My primary sources, as they dealt with gender and sexuality, kept disappearing from US government websites - far from the signal harm of the Trump administration, but an unnerving microcosm of how quickly the administration's others can be made to disappear

The analysis is fairly straightforward, but the piece was difficult to write; I began it before Trump's 2024 re-election, such that the long tail of 9/11 and the long war/s, as unpacked by Evangelista, is both frighteningly obvious and yet to be fully understood.

Not only has this continuted idealisation of the citizen as a white, masculine, straight, cis soldier served to undermine the meaningful democratic control of the armed forces, it also set the stage for the US's current illiberal turn, exemplified by the purging of "woke" from the DoD + public life

It draws upon and expands my previous work on the gendered obligations and politics of "supporting the troops", looking at miltiary service, support for the armed forces, and dissent

My piece, "Gender, Sexuality, and the Making of American Citizenship Post-9/11" examines how seeming-moves towards liberal inclusion of women and LGBTQI+ people in the US armed forces were accompanied by a reification of the ideal citizen as not only a soldier, but as white, masculine, straight

Report is out now! Detailed gender analysis of the norms AND practical, specific recommendations for gender-responsive implementation for each norm

unidir.org/wp-content/u...