominance. In other words, transphobia is a by-product of misogyny, which is a corollary of white supremacy. Anti-trans laws trace their roots back to racism.

Trams FTW!!!

Today the world faces a severe austerity pandemic: the high levels of expenditures needed to cope with COVID-19, the resulting socioeconomic crisis and other shocks due to structural imbalances combined with reduced tax rates have left governments with growing fiscal deficits and indebtedness. Starting in 2021, this initiated a global drive toward fiscal consolidation whereby governments began adopting austerity approaches exactly when the needs of their people and economies are greatest.

[…]

A long list of austerity measures is being considered or already implemented by governments worldwide. This includes eleven types of austerity policies that have negative social impacts on their populations, especially harming women: (1) targeting and rationalizing social protection (in 120 countries); (2) cutting or capping the public sector wage bill (in 91 countries); (3) eliminating subsidies (in 80 countries); (4) privatizing public services/reform of State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) (in 79 countries); (5) pension reforms (in 74 countries); (6) labor flexibilization reforms (in 60 countries); (7) reducing social security contributions (or “tax wedge,” in 47 countries); and (8) cutting health expenditures (in 16 countries). In parallel, three prevalent measures to raise revenues in the short-term that also have detrimental social impacts include: (9) increasing consumption taxes, such as sales and value-added taxes (VAT) (in 86 countries); (10) strengthening public-private partnerships (PPPs) (in 55 countries); and (11) increasing fees/tariffs for public services (in 28 countries).

Rather than investing in a robust post-pandemic recovery to bring prosperity to all citizens, governments are considering austerity measures that will harm populations. These adjustment measures are not new: the same policies have been advised over the years by the international financial institutions (IFIs). Austerity is an outdated policy that has become the “new normal,” an IFI strategy to minimize the public sector and the welfare state –to support the private sector. Countries constrained by debt and deficits are told to adopt fiscal consolidation or austerity measures rather than identifying new sources of fiscal space. Once budgets are contracting, governments must look at policies that minimize the public sector and expand PPPs and the private delivery of services, often promoted and/or assisted by multilateral development banks. These policies principally benefit corporations and the wealthy –they are “pro-rich policies” that exacerbate inequalities. To compensate for the negative social impacts, particularly on women, the IFIs often advise a small safety net targeted to only the poorest populations, which excludes the vast majority of people, punishing the low and middle classes. Pro-corporate policies accompanied by a small safety net targeted to the poorest do not serve the mainstream population; they are detrimental to the majority of citizens, especially women. The worldwide propensity toward fiscal consolidation is expected to aggravate social hardship at a time of high development needs, soaring inequalities and social discontent.

There’s no question that we are at the start of a debt crisis that’s certain to worsen dramatically in the coming years. Debt service obligations to multilateral, bilateral and private creditors directly reduce available funding for already under-resourced shock absorbers, social protections (including those that support women’s workforce participation and caring labor), public investment and investments in physical and social infrastructures that support growth and gender equality. Moreover, as in previous financial and debt crises, support from the Bretton Woods institutions (BWIs) is conditioned on austerity programs that entail, among other things, fiscal consolidation, public expenditure reductions, increased consumption and value-added taxes, user fees (that can restrict educational access for girls), and measures that contract public sector employment.

Constraints on fiscal space are already being felt anew across the Global South. Deeper constraints surely lie ahead. Indeed, there’s ample evidence that the austerity agenda has arrived, and it appears likely to be more severe than that associated with the crisis of the 1980s. Constraints on fiscal space and economic crises are always borne disproportionately by women, as per decades of research by feminist economists.

A debt crisis of epic proportions in the Global South is unfolding. The debt crisis—on top of the continued economic and social fallout of the Covid-19 crisis, the climate crisis, democratic deficits in several national contexts, and the breakdown of cooperation and traditional alliances in the global community—dim the prospects of mobilizing vast quantities of the medium- and long-term financial resources necessary to reverse backsliding and make progress on the full range of the UN SDGs by the looming 2030 target. SDG 5 provides the impetus for this paper.

As with previous debt crises and the pandemic, the burdens of today’s debt crises are borne disproportionately by women and other vulnerable groups and nations. It’s therefore crucial that we explore opportunities for expanding and creating the fiscal space that national policymakers can use to support SDG 5.  I consider strategies that focus on a subset of external financial flows (namely, external debt, concessional finance, and special drawing rights). Some of the strategies I discuss are “gender-indifferent,” meaning that they are neither informed by concerns about gender nor do they directly target gendered inequalities. That said, gender-indifferent external finance strategies directly increase fiscal space and can indirectly support gender equality, if national policymakers have the political commitment and tools to use the space created toward this end. I also discuss gender-informed external finance strategies that can, to various degrees, directly support gender equality. And because austerity policies disproportionately affect women and girls, any strategies that ease external financing burdens and constraints necessarily support gender equality. It’s my intention that those advocating for women the world over will find a set of attractive and viable strategies for creating, expanding, and engendering fiscal space through strategies aimed at external finance at a time of overlapping crises. It’s my hope that this paper will be of use to those advocating for green transitions and for a just, inclusive global economy.

I don't know how I was led to this article, but oh my giddy aunt, having been accused of perfectionism from time to time, and having oodles of executive dysfunction, I have Opinions about it.

Parents are flabbergasted when I suggest that perhaps their child lives within a messy and unscheduled life because they are putting off the responsibility to get the work done perfectly. Most people assume that a perfectionist is someone with a strictly organized environment and routine, the highest grades, and many accolades. Nothing below perfect is accepted by them and they strive daily for that sense of accomplishment. Yet, what many people don’t recognize is the behind-the-scenes agony that transpires inside a child’s (or adult’s) head when they strive for perfection. The amount of planning, rough drafts, materials, and time it takes to reach perfection can weigh heavily on anyone who rigidly believes that this is the only recipe for success. It’s no wonder why so many projects seem like gigantic monsters that should be avoided until a student has no choice but to face the fear and get it done or fail the class.

The Department of Homeland Security has eliminated policies preventing the investigation of individuals or groups solely based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.

The DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis quietly updated its policy manual earlier this month, as first reported by Bloomberg, removing LGBTQ+ identities from the General Requirements section that prohibit surveillance based solely on immutable characteristics.

The manual now states: “OSIC Personnel are prohibited from engaging in intelligence activities based solely on an individual’s or group’s race, ethnicity, sex, religion, country of birth, nationality, or disability. The use of these characteristics is permitted only in combination with other information, and only where (1) intended and reasonably believed to support one or more of I&A’s national or departmental missions and (2) narrowly focused in support of that mission (or those missions).”

The manual previously stated, via the internet archive: “OSIC Personnel are prohibited from engaging in intelligence activities based solely on an individual’s or group’s race, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, country of birth, nationality, or disability. The use of these characteristics is permitted only in combination with other information, and only where (1) intended and reasonably believed to support one or more of I&A’s national or departmental missions and (2) narrowly focused in support of that mission (or those missions).”

More Americans now say they favor or strongly favor laws and policies that:

• Ban health care professionals from providing care related to gender transitions for minors (up 10 percentage points)
• Require trans athletes to compete on teams that match their sex at birth (up 8 points)
• Require trans people to use public bathrooms that match their sex at birth (up 8 points)
• Make it illegal for public school districts to teach about gender identity in elementary schools (up 6 points)

At the same time, fewer Americans now express support for laws and policies that:

• Protect trans people from discrimination (down 8 points since 2022)
• Require health insurance companies to cover medical care for gender transitions (down 5 points)
   

The foundation, originally known as the “Pioneer Fund”, was relaunched and rebranded in 2022 as the “Human Diversity Foundation” (HDF) by Danish eugenicist Emil Kirkegaard.

[…]

The aim has been to normalise the Pioneer Fund’s Nazi-aligned scientific racism in the mainstream through the notion of open debate and ‘free’ inquiry. Scientific racism has been rebranded as the story of ‘human biodiversity’.

The key funder supporting this initiative was revealed to be American technology entrepreneur Andrew Conru, who donated $1.3 million to the HDF. Around the same time, Conru was also funding the most influential conservative voices attacking DEI and ‘critical race theory’ – Christopher Rufo, Peter Boghossian, and Richard Hanania.

HDF’s magazine, Aporia, was founded by British far-right activist Matthew Frost. Conru’s donation provided him with a 15% stake in the group. It has defended Richard Lynn’s pseudoscientific racism, published an interview with Nazi sympathiser Jared Taylor, and in 2024 claimed that racial stereotypes are “reasonably accurate”.

Hope Not Hate’s undercover reporting recorded far-right activists associated with the HDF calling for “remigration” – the ‘mass removal of ethnic minorities’.

Thomas is the single best commentator on the theology that drives these people.

Where does this end? Who is at risk? Anyone who stands in the way of the MAGA vision of purging the nation. “He was not mistakenly sent to El Salvador,” Stephen Miller lied about Kilmar Abrego Garcia last week: “This was the right person sent to the right place.” Who cares what the law says: To the MAGA ideologues, Garcia is outside the boundaries of “real America,” he does not – and must never – belong to the Volk, the “real” people. This is a core tenet of the vision that animates the Trumpist Right. “I’m still gonna call them an illegal alien,” JD Vance proclaimed last September, when he was trying to incite a pogrom against the Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio based on vile lies and conspiracy theories he was instrumental in propagating. He knew the people he was targeting were in the United States legally. Yet for blood-and-soil nationalists like Miller and Vance, there is a “Higher Truth” that overrides all else: The “homeland” is under siege, overrun with enemies who “poison the blood.” The allegiance to the “real American” homeland overrides all else, and those who undermine it must not be tolerated. Legal status is irrelevant, citizenship is always conditional.

The MAGA rage won’t be confined to migrants either. A regime that so aggressively curtails and ignores fundamental rights for one group today will not hesitate to violate and suspend them for others tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow. It’s never far from “illegal aliens” and “alien enemies” to “the enemy within.” In the MAGA imagination, America is simultaneously threatened by outsiders and by insidiously subversive forces on the inside. The “enemy within” – those Un-American forces of radical leftism and “globalist” elites – are as acutely dangerous as the invaders from without. In order to restore this declining nation to former glory, to Make America Great Again, it has as to be “purified” – the enemies have to be subjugated and purged. That is the core promise of Trumpism as a political project.

This is how the attempts to detain, deport, and disappear foreign nationals are directly connected to both the escalating attacks on universities as well as the assault on state institutions and the civil service. To the Trumpist Right, all of these institutions have been taken over by the “globalist” enemy within, they function as power centers for the “woke” elites, they fund and propagate their campaign to subvert and weaken the nation.