DND paid $32K for 'intersectional feminist' report on space exploration
The report calls for feminist, anti-racist approaches to space exploration
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Set your phasers to “offended.”
Newly-unearthed documents reveal the Department of National Defence (DND) paid $32,250 for a report examining space exploration through an intersectional and feminist lens, concluding that existing approaches to space are rife with “patterns of entrenched gender, racial and geopolitical dominance,” exclusions fortified by “discussions in technospeak,” and encourages practices considered “racist,” “exploitative” and “environmentally destructive.”
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The report, entitled Hidden Harms: Human (In)security in Outer Space, was produced by Project Ploughshares — a Canadian “peace research institute” associated with the Canadian Council of Churches.
The report is based consultations and workshops conducted in July and was funded by DND’s Mobilizing Insights in Defence and Security (MINDS) program.
“Space systems represent an unevenly distributed continuum of human benefits and harms that are shaped by gender, race, socioeconomic status, geographic location and other differentiating qualities,” reads a takeaway from the report.
Self-professed science fiction and space nerd Kris Sims, Alberta Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation — which uncovered the report via an access-to-information request — questioned the report’s value.
“This is why people stargaze and write science fiction, to get away from this crap,” she said. “To have it all just boiled down to ‘-isms’ and calling everything sexist — it’s just sad.”
The report champions excluding “gendered,” “colonial” or “militarized” language in space — ostensibly rendering common science fiction plot devices such as space exploration and human settlements on other worlds — as unacceptably problematic.
The report also claims contemporary space programs “invisiblize” women via “manned” language, which the authors claim force women to “imagine themselves within masculine constructs.”
Sims finds that ridiculous, considering the important role women have played in human spaceflight.
“Some of our pioneering astronauts have been women. Our former Governor-General was a woman astronaut,” she said. “To see taxpayers’ money wasted on something this sad is annoying.”
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The report’s opposition to “colonial bias” paints unfavourable associations for science fiction franchises like Star Trek — which for generations referred to space as “The Final Frontier,” and whose lore is based heavily on settlement of star systems across the galaxy.
“These approaches normalize violence and exploitation by using colonial-biased terms like ‘exploration’ and ‘conquest’, referring to space as a frontier and terra nullius, and depicting outer space as a hostile and desolate environment that is unpeopled/inhuman and controlled so that it can provide an extractable resource,” notes the report, despite the vacuum of space indeed being a “hostile and desolate” environment unsuited to all known forms of terrestrial life.
This isn’t the first time Project Ploughshares have benefitted from DND funding.
The report’s grant application lists four other reports dating back to 2019 that received $155,875 in funding from DND’s MINDS program.
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