We are now past the stage of “it’s a lie that USAID is used to promote far-left ideology overseas” to “yes, it’s true, but this is a small percentage of the US budget.”
As if doing this cheaply made it OK. USAID used people’s poverty and desperation to make them say, teach, publish and do things they didn’t believe. This is the equivalent of me telling a person living in a Guatemalan slum, “OK, I’ll feed you but you have to drop on your knees and proclaim that I’m your lord and master.” The fact that I can do this for the low price of 15 bucks does not make my actions moral and acceptable.
I vividly remember how this was done to us in the newly independent Ukraine back in 1991. People were lost and confused because everything had changed so fast on them. And these absolute bastards used us to throw us coins and have us dance in feather skirts for them. Obviously, I mean this metaphorically. No actual feather skirts were involved.
The absolute hubris of thinking that you are entitled to impose your ideology on people overseas because having money makes you superior. And the funniest thing is that it’s precisely the people who prattle endlessly how they are against imperialism who do this.
Clarissa's Blog 
Yes, the curtain is being drawn back. I did not see all that USAID was doing in Bulgaria while I was there as a Peace Corps Volunteer 1996-1998 but saw enough to know that they worked hand in hand with the CIA.
They attempted to pressure the Volunteers to do what USAID wanted versus the mission of the Peace Corps. For the most part I ignored said pressure but could see their thumb on the scale in the 1997 elections.
A good posting!
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An update: I went to the USAID website to get some information about USAID in Bulgaria and found this:
Skip to main content
U.S. Agency for International Development
U.S. Agency for International Development
The resource you are trying to access is temporarily unavailable. We apologize for any inconvenience. Please check back soon…
Tried some of the other USAID web pages and got the same message.
Trump has shut them DOWN!
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Excellent. I hope it’s gone for good.
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It would only make sense if it were for good.
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“USAID used people’s poverty and desperation to make them say, teach, publish and do things they didn’t believe”
When was the change? I’ve only been very marginally involved in two USAID things (one in Poland, one in the US) that seemed pretty benign, but that was a long time ago…. over the years I’ve heard a thing or two about projects/people trying to bring weird US-centric ideas to Poland (like a feminist lecturer getting a very frosty reception from Polish women who thought nothing she said was relevant or helpful) but not much in specifics….
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Feminist conferences were definitely part of it. This was the time before the trans revolution, and it was fashionable among Western feminists to abjure sex with men and proclaim themselves lesbians. You should have seen those poor post-Soviet women, trying to provide for husband, kids, a pregnant sister, and an ailing mom by faking newfound lesbianism without even fully understanding what it involved.
So gender ideology was definitely a big part. Medicalization was another one. Invented syndromes that nobody had ever heard about, efforts to promote dependency on meds, especially among children.
It would get comical when a Western feminist would give a talk, exhorting post-Soviet women to stop being housewives and self-actualize by getting jobs. And these poor women, who never in their lives saw a woman without a job, clearly thinking, “Wait, there are places where women don’t have to have jobs? Where are those places and how can I get there fast?”
Or lectures on how men sexually objectify women. These ones would be especially irritating given that Soviet sexuality at that time went in the exact opposite direction.
It was all tone-deaf, ignorant, and hubristic.
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“exhorting post-Soviet women to stop being housewives and self-actualize by getting jobs”
Head, meet desk. Desk, meet head.
I think that kind of crap was _far_ more common in former Soviet spaces. The two projects I brushed up against were a program that sponsored short term training trips to the US for Polish doctors and a sponsored course in the US for women who ran small businesses from a Latin American country (taught in Spanish, a friend who’d lived in that country was hired to help them with survival English and be a culture guide).
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American feminism and, on the other side, traditionalism is definitely tied up with this idea of modern = women work, traditional = women stay at home to take care of family. Growing up, it was super-rare to meet a married woman who would actually not work. The first time I became aware of that mothers who do not work exist, was when one of my classmates in College told me his mother does not work. I was surprised. Even my grandmother, who was born in 1907, worked since the age of 7 (two years of schooling was considered to be enough for a girl by her parents and babysitting was her first job), and continued to work throughout her marriage (cleaning, doing laundry), and all her daughters, born in 1930ies-1940ies worked as well. Her big thing was to always to tell us to study, so we do not have to do such low-level jobs as she had to do. There was never any question about not working, and I am quite sure she was no feminist. Only wives of the rich could afford not to work, even before the feminism was in vogue.
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\ Growing up, it was super-rare to meet a married woman who would actually not work.
random reader, did you live in USA? Or some other country?
In Ukraine women did work, but I thought American housewives did exist in significant numbers.
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“I thought American housewives did exist in significant numbers”
In the US it’s related to time (especially decade) region and social class all of which are relevant).
Very quick and over-simplified version. Pre-WWII the ideal for anyone who could afford it was that the husband worked and the wife ‘managed the household’ which depending on how much money they had meant doing it herself or managing paid help.
In WWII there was a drive for women to work so that men could go to war. Just after WWII the ideal was for women to give up their jobs for returning soldiers and the 1950s through mid 1960s were the peak time when the man/outside and woman/at home model was held up as a model. Again lots of working/lower class women had to to work regardless of preference and some middle/upper class women had various types of employment (though not necessarily financially needed).
The 50s early 60s was also the time of the ‘club woman’ who didn’t work but also didn’t stay home and was involved in a number of social and/or church/charitable organizations for which they were paid in respect and not money….
Then the women’s movement happened (and succeeded because capital wanted women’s labor). But that’s another post…..
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I did not grow up in the US, although at this point I lived here longer than in my country of origin. Yes, US had very different social conditions and it is true that American housewives are quite common, even today.
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Class, decade, and religion all play a role.
My grandmother, great-grandmothers, and great-great-grandmothers (as far back as we have stories of daily life recorded) were all what people might call housewives in that they did not have a job outside of their household and property. They were also largely farm wives who worked anywhere from 12 to 18 hour days feeding and caring for the people for whom they were responsible and contributing to the household through managing some of the farm chores, especially poultry, gardening, food preservation, etc. This model continues in that a woman working outside of the formal employment economy by managing the childcare and household economy supports the economic stability of the family through her labor rather than her income. Most housewives after the 1970s, I suspect, think of their work on these terms.
The modern housewife has a physically easier job in the sense that most of the heavy labor is now done by machines. This labor has been replaced by expectations around childcare and, often, financial management. There are very few married women who do not have some kind of job prior to having children and those who have the average number tend to find part or full time jobs with flexibility once the kids are in school in order to find occupation or extra money. Those of us spending longer length of time with pre-school aged children or who are more involved in their children’s education through homeschooling or volunteering tend to stay out of the workforce longer but most women find some kind of work in their empty nesting years until retirement age. The exceptions are rare enough that they are notable.
I can’t imagine dealing with the boredom of the “club wives” mentioned above but I’m also a long way away from the option of that kind of lifestyle.
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It’s definitely a class thing. I have holy terror of the yoga-pant moms who hang out at Starbucks while two nannies pick up the kids from school and shuttle them to different extracurriculars. They are a curious class because they reject everything about the traditional womanhood in that they do no childminding or housework and they are always too busy to dress up and do their hair. But they also reject the role of having careers and making money.
Obviously, these are the wives of wealthy men because such a woman needs a supporting cast of house help to function.
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