Hostname: page-component-77c78cf97d-7rbh8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-04-24T10:59:04.675Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

‘This is not who we are’: Gendered bordering practices, ontological insecurity, and lines of continuity under the Trump presidency

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 November 2021

Christine Agius*
Affiliation:
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, School of Social Sciences, Media, Film and Education, Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, Melbourne, Australia
*
*Corresponding author. Email: cagius@swin.edu.au

Abstract

The Trump presidency ushered in a heightened sense of ontological insecurity in the US, based on a national self-narrative that portrayed an emasculated America. Trump promised to return the US to primacy by pursuing policies and practices that focused on border protection, militarisation, and the vilification of external others, while amplifying racial tensions within the country. From caging immigrant children at the border, to an enabling of white supremacy and the Capitol riots, Trump's presidency was broadly seen as aberration in the self-narrative of America as a tolerant, democratic nation. In this article, I am interested in how gendered bordering practices inform ontological (in)security in Trump's narrative of the nation, domestic and external policy, and discourses. While Trump's electoral loss to Biden in 2020 has been described as a ‘return to normal’, this article instead considers how Trump's presidency exhibited lines of continuity when examined through a gender lens. Understanding how masculinism informs ideas of ontological security reveals how notions of gendered bordering, hierarchy, and ordering have been persistent threads in US politics, rather than simply an anomaly under Trump. This suggests greater potential to read ontological security in more complex terms through gendered bordering practices.

Information

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the British International Studies Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable