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Time: Trump's Orwellian Erasure of Women
Time - Trump’s Orwellian Erasure of Women
Anna Funder
Contributor
May 10, 2025 7:30 AM ET
Since President Donald Trump’s January 20 Executive Order against, what he calls, “illegal and immoral” DEI programs, the Trump Administration has been busy commanding an Orwellian erasure of women’s achievements from the public record. In January NASA was ordered to remove mentions of "anything specifically targeting women (women in leadership, etc)" from its website. The Pentagon has deleted online many mentions of female military members who made history. Even a dead woman is still a threat: the Arlington Cemetery website has erased pages on female veterans.
This feels Orwellian, because it reminds us of Orwell’s novel 1984, in which Winston Smith’s job at the Ministry of Truth is to send unwanted truths down the “memory hole” to be obliterated. Winston lives in a surveillance tyranny which falsifies history, including by erasing the names of people who have been “vaporised, and were therefore considered never to have existed.”
But it also feels Orwellian in a more profound way if we take the word to refer to how Orwell lived his life, rather than only to his novel. Orwell had a brilliant wife who was erased from history, and he started it.
Never heard of her? That’s because Eileen O’Shaughnessy’s name, along with her enormous contribution to Orwell’s life (she saved it) and work (she helped make it) have gone down the patriarchal memory hole. When the Trump Administration orders the erasure of women it is doing overtly something that is usually, in patriarchy, done underhandedly.
In Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life, I explore just how a woman so crucial to a man’s life and work can be erased from the story while she is alive, and then, after she dies, from history.
/snip
Anna Funder
Contributor
May 10, 2025 7:30 AM ET
Since President Donald Trump’s January 20 Executive Order against, what he calls, “illegal and immoral” DEI programs, the Trump Administration has been busy commanding an Orwellian erasure of women’s achievements from the public record. In January NASA was ordered to remove mentions of "anything specifically targeting women (women in leadership, etc)" from its website. The Pentagon has deleted online many mentions of female military members who made history. Even a dead woman is still a threat: the Arlington Cemetery website has erased pages on female veterans.
This feels Orwellian, because it reminds us of Orwell’s novel 1984, in which Winston Smith’s job at the Ministry of Truth is to send unwanted truths down the “memory hole” to be obliterated. Winston lives in a surveillance tyranny which falsifies history, including by erasing the names of people who have been “vaporised, and were therefore considered never to have existed.”
But it also feels Orwellian in a more profound way if we take the word to refer to how Orwell lived his life, rather than only to his novel. Orwell had a brilliant wife who was erased from history, and he started it.
Never heard of her? That’s because Eileen O’Shaughnessy’s name, along with her enormous contribution to Orwell’s life (she saved it) and work (she helped make it) have gone down the patriarchal memory hole. When the Trump Administration orders the erasure of women it is doing overtly something that is usually, in patriarchy, done underhandedly.
In Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life, I explore just how a woman so crucial to a man’s life and work can be erased from the story while she is alive, and then, after she dies, from history.
/snip
5 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
Response to Dennis Donovan (Original post)
