Feminist language is being twisted into a weapon against feminism itself.

This post was originally published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, with the headline “‘War Is Peace. Freedom Is Slavery. Ignorance Is Strength.’ — 1984 in 2025.”

As someone who has taught and fought for women’s rights for close to four decades, I find it intensely frustrating how the Trump administration is weaponizing feminist rhetoric and law to attack women’s rights. Claiming to defend gender equality, they are eliminating hard-fought gains for women and twisting laws meant to protect women’s rights into tools to destroy them. We are plunging into a world eerily similar to George Orwell’s novel 1984.

This gaslighting strategy has been used for years by the antiabortion movement, which claims that abortion restrictions protect women’s health, when in fact they harm women’s health. Antiabortion crisis pregnancy centers call themselves “Choices” or “All Options” as they work to eliminate both women’s choices and options. These centers claim to care about women but use disinformation and scare tactics to coerce them into carrying unwanted pregnancies to term.

Antiabortion advocates have coopted the language of anti-racism to attack Black women for having abortions. These largely white activists have held “freedom rides” across the South and coopted the Black Lives Matter movement by proclaiming “Baby Lives Matter.” Their feigned concern for Black children is belied by their attempts to cut social programs that support these children once they are born.

Extending their manipulation beyond language and into history, the antiabortion movement coopts feminist and anti-racist heroes to attack the rights of women and Black people. One of the leading antiabortion organizations is called Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. Ironically, abortion opponents introduced legislation in Congress to restrict abortion, titled the Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act.

Using a different tactic, they push to eliminate programs that help mothers by arguing that these programs are discriminatory because they help some but not all women. The Trump administration is considering doing away with federal tax credits for daycare—claiming that it’s “discriminatory” towards “stay-at-home parents.” Don’t be fooled by their gender-neutral language—they are talking about mothers.

In higher education, the Trump administration justifies its attacks on gender and ethnic studies by arguing that these fields are discriminatory because they study discrimination. Despite his Nazi affiliations, Trump uses claims of anti-Semitism to destroy higher education. Trump deletes history from government websites and bans words, such as women, gender and sexuality. Meanwhile, they are eliminating Title IX protections against sexual harassment and assault in schools—all while insisting they are the ones who are fighting discrimination.

Conservatives then invoke women’s rights to attack other historically marginalized communities. Last summer, the conservative Independent Women’s Forum operated a cross-country bus campaign called, “Save Our Sports: Take Back Title IX.” IWF has never done anything to promote women’s sports or enforce Title IX, but they urged Trump to weaponize the law to block a handful of trans women across the country from participating in women’s sports. Schools have been violating Title IX’s prohibition of sex discrimination in education for years, yet never has the federal government withdrawn federal funding from a school until now—not for discriminating against women, but for allowing trans women to participate in women’s sports. Trump doesn’t care that the lost funding is likely to hurt women’s sports because, of course, it was never about supporting female athletes.

Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s policy agenda that Trump has closely followed, is full of this kind of hypocrisy. They claim to support freedom, equality and the “inalienable right of self-direction,” yet recommend policies that roll back women’s right to control their bodies by banning abortion, restricting contraception and eliminating funding for domestic violence shelters and rape crisis centers.

For generations, feminist philosophers have analyzed how patriarchy inverts the truth to serve its interests. Mary Daly, in her book Beyond God the Father, called this phenomenon “reversal,” illustrated by the patriarchal myth of Adam giving birth to Eve. Daly explained: “It’s ridiculous. Who could believe that? It’s contrary to all biology. But with that myth in mind, people can justify somehow the idea that God is male. And therefore that male is God.”

George Orwell called it “Doublethink” in 1984’s totalitarian society where, “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” In the novel, The Ministry of Truth made up the lies, and the Ministry of Love tortured people. In an essay on political language, Orwell argued that tyrants use propaganda “to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

Republicans today are using the 1984 reversal playbook, flooding people with lies to confuse them and corrupting our thought with their language. Many have fallen for Trump’s lies—or don’t care about the truth. They hope to acclimatize us, like a frog in warming water, to the atrocities of Trump’s authoritarian regime. If we continue down our current trajectory, I fear we are destined to become the controlled and manipulated society of Orwell’s 1984.

But Orwell had advice: “To think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration.”

To think clearly, we must challenge their lies and relentlessly, loudly and clearly speak the truth. And we must invest in science, higher education, open debate and critical thinking without fear of penalty.