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Quem é Guilherme Mello, novo presidente do Conselho de Administração da Petrobras
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Cuts, Commitments and Contradictions – guest post by Lucien Heurtier
Lucien Heurtier is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at King’s College London in the group of Theoretical Particle Physics & Cosmology. He contacted me yesterday to ask if I would use this platform to share a blog post he wrote about the events at last week’s Select Commitee meetings about the crisis at the Science and Technology Facilities, in order to boost its circulation. I am happy to do so. I have changed the formatting a little, but not any of the content.
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Over the past week, three key meetings brought together members of the Particle Physics, Astronomy, and Nuclear Physics (PPAN) community with ministers, Members of Parliament, and representatives of UKRI and STFC. For the PPAN community, these discussions were particularly significant. They not only shed light on some of the underlying causes of the current financial pressures facing the programme, but also revealed what appears to be a growing disconnect between the strategic priorities emerging within UKRI and the concerns expressed by government, STFC leadership, and the PPAN research community itself.
In this article, I attempt to capture how researchers across the PPAN community have interpreted and reacted to these meetings. I discuss how this perceived disconnect relates to the developments of the past several months, and what these events may mean for what comes next.
The House of Lords Acknowledges a ‘Very Particular Problem Around STFC’
On Tuesday, 3rd of March, Rt Hon Liz Kendall MP (Secretary of State at DSIT), Lord Patrick Vallance (Minister of State at DSIT), and Emran Mian (Permanent Secretary at DSIT) appeared before the House of Lords Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, which questioned them on the UKRI funding strategy and its impact on PPAN science.
From the start, Lord Mair (the chair) questioned the Minister: “As you are probably aware, several research councils have paused grants and announced cuts to basic science funding”, he said. “Is it the Government’s policy to cut funding for curiosity-driven research—from bucket 1—in favour of research for the other two buckets?”. Lord Vallance of Balham responded that “There have been no cuts in basic, curiosity-driven research”, although he admitted that “there is a very particular problem around STFC, […] but it is not the case that there have been cuts in any of the other areas”. So the stage is set: STFC is the only council facing explicit cuts. This might sound like a technicality to some, but for the PPAN community, simply getting the minister to acknowledge that STFC is facing budget cuts is already a success.
Among others, an important question comes up: “Would it be right to say that QR funding is being assumed to principally support bucket 1?” Indeed, in recent communications, UKRI has repeatedly classified QR research (QR standing for Quality Related) as being entirely part of the budget for bucket-1. In fact, it represents roughly 60% of the total budget in that bucket. However, Lord Vallance confessed, “No, it is going to support whatever the universities want it to support.” He even explicitly said that “that may be reallocated to other buckets, actually”. This obviously raises the question of whether curiosity-driven research is actually protected, as the government and UKRI have been repeating for months, and why QR research was entirely counted as contributing to bucket 1. Yet Lord Vallance simply said that “Sir Ian Chapman and the team—I think correctly—decided that trying to divide QR up in a complicated formula was bureaucratic”. Make of that what you will.
Lord Vallance then acknowledged poor communications from UKRI: “We can all agree that has not been done well”, he said. He then brought up the STFC case himself: “STFC is unusual in research councils because it has a very large infrastructure pot, and it also funds particle physics and astronomy”. “There is something that needs to be resolved there”, he repeated, “the basic, curiosity-driven, investigator-led research in that bucket needs to be protected”. Once again, such a statement is extremely important for PPAN. The minister is acknowledging that, beyond bad communication from UKRI, there is a problem here, and that cuts in STFC research are not in line with the idea that curiosity-driven research is protected, which Lord Vallance clearly appears to care about.
The committee kept asking: “We are hearing that there is a 30% reduction—the budget itself has not changed, but there is a shifting in the budget for STFC”, said the Baroness Willis of Summertown. “The ringfencing for the blue skies [Drayson partition] has gone from that structure. Is that understanding correct?” “No”, said Lord Vallance, “there was no hard partition in that. It has always been tensioned against the two things”. “The international spend has gone up by about 20% at a time when domestic spend has gone up at about 11% over a period of six or seven years. That has put big pressure on the overall system”, he said. “In previous years, the overspend in STFC has then been absorbed by the other research councils, so there has been a strange picture where other research councils have actually ended up having to give money into the system to cover that. We need to fix that. We need a sustainable, proper, well thought-through, structured way to fund the infrastructure. I am very determined that UKRI must find a way to look after so-called PPAN—particle physics and astronomy.” This statement, I think, kept many of my colleagues in suspense before finally prompting a collective sigh of relief.
Later during the meeting, Lord Drayson insisted: “This is not a new problem”, he said, “We saw this back in the financial crash of 2007-08. That is when we put in those protections to ensure that the other budgets were not hit.” “The Government needs to be able to recognise the long-term funding requirements for the science budget to protect these facilities”, he added. To which Liz Kendall responded that “We are here again, but our commitment to long-term funding of these areas is absolutely there”. This very much sounded as though DSIT is determined to protect PPAN science, but also facilities, against their potential cost increase. We will hold them to their word.
The minister was then extensively questioned about the new ‘bucket’ framework. “you will accept, I think, that the reorganisation that UKRI is bringing in—you have mentioned its looking to facilitate the removal of duplication and have cross-cutting thematic research—means that the complexity of the decision-making process is becoming more opaque”, said Lord Drayson. “I worry that by insisting that this over here is blue sky and this over here is applied, you risk leaving out or not concentrating enough on the most interesting things”, said Lord Stern of Brentford. “It is absolutely one of the risks”, responded Vallance, adding that UKRI “will look at how to make that work across buckets, and it is going to put in systems”. Unfortunately, nothing more concrete than that emerged from the meeting. But Lord Vallance made it very clear, “We view the first bucket as protecting that against what I have seen in companies and see as a risk in government, which is somebody looking at the £14.5 billion and saying ‘Well, it wouldn’t really matter if we didn’t do that for a while’. It matters enormously because once you lose that, you lose it for a very long time, and it is that work that ultimately creates wealth in 10 or 20 or 30 years’ time, even though I cannot tell you which bits of it are going to create wealth.” Again, such a commitment that the government is going to protect blue skies science is essential for PPAN.
Many other important things were raised during the rest of this hearing, but this part is what mattered the most to the PPAN community. As we will see later, the notion that curiosity-driven and PPAN science must be protected clearly contrasts with a very different attitude from UKRI…
PPAN Early Career Researchers and Advanced Fellows Raise Concerns with STFC and UKRI — Only to Be Dismissed
The same day, a delegation of early-career researchers (postdoctoral researchers and PhD students) and advanced fellows (holding advanced fellowships such as the Ernest Rutherford, Future Leader, or Royal Society Research Fellowships) from all components of the PPAN community were invited for a ‘consultation’ meeting with Sir Ian Chapman (CEO of UKRI), Prof. Michele Dougherty (head of STFC), and Prof. Graham Blair (STFC Executive Director of Programmes), accompanied by an external observer from the Institute of Physics, Elizabeth Chamberlain. “I would be happy to meet with you to discuss the situation so that we can explain the details and discuss your suggestions”, Sir Ian Chapman wrote in his invitation two weeks before the meeting.
We came prepared. We gathered a team of representatives, with people from all PPAN areas of research and various career stages. We sent the CEO of UKRI a list of questions a week before the meeting so that our suggestions could better reflect the realities on the ground. Our questions were ignored. UKRI is certainly busy these days. We therefore refined our arguments and developed proposals that, in our view, represented the minimum needed to support our community.
Yet we ran into a wall. To be fair, the meeting format allowed an open discussion, in which both sides could clearly express their ideas, which we were particularly grateful for. But what emerged from the meeting was a profound disconnect between the alarms raised by the PPAN community—based on scientific excellence and sovereignty over key research capabilities and highly-qualified scientists—and the arguments advanced by both UKRI and STFC representatives, exclusively based on accounting cost-reduction arguments.
“You know why we’re here. 30% cuts.” began Dr Kirsty Duffy. But that’s not how they see it. Indeed, from the UKRI perspective, STFC must have a flat budget, as all other councils do, and if STFC costs increase, it must accept corresponding cuts to its grant funding. It is as simple as that, and at no point during the meeting did either Sir Ian Chapman or Michele Dougherty consider a different possibility. From the PPAN point of view, things are really different: “not only the expected cuts, but the current delay has already removed a cohort of ECRs”, said Dr Simon Williams. “Rebuilding is not a matter of returning money or not making a similar cut”, he said, “has the effect been forecast on the output of the community?” “I don’t know”, admits Sir Ian Chapman. “We have a budget, and we have to work within it. It’s where it is from where we are”, repeats Prof Dougherty. And that was it.
ECRs have asked repeatedly for details of the cost overruns and where they come from—this was part of the formal request for information sent before the meeting, and multiple requests for that information during the meeting. Unfortunately, this information has not been provided, and ECRs expressed that this leads the community to feel it is a deliberate decision by UKRI to cut PPAN in favour of facilities, particularly given that the overall STFC budget will be flat. Sir Ian Chapman said that the main driver of cost pressures was starting too many projects, and that energy costs were a small fraction (which appears to contradict previous public statements). Prof Dougherty said “the majority of the cut is within STFC, where the vast majority of the increase in costs comes”, although Sir Ian Chapman said that no decision on how cost savings would be apportioned between PPAN and STFC facilities had been made yet.
Probably the only positive outcome of this meeting: Prof Dougherty clarified that a 30% cut is the “worst case scenario” and that the Science Board has been asked to put together scenarios for 10%, 20%, and 30% cuts. She clarified that this was relative to the fiscal year 2024 budget, and that the PPAN grants have already been cut 15% compared to that. So perhaps we should have considered ourselves fortunate, as a 10% scenario would mean the grant line will be going up again, slightly… Michele Dougherty said she will take those scenarios to UKRI and the Science Minister before they reach a final decision.
Advanced fellows made the case that existing cuts have already hurt the astronomy community very badly: “The funding gap in departments had the direct effect that people can no longer be named on grants”, said Laura Wolz. “People going abroad, not finding other positions, those are real effects with real consequences”. “The leadership we have internationally will be undermined if funding changes overnight”, added Dr Harriett Watson. “Any ECR in this room wants to be an international leader, but the pipeline is cut short if we remove funding”, she said. The least we would have hoped for is for UKRI to listen to the concerns, acknowledge that it is critical and formulate the intention to bring that problem to the government in one way or the other to attempt to solve it. The reaction we encountered, however, was rather less encouraging. “Do you accept that this is happening now?” insisted Dr Williams, “the effects of those cuts and delays are already leading to losing a generation of ECRs, who are leaving outside of the UK and won’t come back”, he said. “Yes, I grasp we will lose some postdocs as a result. I hope we don’t lose all. I can’t see a scenario where we would sign on consolidated grants that only cover academic staff time.” A comforting thought for ECRs: they might not be completely wiped out after all… “Perhaps some crumbs of comfort”, adds Sir Ian Chapman. “In a previous job, we had to implement a 30% budget cut. For three years, we had no PhD students and no postdocs, and we had to make compulsory redundancies among staff. It was a bleak period, and everything was under challenge. But today that community is in rude health, and its budget has been growing year on year.” The message is clear. We need to accept that PPAN will be hurt to unprecedented levels, but to look at the bright side: Time heals all wounds.
We also raised the issue of the Infrastructure Fund in light of the cancellation of some PPAN projects, in particular the LHCb upgrade. Both STFC and UKRI stressed that projects in other councils were also cut, but the nature of the damage to our international reputation was raised. Sir Ian Chapman repeated that the funding had not been awarded, but we insisted that funding had been allocated with the award subject to business case approval, for which UKRI had not read the business case. Sir Ian told us that all funding was subject to spending review and that tough decisions needed to be made. Prof. Dougherty noted that she recused herself from the Investment Advisory Committee’s decision-making process.
One “upside” that UKRI is always keen to remind the community is that PPAN research might be able to access funds from other buckets, through, for instance, AI and quantum-oriented projects. An upside that, Ian Chapman admits, “is not accessible yet”. “Is it dangerous to cut PPAN, which is more blue sky and where much of quantum and AI came from, for something that gives growth now but maybe not sovereignty in the future?” asked Dr Simon Williams. “Complicated answer”, says Chapman, “not all within our gift”, he confesses.
And this is something we are all afraid of in PPAN, including for physicists who are experts in machine learning but whose purpose is entirely curiosity-driven. So I asked the CEO of UKRI, “People working on AI within the PPAN community are actually afraid that they may not be able to access other buckets that easily. Will part of the budget dedicated to AI actually be guaranteed to be accessible to PPAN research?” “Well,” said Sir Ian, “it will be open to everybody, and accessible to you, but money will go to highest-impact applications…”. The idea of partitioning the budget from other buckets so a fraction of it is guaranteed to go to PPAN science is not on the table, Ian Chapman confirmed to me after the meeting, as the idea of the buckets is to get rid of “disciplinary rigidity”. In other words, the amount of funding accessible to PPAN from other buckets cannot be quantified.
The idea of UKRI providing STFC with more money from councils that have decreasing cost forecasts is also not an option: “In previous years, STFC has gone overboard, and others compensated […] Imagine being in medical, how would you feel about this?” answers Chapman. I thus asked, “If it is the case that UKRI doesn’t have enough money to rescue PPAN research, then should UKRI not ask the government for more money specifically for STFC, so UKRI doesn’t have to sacrifice an entire field of research?” “We do that every day of every year”, says Chapman. One would hope so.
In short, none of our concerns can be reasonably addressed; the blame is on past decisions from STFC and UKRI, and the best UKRI and STFC can do now is to optimise the way they will implement cuts, through an exercise of reprioritisation. As representatives of the PPAN community in this meeting, needless to say that these conclusions were far from satisfactory.
The SIT Select Committee Rescues PPAN from STFC ‘Cutting Its Tree by the Roots’
The following day, on Wednesday 4th of March, two panels were heard by the Science, Innovation, and Technology select committee, in the House of Commons. Prof Jon Butterworth, Prof Catherine Heymans (Royal Astronomer of Scotland), and Dr Simon Williams represented the PPAN community and explained to the committee why the expected 30% cuts to PPAN grant funding announced by STFC and UKRI would be devastating for the country. After that, Prof Michele Dougherty, head of STFC and the Royal Astronomer of England, explained to the committee why she considers such cuts necessary, despite UKRI as a whole seeing its budget increase.
The first panel made very clear statements regarding the importance of PPAN science and how devastating a 30% cut would be for all the existing programmes and our international reputation. Prof Heymans started by listing the many international astronomy projects that are at risk because of these cuts. “The Vera Rubin Observatory is the biggest camera in the world, we have started making a movie of the universe” she said, and “this sort of cut means we will not be able to process that data”. Prof Butterworth reminded the committee that the LHC is “the most powerful microscope we’ve ever built”, and highlighted how essential LHCb is “to scrutinise the origins of our universe”. “Without it”, he warned, “we may end up missing some very key data there”. Prof Heymans added, “This is what gets people into physics to study at university, but then they go out and do all the amazing things. To cut these blue-skies areas of research, which are the gateway for these very important areas for the growth of our country, this is really not what the UK should be doing right now”. Freddie van Mierlo MP asked, “Does this impact how we are seen internationally?” Prof Butterworth did not hesitate to answer: “Very much”. Dame Chi Onwurah MP then asked “if funding was available in two years, would we be able to get back in?” Butterworth answered that we would try but “we would certainly not be leading anymore”.
Dr Williams then stressed how critical these cuts would be (and already are) for hiring early-career researchers, such as postdocs and PhD students. “ECRs tend to be where the economic growth comes from”, he said, “cutting at this level would be catastrophic for UK science, very much like killing the tree by cutting the roots: you might not notice it for a while, but time will come when you do”. Dr Lauren Sullivan MP asked whether it would be beneficial for ECRs if a transition mechanism, for instance, funding extensions, were provided to ensure that the workforce is not lost while the funding framework is being changed. “I agree”, said Dr Williams, “the consultation should have been done before the change. The uncertainty that has been injected into the system is catastrophic.”
After these concerns were raised, the committee questioned Prof Dougherty, who mostly blamed the previous governance of UKRI and STFC, invoking “an overabundance of ambition” leading to a “difficult shortfall” she had to handle in the best way possible. This was not, she said, “what I signed up for”. She added, “All I can talk to is what I’ve been dealing with since I arrived”. Regarding the UK’s international reputation, she sadly accepted, “it does weaken our standing, certainly”.
Michele Dougherty also insisted that for UKRI to find a quick solution to the problem, “we need to share with UKRI what the impact of these cuts is, then a final decision can be made”. “Ian Chapman is very well aware that the community […] hoping that he will see what the impact is and whether there is a way to mitigate that impact, but I cannot speak for him”, she said.
Nonetheless, Martin Wrigley MP insisted, “we heard the budget of UKRI is increasing, so they are losing, who is winning?” Prof Dougherty said, “I do not have responsibility for these new buckets”. Martin Wrigley MP is therefore not convinced: “it sounds to me like you need to be more creative in your allocation of your expanding budget to your existing people rather than projects.”, but Dougherty answered she is not responsible for the way money can be accessed from other buckets for AI and quantum, and the only thing she can do is to tell her community that “there is real potential there”, which Wrigley considered “too passive in accepting what you’re being given”.
“There are other things that could be done”, says the Rt Hon Kit Malthouse MP, “as for example, reclassifying subscriptions that you pay as international treaty obligations”. “I am having that conversation with Ian Chapman, and with DSIT as well”, says Dougherty. But Rt Hon Kit Malthouse MP insisted that “UKRI’s budget over the years has been sort of manipulated to ensure that the DSIT budget is fully spent […] There is flexibility in there, so if you are having that conversation and it is resulting in 30% cuts for some of these, should we be saying to the Minister next time we get them in front of us, ‘Why did you say no to Professor Dougherty?’“. “Nobody has said no yet” stresses the head of STFC, “but I have been asked to look at the impact that the 30% will have. I need to follow through on that while I am having this conversation.”
“The extent of the impact on our existing science, scientists and early-career researchers is unacceptable”, concludes Dame Chi Onwurah, “can you give a commitment that you will look into bringing funding to close that gap on the short and medium term?”. “Yes” said Prof Dougherty. Needless to say the PPAN community now looks forward to seeing these words put into action.
Taken together, these meetings reveal a striking contrast. On the one hand, ministers and parliamentarians appear increasingly aware that the current trajectory risks serious damage to UK particle physics and astronomy. On the other hand, UKRI and STFC leadership insist that the constraints of the current funding framework leave them little room for manoeuvre. The result is a situation in which the problem is widely acknowledged, but its resolution remains uncertain. Ideas were proposed during these meetings that are all worth exploring, but will certainly require seeking further approval from the government. Dr Dougherty has committed to find short term solutions to mitigate the damage currently inflicted on the PPAN community, but it is unclear how.
The coming months will therefore be decisive in determining whether these warnings translate into concrete action, or whether the UK will accept the long-term consequences of cutting one of its most internationally successful scientific communities.
Dr Lucien Heurtier
London, 07/03/2026
#CatherineHeymans #JonButterworth #MicheleDougherty #PPAN #STFC #STFCCrisis #STFCFunding #UKRI -
Cuts, Commitments and Contradictions – guest post by Lucien Heurtier
Lucien Heurtier is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at King’s College London in the group of Theoretical Particle Physics & Cosmology. He contacted me yesterday to ask if I would use this platform to share the a blog post he wrote about the events at last week’s Select Commitee meetings about the crisis at the Science and Technology Facilities, in order to boost its circulation. I am happy to do so. I have changed the formatting a little, but not any of the content.
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Over the past week, three key meetings brought together members of the Particle Physics, Astronomy, and Nuclear Physics (PPAN) community with ministers, Members of Parliament, and representatives of UKRI and STFC. For the PPAN community, these discussions were particularly significant. They not only shed light on some of the underlying causes of the current financial pressures facing the programme, but also revealed what appears to be a growing disconnect between the strategic priorities emerging within UKRI and the concerns expressed by government, STFC leadership, and the PPAN research community itself.
In this article, I attempt to capture how researchers across the PPAN community have interpreted and reacted to these meetings. I discuss how this perceived disconnect relates to the developments of the past several months, and what these events may mean for what comes next.
The House of Lords Acknowledges a ‘Very Particular Problem Around STFC’
On Tuesday, 3rd of March, Rt Hon Liz Kendall MP (Secretary of State at DSIT), Lord Patrick Vallance (Minister of State at DSIT), and Emran Mian (Permanent Secretary at DSIT) appeared before the House of Lords Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, which questioned them on the UKRI funding strategy and its impact on PPAN science.
From the start, Lord Mair (the chair) questioned the Minister: “As you are probably aware, several research councils have paused grants and announced cuts to basic science funding”, he said. “Is it the Government’s policy to cut funding for curiosity-driven research—from bucket 1—in favour of research for the other two buckets?”. Lord Vallance of Balham responded that “There have been no cuts in basic, curiosity-driven research”, although he admitted that “there is a very particular problem around STFC, […] but it is not the case that there have been cuts in any of the other areas”. So the stage is set: STFC is the only council facing explicit cuts. This might sound like a technicality to some, but for the PPAN community, simply getting the minister to acknowledge that STFC is facing budget cuts is already a success.
Among others, an important question comes up: “Would it be right to say that QR funding is being assumed to principally support bucket 1?” Indeed, in recent communications, UKRI has repeatedly classified QR research (QR standing for Quality Related) as being entirely part of the budget for bucket-1. In fact, it represents roughly 60% of the total budget in that bucket. However, Lord Vallance confessed, “No, it is going to support whatever the universities want it to support.” He even explicitly said that “that may be reallocated to other buckets, actually”. This obviously raises the question of whether curiosity-driven research is actually protected, as the government and UKRI have been repeating for months, and why QR research was entirely counted as contributing to bucket 1. Yet Lord Vallance simply said that “Sir Ian Chapman and the team—I think correctly—decided that trying to divide QR up in a complicated formula was bureaucratic”. Make of that what you will.
Lord Vallance then acknowledged poor communications from UKRI: “We can all agree that has not been done well”, he said. He then brought up the STFC case himself: “STFC is unusual in research councils because it has a very large infrastructure pot, and it also funds particle physics and astronomy”. “There is something that needs to be resolved there”, he repeated, “the basic, curiosity-driven, investigator-led research in that bucket needs to be protected”. Once again, such a statement is extremely important for PPAN. The minister is acknowledging that, beyond bad communication from UKRI, there is a problem here, and that cuts in STFC research are not in line with the idea that curiosity-driven research is protected, which Lord Vallance clearly appears to care about.
The committee kept asking: “We are hearing that there is a 30% reduction—the budget itself has not changed, but there is a shifting in the budget for STFC”, said the Baroness Willis of Summertown. “The ringfencing for the blue skies [Drayson partition] has gone from that structure. Is that understanding correct?” “No”, said Lord Vallance, “there was no hard partition in that. It has always been tensioned against the two things”. “The international spend has gone up by about 20% at a time when domestic spend has gone up at about 11% over a period of six or seven years. That has put big pressure on the overall system”, he said. “In previous years, the overspend in STFC has then been absorbed by the other research councils, so there has been a strange picture where other research councils have actually ended up having to give money into the system to cover that. We need to fix that. We need a sustainable, proper, well thought-through, structured way to fund the infrastructure. I am very determined that UKRI must find a way to look after so-called PPAN—particle physics and astronomy.” This statement, I think, kept many of my colleagues in suspense before finally prompting a collective sigh of relief.
Later during the meeting, Lord Drayson insisted: “This is not a new problem”, he said, “We saw this back in the financial crash of 2007-08. That is when we put in those protections to ensure that the other budgets were not hit.” “The Government needs to be able to recognise the long-term funding requirements for the science budget to protect these facilities”, he added. To which Liz Kendall responded that “We are here again, but our commitment to long-term funding of these areas is absolutely there”. This very much sounded as though DSIT is determined to protect PPAN science, but also facilities, against their potential cost increase. We will hold them to their word.
The minister was then extensively questioned about the new ‘bucket’ framework. “you will accept, I think, that the reorganisation that UKRI is bringing in—you have mentioned its looking to facilitate the removal of duplication and have cross-cutting thematic research—means that the complexity of the decision-making process is becoming more opaque”, said Lord Drayson. “I worry that by insisting that this over here is blue sky and this over here is applied, you risk leaving out or not concentrating enough on the most interesting things”, said Lord Stern of Brentford. “It is absolutely one of the risks”, responded Vallance, adding that UKRI “will look at how to make that work across buckets, and it is going to put in systems”. Unfortunately, nothing more concrete than that emerged from the meeting. But Lord Vallance made it very clear, “We view the first bucket as protecting that against what I have seen in companies and see as a risk in government, which is somebody looking at the £14.5 billion and saying ‘Well, it wouldn’t really matter if we didn’t do that for a while’. It matters enormously because once you lose that, you lose it for a very long time, and it is that work that ultimately creates wealth in 10 or 20 or 30 years’ time, even though I cannot tell you which bits of it are going to create wealth.” Again, such a commitment that the government is going to protect blue skies science is essential for PPAN.
Many other important things were raised during the rest of this hearing, but this part is what mattered the most to the PPAN community. As we will see later, the notion that curiosity-driven and PPAN science must be protected clearly contrasts with a very different attitude from UKRI…
PPAN Early Career Researchers and Advanced Fellows Raise Concerns with STFC and UKRI — Only to Be Dismissed
The same day, a delegation of early-career researchers (postdoctoral researchers and PhD students) and advanced fellows (holding advanced fellowships such as the Ernest Rutherford, Future Leader, or Royal Society Research Fellowships) from all components of the PPAN community were invited for a ‘consultation’ meeting with Sir Ian Chapman (CEO of UKRI), Prof. Michele Dougherty (head of STFC), and Prof. Graham Blair (STFC Executive Director of Programmes), accompanied by an external observer from the Institute of Physics, Elizabeth Chamberlain. “I would be happy to meet with you to discuss the situation so that we can explain the details and discuss your suggestions”, Sir Ian Chapman wrote in his invitation two weeks before the meeting.
We came prepared. We gathered a team of representatives, with people from all PPAN areas of research and various career stages. We sent the CEO of UKRI a list of questions a week before the meeting so that our suggestions could better reflect the realities on the ground. Our questions were ignored. UKRI is certainly busy these days. We therefore refined our arguments and developed proposals that, in our view, represented the minimum needed to support our community.
Yet we ran into a wall. To be fair, the meeting format allowed an open discussion, in which both sides could clearly express their ideas, which we were particularly grateful for. But what emerged from the meeting was a profound disconnect between the alarms raised by the PPAN community—based on scientific excellence and sovereignty over key research capabilities and highly-qualified scientists—and the arguments advanced by both UKRI and STFC representatives, exclusively based on accounting cost-reduction arguments.
“You know why we’re here. 30% cuts.” began Dr Kirsty Duffy. But that’s not how they see it. Indeed, from the UKRI perspective, STFC must have a flat budget, as all other councils do, and if STFC costs increase, it must accept corresponding cuts to its grant funding. It is as simple as that, and at no point during the meeting did either Sir Ian Chapman or Michele Dougherty consider a different possibility. From the PPAN point of view, things are really different: “not only the expected cuts, but the current delay has already removed a cohort of ECRs”, said Dr Simon Williams. “Rebuilding is not a matter of returning money or not making a similar cut”, he said, “has the effect been forecast on the output of the community?” “I don’t know”, admits Sir Ian Chapman. “We have a budget, and we have to work within it. It’s where it is from where we are”, repeats Prof Dougherty. And that was it.
ECRs have asked repeatedly for details of the cost overruns and where they come from—this was part of the formal request for information sent before the meeting, and multiple requests for that information during the meeting. Unfortunately, this information has not been provided, and ECRs expressed that this leads the community to feel it is a deliberate decision by UKRI to cut PPAN in favour of facilities, particularly given that the overall STFC budget will be flat. Sir Ian Chapman said that the main driver of cost pressures was starting too many projects, and that energy costs were a small fraction (which appears to contradict previous public statements). Prof Dougherty said “the majority of the cut is within STFC, where the vast majority of the increase in costs comes”, although Sir Ian Chapman said that no decision on how cost savings would be apportioned between PPAN and STFC facilities had been made yet.
Probably the only positive outcome of this meeting: Prof Dougherty clarified that a 30% cut is the “worst case scenario” and that the Science Board has been asked to put together scenarios for 10%, 20%, and 30% cuts. She clarified that this was relative to the fiscal year 2024 budget, and that the PPAN grants have already been cut 15% compared to that. So perhaps we should have considered ourselves fortunate, as a 10% scenario would mean the grant line will be going up again, slightly… Michele Dougherty said she will take those scenarios to UKRI and the Science Minister before they reach a final decision.
Advanced fellows made the case that existing cuts have already hurt the astronomy community very badly: “The funding gap in departments had the direct effect that people can no longer be named on grants”, said Laura Wolz. “People going abroad, not finding other positions, those are real effects with real consequences”. “The leadership we have internationally will be undermined if funding changes overnight”, added Dr Harriett Watson. “Any ECR in this room wants to be an international leader, but the pipeline is cut short if we remove funding”, she said. The least we would have hoped for is for UKRI to listen to the concerns, acknowledge that it is critical and formulate the intention to bring that problem to the government in one way or the other to attempt to solve it. The reaction we encountered, however, was rather less encouraging. “Do you accept that this is happening now?” insisted Dr Williams, “the effects of those cuts and delays are already leading to losing a generation of ECRs, who are leaving outside of the UK and won’t come back”, he said. “Yes, I grasp we will lose some postdocs as a result. I hope we don’t lose all. I can’t see a scenario where we would sign on consolidated grants that only cover academic staff time.” A comforting thought for ECRs: they might not be completely wiped out after all… “Perhaps some crumbs of comfort”, adds Sir Ian Chapman. “In a previous job, we had to implement a 30% budget cut. For three years, we had no PhD students and no postdocs, and we had to make compulsory redundancies among staff. It was a bleak period, and everything was under challenge. But today that community is in rude health, and its budget has been growing year on year.” The message is clear. We need to accept that PPAN will be hurt to unprecedented levels, but to look at the bright side: Time heals all wounds.
We also raised the issue of the Infrastructure Fund in light of the cancellation of some PPAN projects, in particular the LHCb upgrade. Both STFC and UKRI stressed that projects in other councils were also cut, but the nature of the damage to our international reputation was raised. Sir Ian Chapman repeated that the funding had not been awarded, but we insisted that funding had been allocated with the award subject to business case approval, for which UKRI had not read the business case. Sir Ian told us that all funding was subject to spending review and that tough decisions needed to be made. Prof. Dougherty noted that she recused herself from the Investment Advisory Committee’s decision-making process.
One “upside” that UKRI is always keen to remind the community is that PPAN research might be able to access funds from other buckets, through, for instance, AI and quantum-oriented projects. An upside that, Ian Chapman admits, “is not accessible yet”. “Is it dangerous to cut PPAN, which is more blue sky and where much of quantum and AI came from, for something that gives growth now but maybe not sovereignty in the future?” asked Dr Simon Williams. “Complicated answer”, says Chapman, “not all within our gift”, he confesses.
And this is something we are all afraid of in PPAN, including for physicists who are experts in machine learning but whose purpose is entirely curiosity-driven. So I asked the CEO of UKRI, “People working on AI within the PPAN community are actually afraid that they may not be able to access other buckets that easily. Will part of the budget dedicated to AI actually be guaranteed to be accessible to PPAN research?” “Well,” said Sir Ian, “it will be open to everybody, and accessible to you, but money will go to highest-impact applications…”. The idea of partitioning the budget from other buckets so a fraction of it is guaranteed to go to PPAN science is not on the table, Ian Chapman confirmed to me after the meeting, as the idea of the buckets is to get rid of “disciplinary rigidity”. In other words, the amount of funding accessible to PPAN from other buckets cannot be quantified.
The idea of UKRI providing STFC with more money from councils that have decreasing cost forecasts is also not an option: “In previous years, STFC has gone overboard, and others compensated […] Imagine being in medical, how would you feel about this?” answers Chapman. I thus asked, “If it is the case that UKRI doesn’t have enough money to rescue PPAN research, then should UKRI not ask the government for more money specifically for STFC, so UKRI doesn’t have to sacrifice an entire field of research?” “We do that every day of every year”, says Chapman. One would hope so.
In short, none of our concerns can be reasonably addressed; the blame is on past decisions from STFC and UKRI, and the best UKRI and STFC can do now is to optimise the way they will implement cuts, through an exercise of reprioritisation. As representatives of the PPAN community in this meeting, needless to say that these conclusions were far from satisfactory.
The SIT Select Committee Rescues PPAN from STFC ‘Cutting Its Tree by the Roots’
The following day, on Wednesday 4th of March, two panels were heard by the Science, Innovation, and Technology select committee, in the House of Commons. Prof Jon Butterworth, Prof Catherine Heymans (Royal Astronomer of Scotland), and Dr Simon Williams represented the PPAN community and explained to the committee why the expected 30% cuts to PPAN grant funding announced by STFC and UKRI would be devastating for the country. After that, Prof Michele Dougherty, head of STFC and the Royal Astronomer of England, explained to the committee why she considers such cuts necessary, despite UKRI as a whole seeing its budget increase.
The first panel made very clear statements regarding the importance of PPAN science and how devastating a 30% cut would be for all the existing programmes and our international reputation. Prof Heymans started by listing the many international astronomy projects that are at risk because of these cuts. “The Vera Rubin Observatory is the biggest camera in the world, we have started making a movie of the universe” she said, and “this sort of cut means we will not be able to process that data”. Prof Butterworth reminded the committee that the LHC is “the most powerful microscope we’ve ever built”, and highlighted how essential LHCb is “to scrutinise the origins of our universe”. “Without it”, he warned, “we may end up missing some very key data there”. Prof Heymans added, “This is what gets people into physics to study at university, but then they go out and do all the amazing things. To cut these blue-skies areas of research, which are the gateway for these very important areas for the growth of our country, this is really not what the UK should be doing right now”. Freddie van Mierlo MP asked, “Does this impact how we are seen internationally?” Prof Butterworth did not hesitate to answer: “Very much”. Dame Chi Onwurah MP then asked “if funding was available in two years, would we be able to get back in?” Butterworth answered that we would try but “we would certainly not be leading anymore”.
Dr Williams then stressed how critical these cuts would be (and already are) for hiring early-career researchers, such as postdocs and PhD students. “ECRs tend to be where the economic growth comes from”, he said, “cutting at this level would be catastrophic for UK science, very much like killing the tree by cutting the roots: you might not notice it for a while, but time will come when you do”. Dr Lauren Sullivan MP asked whether it would be beneficial for ECRs if a transition mechanism, for instance, funding extensions, were provided to ensure that the workforce is not lost while the funding framework is being changed. “I agree”, said Dr Williams, “the consultation should have been done before the change. The uncertainty that has been injected into the system is catastrophic.”
After these concerns were raised, the committee questioned Prof Dougherty, who mostly blamed the previous governance of UKRI and STFC, invoking “an overabundance of ambition” leading to a “difficult shortfall” she had to handle in the best way possible. This was not, she said, “what I signed up for”. She added, “All I can talk to is what I’ve been dealing with since I arrived”. Regarding the UK’s international reputation, she sadly accepted, “it does weaken our standing, certainly”.
Michele Dougherty also insisted that for UKRI to find a quick solution to the problem, “we need to share with UKRI what the impact of these cuts is, then a final decision can be made”. “Ian Chapman is very well aware that the community […] hoping that he will see what the impact is and whether there is a way to mitigate that impact, but I cannot speak for him”, she said.
Nonetheless, Martin Wrigley MP insisted, “we heard the budget of UKRI is increasing, so they are losing, who is winning?” Prof Dougherty said, “I do not have responsibility for these new buckets”. Martin Wrigley MP is therefore not convinced: “it sounds to me like you need to be more creative in your allocation of your expanding budget to your existing people rather than projects.”, but Dougherty answered she is not responsible for the way money can be accessed from other buckets for AI and quantum, and the only thing she can do is to tell her community that “there is real potential there”, which Wrigley considered “too passive in accepting what you’re being given”.
“There are other things that could be done”, says the Rt Hon Kit Malthouse MP, “as for example, reclassifying subscriptions that you pay as international treaty obligations”. “I am having that conversation with Ian Chapman, and with DSIT as well”, says Dougherty. But Rt Hon Kit Malthouse MP insisted that “UKRI’s budget over the years has been sort of manipulated to ensure that the DSIT budget is fully spent […] There is flexibility in there, so if you are having that conversation and it is resulting in 30% cuts for some of these, should we be saying to the Minister next time we get them in front of us, ‘Why did you say no to Professor Dougherty?’“. “Nobody has said no yet” stresses the head of STFC, “but I have been asked to look at the impact that the 30% will have. I need to follow through on that while I am having this conversation.”
“The extent of the impact on our existing science, scientists and early-career researchers is unacceptable”, concludes Dame Chi Onwurah, “can you give a commitment that you will look into bringing funding to close that gap on the short and medium term?”. “Yes” said Prof Dougherty. Needless to say the PPAN community now looks forward to seeing these words put into action.
Taken together, these meetings reveal a striking contrast. On the one hand, ministers and parliamentarians appear increasingly aware that the current trajectory risks serious damage to UK particle physics and astronomy. On the other hand, UKRI and STFC leadership insist that the constraints of the current funding framework leave them little room for manoeuvre. The result is a situation in which the problem is widely acknowledged, but its resolution remains uncertain. Ideas were proposed during these meetings that are all worth exploring, but will certainly require seeking further approval from the government. Dr Dougherty has committed to find short term solutions to mitigate the damage currently inflicted on the PPAN community, but it is unclear how.
The coming months will therefore be decisive in determining whether these warnings translate into concrete action, or whether the UK will accept the long-term consequences of cutting one of its most internationally successful scientific communities.
Dr Lucien Heurtier
London, 07/03/2026
#CatherineHeymans #JonButterworth #MicheleDougherty #PPAN #STFC #STFCCrisis #STFCFunding #UKRI -
Cuts, Commitments and Contradictions – guest post by Lucien Heurtier
Lucien Heurtier is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at King’s College London in the group of Theoretical Particle Physics & Cosmology. He contacted me yesterday to ask if I would use this platform to share a blog post he wrote about the events at last week’s Select Commitee meetings about the crisis at the Science and Technology Facilities, in order to boost its circulation. I am happy to do so. I have changed the formatting a little, but not any of the content.
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Over the past week, three key meetings brought together members of the Particle Physics, Astronomy, and Nuclear Physics (PPAN) community with ministers, Members of Parliament, and representatives of UKRI and STFC. For the PPAN community, these discussions were particularly significant. They not only shed light on some of the underlying causes of the current financial pressures facing the programme, but also revealed what appears to be a growing disconnect between the strategic priorities emerging within UKRI and the concerns expressed by government, STFC leadership, and the PPAN research community itself.
In this article, I attempt to capture how researchers across the PPAN community have interpreted and reacted to these meetings. I discuss how this perceived disconnect relates to the developments of the past several months, and what these events may mean for what comes next.
The House of Lords Acknowledges a ‘Very Particular Problem Around STFC’
On Tuesday, 3rd of March, Rt Hon Liz Kendall MP (Secretary of State at DSIT), Lord Patrick Vallance (Minister of State at DSIT), and Emran Mian (Permanent Secretary at DSIT) appeared before the House of Lords Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, which questioned them on the UKRI funding strategy and its impact on PPAN science.
From the start, Lord Mair (the chair) questioned the Minister: “As you are probably aware, several research councils have paused grants and announced cuts to basic science funding”, he said. “Is it the Government’s policy to cut funding for curiosity-driven research—from bucket 1—in favour of research for the other two buckets?”. Lord Vallance of Balham responded that “There have been no cuts in basic, curiosity-driven research”, although he admitted that “there is a very particular problem around STFC, […] but it is not the case that there have been cuts in any of the other areas”. So the stage is set: STFC is the only council facing explicit cuts. This might sound like a technicality to some, but for the PPAN community, simply getting the minister to acknowledge that STFC is facing budget cuts is already a success.
Among others, an important question comes up: “Would it be right to say that QR funding is being assumed to principally support bucket 1?” Indeed, in recent communications, UKRI has repeatedly classified QR research (QR standing for Quality Related) as being entirely part of the budget for bucket-1. In fact, it represents roughly 60% of the total budget in that bucket. However, Lord Vallance confessed, “No, it is going to support whatever the universities want it to support.” He even explicitly said that “that may be reallocated to other buckets, actually”. This obviously raises the question of whether curiosity-driven research is actually protected, as the government and UKRI have been repeating for months, and why QR research was entirely counted as contributing to bucket 1. Yet Lord Vallance simply said that “Sir Ian Chapman and the team—I think correctly—decided that trying to divide QR up in a complicated formula was bureaucratic”. Make of that what you will.
Lord Vallance then acknowledged poor communications from UKRI: “We can all agree that has not been done well”, he said. He then brought up the STFC case himself: “STFC is unusual in research councils because it has a very large infrastructure pot, and it also funds particle physics and astronomy”. “There is something that needs to be resolved there”, he repeated, “the basic, curiosity-driven, investigator-led research in that bucket needs to be protected”. Once again, such a statement is extremely important for PPAN. The minister is acknowledging that, beyond bad communication from UKRI, there is a problem here, and that cuts in STFC research are not in line with the idea that curiosity-driven research is protected, which Lord Vallance clearly appears to care about.
The committee kept asking: “We are hearing that there is a 30% reduction—the budget itself has not changed, but there is a shifting in the budget for STFC”, said the Baroness Willis of Summertown. “The ringfencing for the blue skies [Drayson partition] has gone from that structure. Is that understanding correct?” “No”, said Lord Vallance, “there was no hard partition in that. It has always been tensioned against the two things”. “The international spend has gone up by about 20% at a time when domestic spend has gone up at about 11% over a period of six or seven years. That has put big pressure on the overall system”, he said. “In previous years, the overspend in STFC has then been absorbed by the other research councils, so there has been a strange picture where other research councils have actually ended up having to give money into the system to cover that. We need to fix that. We need a sustainable, proper, well thought-through, structured way to fund the infrastructure. I am very determined that UKRI must find a way to look after so-called PPAN—particle physics and astronomy.” This statement, I think, kept many of my colleagues in suspense before finally prompting a collective sigh of relief.
Later during the meeting, Lord Drayson insisted: “This is not a new problem”, he said, “We saw this back in the financial crash of 2007-08. That is when we put in those protections to ensure that the other budgets were not hit.” “The Government needs to be able to recognise the long-term funding requirements for the science budget to protect these facilities”, he added. To which Liz Kendall responded that “We are here again, but our commitment to long-term funding of these areas is absolutely there”. This very much sounded as though DSIT is determined to protect PPAN science, but also facilities, against their potential cost increase. We will hold them to their word.
The minister was then extensively questioned about the new ‘bucket’ framework. “you will accept, I think, that the reorganisation that UKRI is bringing in—you have mentioned its looking to facilitate the removal of duplication and have cross-cutting thematic research—means that the complexity of the decision-making process is becoming more opaque”, said Lord Drayson. “I worry that by insisting that this over here is blue sky and this over here is applied, you risk leaving out or not concentrating enough on the most interesting things”, said Lord Stern of Brentford. “It is absolutely one of the risks”, responded Vallance, adding that UKRI “will look at how to make that work across buckets, and it is going to put in systems”. Unfortunately, nothing more concrete than that emerged from the meeting. But Lord Vallance made it very clear, “We view the first bucket as protecting that against what I have seen in companies and see as a risk in government, which is somebody looking at the £14.5 billion and saying ‘Well, it wouldn’t really matter if we didn’t do that for a while’. It matters enormously because once you lose that, you lose it for a very long time, and it is that work that ultimately creates wealth in 10 or 20 or 30 years’ time, even though I cannot tell you which bits of it are going to create wealth.” Again, such a commitment that the government is going to protect blue skies science is essential for PPAN.
Many other important things were raised during the rest of this hearing, but this part is what mattered the most to the PPAN community. As we will see later, the notion that curiosity-driven and PPAN science must be protected clearly contrasts with a very different attitude from UKRI…
PPAN Early Career Researchers and Advanced Fellows Raise Concerns with STFC and UKRI — Only to Be Dismissed
The same day, a delegation of early-career researchers (postdoctoral researchers and PhD students) and advanced fellows (holding advanced fellowships such as the Ernest Rutherford, Future Leader, or Royal Society Research Fellowships) from all components of the PPAN community were invited for a ‘consultation’ meeting with Sir Ian Chapman (CEO of UKRI), Prof. Michele Dougherty (head of STFC), and Prof. Graham Blair (STFC Executive Director of Programmes), accompanied by an external observer from the Institute of Physics, Elizabeth Chamberlain. “I would be happy to meet with you to discuss the situation so that we can explain the details and discuss your suggestions”, Sir Ian Chapman wrote in his invitation two weeks before the meeting.
We came prepared. We gathered a team of representatives, with people from all PPAN areas of research and various career stages. We sent the CEO of UKRI a list of questions a week before the meeting so that our suggestions could better reflect the realities on the ground. Our questions were ignored. UKRI is certainly busy these days. We therefore refined our arguments and developed proposals that, in our view, represented the minimum needed to support our community.
Yet we ran into a wall. To be fair, the meeting format allowed an open discussion, in which both sides could clearly express their ideas, which we were particularly grateful for. But what emerged from the meeting was a profound disconnect between the alarms raised by the PPAN community—based on scientific excellence and sovereignty over key research capabilities and highly-qualified scientists—and the arguments advanced by both UKRI and STFC representatives, exclusively based on accounting cost-reduction arguments.
“You know why we’re here. 30% cuts.” began Dr Kirsty Duffy. But that’s not how they see it. Indeed, from the UKRI perspective, STFC must have a flat budget, as all other councils do, and if STFC costs increase, it must accept corresponding cuts to its grant funding. It is as simple as that, and at no point during the meeting did either Sir Ian Chapman or Michele Dougherty consider a different possibility. From the PPAN point of view, things are really different: “not only the expected cuts, but the current delay has already removed a cohort of ECRs”, said Dr Simon Williams. “Rebuilding is not a matter of returning money or not making a similar cut”, he said, “has the effect been forecast on the output of the community?” “I don’t know”, admits Sir Ian Chapman. “We have a budget, and we have to work within it. It’s where it is from where we are”, repeats Prof Dougherty. And that was it.
ECRs have asked repeatedly for details of the cost overruns and where they come from—this was part of the formal request for information sent before the meeting, and multiple requests for that information during the meeting. Unfortunately, this information has not been provided, and ECRs expressed that this leads the community to feel it is a deliberate decision by UKRI to cut PPAN in favour of facilities, particularly given that the overall STFC budget will be flat. Sir Ian Chapman said that the main driver of cost pressures was starting too many projects, and that energy costs were a small fraction (which appears to contradict previous public statements). Prof Dougherty said “the majority of the cut is within STFC, where the vast majority of the increase in costs comes”, although Sir Ian Chapman said that no decision on how cost savings would be apportioned between PPAN and STFC facilities had been made yet.
Probably the only positive outcome of this meeting: Prof Dougherty clarified that a 30% cut is the “worst case scenario” and that the Science Board has been asked to put together scenarios for 10%, 20%, and 30% cuts. She clarified that this was relative to the fiscal year 2024 budget, and that the PPAN grants have already been cut 15% compared to that. So perhaps we should have considered ourselves fortunate, as a 10% scenario would mean the grant line will be going up again, slightly… Michele Dougherty said she will take those scenarios to UKRI and the Science Minister before they reach a final decision.
Advanced fellows made the case that existing cuts have already hurt the astronomy community very badly: “The funding gap in departments had the direct effect that people can no longer be named on grants”, said Laura Wolz. “People going abroad, not finding other positions, those are real effects with real consequences”. “The leadership we have internationally will be undermined if funding changes overnight”, added Dr Harriett Watson. “Any ECR in this room wants to be an international leader, but the pipeline is cut short if we remove funding”, she said. The least we would have hoped for is for UKRI to listen to the concerns, acknowledge that it is critical and formulate the intention to bring that problem to the government in one way or the other to attempt to solve it. The reaction we encountered, however, was rather less encouraging. “Do you accept that this is happening now?” insisted Dr Williams, “the effects of those cuts and delays are already leading to losing a generation of ECRs, who are leaving outside of the UK and won’t come back”, he said. “Yes, I grasp we will lose some postdocs as a result. I hope we don’t lose all. I can’t see a scenario where we would sign on consolidated grants that only cover academic staff time.” A comforting thought for ECRs: they might not be completely wiped out after all… “Perhaps some crumbs of comfort”, adds Sir Ian Chapman. “In a previous job, we had to implement a 30% budget cut. For three years, we had no PhD students and no postdocs, and we had to make compulsory redundancies among staff. It was a bleak period, and everything was under challenge. But today that community is in rude health, and its budget has been growing year on year.” The message is clear. We need to accept that PPAN will be hurt to unprecedented levels, but to look at the bright side: Time heals all wounds.
We also raised the issue of the Infrastructure Fund in light of the cancellation of some PPAN projects, in particular the LHCb upgrade. Both STFC and UKRI stressed that projects in other councils were also cut, but the nature of the damage to our international reputation was raised. Sir Ian Chapman repeated that the funding had not been awarded, but we insisted that funding had been allocated with the award subject to business case approval, for which UKRI had not read the business case. Sir Ian told us that all funding was subject to spending review and that tough decisions needed to be made. Prof. Dougherty noted that she recused herself from the Investment Advisory Committee’s decision-making process.
One “upside” that UKRI is always keen to remind the community is that PPAN research might be able to access funds from other buckets, through, for instance, AI and quantum-oriented projects. An upside that, Ian Chapman admits, “is not accessible yet”. “Is it dangerous to cut PPAN, which is more blue sky and where much of quantum and AI came from, for something that gives growth now but maybe not sovereignty in the future?” asked Dr Simon Williams. “Complicated answer”, says Chapman, “not all within our gift”, he confesses.
And this is something we are all afraid of in PPAN, including for physicists who are experts in machine learning but whose purpose is entirely curiosity-driven. So I asked the CEO of UKRI, “People working on AI within the PPAN community are actually afraid that they may not be able to access other buckets that easily. Will part of the budget dedicated to AI actually be guaranteed to be accessible to PPAN research?” “Well,” said Sir Ian, “it will be open to everybody, and accessible to you, but money will go to highest-impact applications…”. The idea of partitioning the budget from other buckets so a fraction of it is guaranteed to go to PPAN science is not on the table, Ian Chapman confirmed to me after the meeting, as the idea of the buckets is to get rid of “disciplinary rigidity”. In other words, the amount of funding accessible to PPAN from other buckets cannot be quantified.
The idea of UKRI providing STFC with more money from councils that have decreasing cost forecasts is also not an option: “In previous years, STFC has gone overboard, and others compensated […] Imagine being in medical, how would you feel about this?” answers Chapman. I thus asked, “If it is the case that UKRI doesn’t have enough money to rescue PPAN research, then should UKRI not ask the government for more money specifically for STFC, so UKRI doesn’t have to sacrifice an entire field of research?” “We do that every day of every year”, says Chapman. One would hope so.
In short, none of our concerns can be reasonably addressed; the blame is on past decisions from STFC and UKRI, and the best UKRI and STFC can do now is to optimise the way they will implement cuts, through an exercise of reprioritisation. As representatives of the PPAN community in this meeting, needless to say that these conclusions were far from satisfactory.
The SIT Select Committee Rescues PPAN from STFC ‘Cutting Its Tree by the Roots’
The following day, on Wednesday 4th of March, two panels were heard by the Science, Innovation, and Technology select committee, in the House of Commons. Prof Jon Butterworth, Prof Catherine Heymans (Royal Astronomer of Scotland), and Dr Simon Williams represented the PPAN community and explained to the committee why the expected 30% cuts to PPAN grant funding announced by STFC and UKRI would be devastating for the country. After that, Prof Michele Dougherty, head of STFC and the Royal Astronomer of England, explained to the committee why she considers such cuts necessary, despite UKRI as a whole seeing its budget increase.
The first panel made very clear statements regarding the importance of PPAN science and how devastating a 30% cut would be for all the existing programmes and our international reputation. Prof Heymans started by listing the many international astronomy projects that are at risk because of these cuts. “The Vera Rubin Observatory is the biggest camera in the world, we have started making a movie of the universe” she said, and “this sort of cut means we will not be able to process that data”. Prof Butterworth reminded the committee that the LHC is “the most powerful microscope we’ve ever built”, and highlighted how essential LHCb is “to scrutinise the origins of our universe”. “Without it”, he warned, “we may end up missing some very key data there”. Prof Heymans added, “This is what gets people into physics to study at university, but then they go out and do all the amazing things. To cut these blue-skies areas of research, which are the gateway for these very important areas for the growth of our country, this is really not what the UK should be doing right now”. Freddie van Mierlo MP asked, “Does this impact how we are seen internationally?” Prof Butterworth did not hesitate to answer: “Very much”. Dame Chi Onwurah MP then asked “if funding was available in two years, would we be able to get back in?” Butterworth answered that we would try but “we would certainly not be leading anymore”.
Dr Williams then stressed how critical these cuts would be (and already are) for hiring early-career researchers, such as postdocs and PhD students. “ECRs tend to be where the economic growth comes from”, he said, “cutting at this level would be catastrophic for UK science, very much like killing the tree by cutting the roots: you might not notice it for a while, but time will come when you do”. Dr Lauren Sullivan MP asked whether it would be beneficial for ECRs if a transition mechanism, for instance, funding extensions, were provided to ensure that the workforce is not lost while the funding framework is being changed. “I agree”, said Dr Williams, “the consultation should have been done before the change. The uncertainty that has been injected into the system is catastrophic.”
After these concerns were raised, the committee questioned Prof Dougherty, who mostly blamed the previous governance of UKRI and STFC, invoking “an overabundance of ambition” leading to a “difficult shortfall” she had to handle in the best way possible. This was not, she said, “what I signed up for”. She added, “All I can talk to is what I’ve been dealing with since I arrived”. Regarding the UK’s international reputation, she sadly accepted, “it does weaken our standing, certainly”.
Michele Dougherty also insisted that for UKRI to find a quick solution to the problem, “we need to share with UKRI what the impact of these cuts is, then a final decision can be made”. “Ian Chapman is very well aware that the community […] hoping that he will see what the impact is and whether there is a way to mitigate that impact, but I cannot speak for him”, she said.
Nonetheless, Martin Wrigley MP insisted, “we heard the budget of UKRI is increasing, so they are losing, who is winning?” Prof Dougherty said, “I do not have responsibility for these new buckets”. Martin Wrigley MP is therefore not convinced: “it sounds to me like you need to be more creative in your allocation of your expanding budget to your existing people rather than projects.”, but Dougherty answered she is not responsible for the way money can be accessed from other buckets for AI and quantum, and the only thing she can do is to tell her community that “there is real potential there”, which Wrigley considered “too passive in accepting what you’re being given”.
“There are other things that could be done”, says the Rt Hon Kit Malthouse MP, “as for example, reclassifying subscriptions that you pay as international treaty obligations”. “I am having that conversation with Ian Chapman, and with DSIT as well”, says Dougherty. But Rt Hon Kit Malthouse MP insisted that “UKRI’s budget over the years has been sort of manipulated to ensure that the DSIT budget is fully spent […] There is flexibility in there, so if you are having that conversation and it is resulting in 30% cuts for some of these, should we be saying to the Minister next time we get them in front of us, ‘Why did you say no to Professor Dougherty?’“. “Nobody has said no yet” stresses the head of STFC, “but I have been asked to look at the impact that the 30% will have. I need to follow through on that while I am having this conversation.”
“The extent of the impact on our existing science, scientists and early-career researchers is unacceptable”, concludes Dame Chi Onwurah, “can you give a commitment that you will look into bringing funding to close that gap on the short and medium term?”. “Yes” said Prof Dougherty. Needless to say the PPAN community now looks forward to seeing these words put into action.
Taken together, these meetings reveal a striking contrast. On the one hand, ministers and parliamentarians appear increasingly aware that the current trajectory risks serious damage to UK particle physics and astronomy. On the other hand, UKRI and STFC leadership insist that the constraints of the current funding framework leave them little room for manoeuvre. The result is a situation in which the problem is widely acknowledged, but its resolution remains uncertain. Ideas were proposed during these meetings that are all worth exploring, but will certainly require seeking further approval from the government. Dr Dougherty has committed to find short term solutions to mitigate the damage currently inflicted on the PPAN community, but it is unclear how.
The coming months will therefore be decisive in determining whether these warnings translate into concrete action, or whether the UK will accept the long-term consequences of cutting one of its most internationally successful scientific communities.
Dr Lucien Heurtier
London, 07/03/2026
#CatherineHeymans #JonButterworth #MicheleDougherty #PPAN #STFC #STFCCrisis #STFCFunding #UKRI -
Cuts, Commitments and Contradictions – guest post by Lucien Heurtier
Lucien Heurtier is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at King’s College London in the group of Theoretical Particle Physics & Cosmology. He contacted me yesterday to ask if I would use this platform to share the a blog post he wrote about the events at last week’s Select Commitee meetings about the crisis at the Science and Technology Facilities, in order to boost its circulation. I am happy to do so. I have changed the formatting a little, but not any of the content.
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Over the past week, three key meetings brought together members of the Particle Physics, Astronomy, and Nuclear Physics (PPAN) community with ministers, Members of Parliament, and representatives of UKRI and STFC. For the PPAN community, these discussions were particularly significant. They not only shed light on some of the underlying causes of the current financial pressures facing the programme, but also revealed what appears to be a growing disconnect between the strategic priorities emerging within UKRI and the concerns expressed by government, STFC leadership, and the PPAN research community itself.
In this article, I attempt to capture how researchers across the PPAN community have interpreted and reacted to these meetings. I discuss how this perceived disconnect relates to the developments of the past several months, and what these events may mean for what comes next.
The House of Lords Acknowledges a ‘Very Particular Problem Around STFC’
On Tuesday, 3rd of March, Rt Hon Liz Kendall MP (Secretary of State at DSIT), Lord Patrick Vallance (Minister of State at DSIT), and Emran Mian (Permanent Secretary at DSIT) appeared before the House of Lords Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, which questioned them on the UKRI funding strategy and its impact on PPAN science.
From the start, Lord Mair (the chair) questioned the Minister: “As you are probably aware, several research councils have paused grants and announced cuts to basic science funding”, he said. “Is it the Government’s policy to cut funding for curiosity-driven research—from bucket 1—in favour of research for the other two buckets?”. Lord Vallance of Balham responded that “There have been no cuts in basic, curiosity-driven research”, although he admitted that “there is a very particular problem around STFC, […] but it is not the case that there have been cuts in any of the other areas”. So the stage is set: STFC is the only council facing explicit cuts. This might sound like a technicality to some, but for the PPAN community, simply getting the minister to acknowledge that STFC is facing budget cuts is already a success.
Among others, an important question comes up: “Would it be right to say that QR funding is being assumed to principally support bucket 1?” Indeed, in recent communications, UKRI has repeatedly classified QR research (QR standing for Quality Related) as being entirely part of the budget for bucket-1. In fact, it represents roughly 60% of the total budget in that bucket. However, Lord Vallance confessed, “No, it is going to support whatever the universities want it to support.” He even explicitly said that “that may be reallocated to other buckets, actually”. This obviously raises the question of whether curiosity-driven research is actually protected, as the government and UKRI have been repeating for months, and why QR research was entirely counted as contributing to bucket 1. Yet Lord Vallance simply said that “Sir Ian Chapman and the team—I think correctly—decided that trying to divide QR up in a complicated formula was bureaucratic”. Make of that what you will.
Lord Vallance then acknowledged poor communications from UKRI: “We can all agree that has not been done well”, he said. He then brought up the STFC case himself: “STFC is unusual in research councils because it has a very large infrastructure pot, and it also funds particle physics and astronomy”. “There is something that needs to be resolved there”, he repeated, “the basic, curiosity-driven, investigator-led research in that bucket needs to be protected”. Once again, such a statement is extremely important for PPAN. The minister is acknowledging that, beyond bad communication from UKRI, there is a problem here, and that cuts in STFC research are not in line with the idea that curiosity-driven research is protected, which Lord Vallance clearly appears to care about.
The committee kept asking: “We are hearing that there is a 30% reduction—the budget itself has not changed, but there is a shifting in the budget for STFC”, said the Baroness Willis of Summertown. “The ringfencing for the blue skies [Drayson partition] has gone from that structure. Is that understanding correct?” “No”, said Lord Vallance, “there was no hard partition in that. It has always been tensioned against the two things”. “The international spend has gone up by about 20% at a time when domestic spend has gone up at about 11% over a period of six or seven years. That has put big pressure on the overall system”, he said. “In previous years, the overspend in STFC has then been absorbed by the other research councils, so there has been a strange picture where other research councils have actually ended up having to give money into the system to cover that. We need to fix that. We need a sustainable, proper, well thought-through, structured way to fund the infrastructure. I am very determined that UKRI must find a way to look after so-called PPAN—particle physics and astronomy.” This statement, I think, kept many of my colleagues in suspense before finally prompting a collective sigh of relief.
Later during the meeting, Lord Drayson insisted: “This is not a new problem”, he said, “We saw this back in the financial crash of 2007-08. That is when we put in those protections to ensure that the other budgets were not hit.” “The Government needs to be able to recognise the long-term funding requirements for the science budget to protect these facilities”, he added. To which Liz Kendall responded that “We are here again, but our commitment to long-term funding of these areas is absolutely there”. This very much sounded as though DSIT is determined to protect PPAN science, but also facilities, against their potential cost increase. We will hold them to their word.
The minister was then extensively questioned about the new ‘bucket’ framework. “you will accept, I think, that the reorganisation that UKRI is bringing in—you have mentioned its looking to facilitate the removal of duplication and have cross-cutting thematic research—means that the complexity of the decision-making process is becoming more opaque”, said Lord Drayson. “I worry that by insisting that this over here is blue sky and this over here is applied, you risk leaving out or not concentrating enough on the most interesting things”, said Lord Stern of Brentford. “It is absolutely one of the risks”, responded Vallance, adding that UKRI “will look at how to make that work across buckets, and it is going to put in systems”. Unfortunately, nothing more concrete than that emerged from the meeting. But Lord Vallance made it very clear, “We view the first bucket as protecting that against what I have seen in companies and see as a risk in government, which is somebody looking at the £14.5 billion and saying ‘Well, it wouldn’t really matter if we didn’t do that for a while’. It matters enormously because once you lose that, you lose it for a very long time, and it is that work that ultimately creates wealth in 10 or 20 or 30 years’ time, even though I cannot tell you which bits of it are going to create wealth.” Again, such a commitment that the government is going to protect blue skies science is essential for PPAN.
Many other important things were raised during the rest of this hearing, but this part is what mattered the most to the PPAN community. As we will see later, the notion that curiosity-driven and PPAN science must be protected clearly contrasts with a very different attitude from UKRI…
PPAN Early Career Researchers and Advanced Fellows Raise Concerns with STFC and UKRI — Only to Be Dismissed
The same day, a delegation of early-career researchers (postdoctoral researchers and PhD students) and advanced fellows (holding advanced fellowships such as the Ernest Rutherford, Future Leader, or Royal Society Research Fellowships) from all components of the PPAN community were invited for a ‘consultation’ meeting with Sir Ian Chapman (CEO of UKRI), Prof. Michele Dougherty (head of STFC), and Prof. Graham Blair (STFC Executive Director of Programmes), accompanied by an external observer from the Institute of Physics, Elizabeth Chamberlain. “I would be happy to meet with you to discuss the situation so that we can explain the details and discuss your suggestions”, Sir Ian Chapman wrote in his invitation two weeks before the meeting.
We came prepared. We gathered a team of representatives, with people from all PPAN areas of research and various career stages. We sent the CEO of UKRI a list of questions a week before the meeting so that our suggestions could better reflect the realities on the ground. Our questions were ignored. UKRI is certainly busy these days. We therefore refined our arguments and developed proposals that, in our view, represented the minimum needed to support our community.
Yet we ran into a wall. To be fair, the meeting format allowed an open discussion, in which both sides could clearly express their ideas, which we were particularly grateful for. But what emerged from the meeting was a profound disconnect between the alarms raised by the PPAN community—based on scientific excellence and sovereignty over key research capabilities and highly-qualified scientists—and the arguments advanced by both UKRI and STFC representatives, exclusively based on accounting cost-reduction arguments.
“You know why we’re here. 30% cuts.” began Dr Kirsty Duffy. But that’s not how they see it. Indeed, from the UKRI perspective, STFC must have a flat budget, as all other councils do, and if STFC costs increase, it must accept corresponding cuts to its grant funding. It is as simple as that, and at no point during the meeting did either Sir Ian Chapman or Michele Dougherty consider a different possibility. From the PPAN point of view, things are really different: “not only the expected cuts, but the current delay has already removed a cohort of ECRs”, said Dr Simon Williams. “Rebuilding is not a matter of returning money or not making a similar cut”, he said, “has the effect been forecast on the output of the community?” “I don’t know”, admits Sir Ian Chapman. “We have a budget, and we have to work within it. It’s where it is from where we are”, repeats Prof Dougherty. And that was it.
ECRs have asked repeatedly for details of the cost overruns and where they come from—this was part of the formal request for information sent before the meeting, and multiple requests for that information during the meeting. Unfortunately, this information has not been provided, and ECRs expressed that this leads the community to feel it is a deliberate decision by UKRI to cut PPAN in favour of facilities, particularly given that the overall STFC budget will be flat. Sir Ian Chapman said that the main driver of cost pressures was starting too many projects, and that energy costs were a small fraction (which appears to contradict previous public statements). Prof Dougherty said “the majority of the cut is within STFC, where the vast majority of the increase in costs comes”, although Sir Ian Chapman said that no decision on how cost savings would be apportioned between PPAN and STFC facilities had been made yet.
Probably the only positive outcome of this meeting: Prof Dougherty clarified that a 30% cut is the “worst case scenario” and that the Science Board has been asked to put together scenarios for 10%, 20%, and 30% cuts. She clarified that this was relative to the fiscal year 2024 budget, and that the PPAN grants have already been cut 15% compared to that. So perhaps we should have considered ourselves fortunate, as a 10% scenario would mean the grant line will be going up again, slightly… Michele Dougherty said she will take those scenarios to UKRI and the Science Minister before they reach a final decision.
Advanced fellows made the case that existing cuts have already hurt the astronomy community very badly: “The funding gap in departments had the direct effect that people can no longer be named on grants”, said Laura Wolz. “People going abroad, not finding other positions, those are real effects with real consequences”. “The leadership we have internationally will be undermined if funding changes overnight”, added Dr Harriett Watson. “Any ECR in this room wants to be an international leader, but the pipeline is cut short if we remove funding”, she said. The least we would have hoped for is for UKRI to listen to the concerns, acknowledge that it is critical and formulate the intention to bring that problem to the government in one way or the other to attempt to solve it. The reaction we encountered, however, was rather less encouraging. “Do you accept that this is happening now?” insisted Dr Williams, “the effects of those cuts and delays are already leading to losing a generation of ECRs, who are leaving outside of the UK and won’t come back”, he said. “Yes, I grasp we will lose some postdocs as a result. I hope we don’t lose all. I can’t see a scenario where we would sign on consolidated grants that only cover academic staff time.” A comforting thought for ECRs: they might not be completely wiped out after all… “Perhaps some crumbs of comfort”, adds Sir Ian Chapman. “In a previous job, we had to implement a 30% budget cut. For three years, we had no PhD students and no postdocs, and we had to make compulsory redundancies among staff. It was a bleak period, and everything was under challenge. But today that community is in rude health, and its budget has been growing year on year.” The message is clear. We need to accept that PPAN will be hurt to unprecedented levels, but to look at the bright side: Time heals all wounds.
We also raised the issue of the Infrastructure Fund in light of the cancellation of some PPAN projects, in particular the LHCb upgrade. Both STFC and UKRI stressed that projects in other councils were also cut, but the nature of the damage to our international reputation was raised. Sir Ian Chapman repeated that the funding had not been awarded, but we insisted that funding had been allocated with the award subject to business case approval, for which UKRI had not read the business case. Sir Ian told us that all funding was subject to spending review and that tough decisions needed to be made. Prof. Dougherty noted that she recused herself from the Investment Advisory Committee’s decision-making process.
One “upside” that UKRI is always keen to remind the community is that PPAN research might be able to access funds from other buckets, through, for instance, AI and quantum-oriented projects. An upside that, Ian Chapman admits, “is not accessible yet”. “Is it dangerous to cut PPAN, which is more blue sky and where much of quantum and AI came from, for something that gives growth now but maybe not sovereignty in the future?” asked Dr Simon Williams. “Complicated answer”, says Chapman, “not all within our gift”, he confesses.
And this is something we are all afraid of in PPAN, including for physicists who are experts in machine learning but whose purpose is entirely curiosity-driven. So I asked the CEO of UKRI, “People working on AI within the PPAN community are actually afraid that they may not be able to access other buckets that easily. Will part of the budget dedicated to AI actually be guaranteed to be accessible to PPAN research?” “Well,” said Sir Ian, “it will be open to everybody, and accessible to you, but money will go to highest-impact applications…”. The idea of partitioning the budget from other buckets so a fraction of it is guaranteed to go to PPAN science is not on the table, Ian Chapman confirmed to me after the meeting, as the idea of the buckets is to get rid of “disciplinary rigidity”. In other words, the amount of funding accessible to PPAN from other buckets cannot be quantified.
The idea of UKRI providing STFC with more money from councils that have decreasing cost forecasts is also not an option: “In previous years, STFC has gone overboard, and others compensated […] Imagine being in medical, how would you feel about this?” answers Chapman. I thus asked, “If it is the case that UKRI doesn’t have enough money to rescue PPAN research, then should UKRI not ask the government for more money specifically for STFC, so UKRI doesn’t have to sacrifice an entire field of research?” “We do that every day of every year”, says Chapman. One would hope so.
In short, none of our concerns can be reasonably addressed; the blame is on past decisions from STFC and UKRI, and the best UKRI and STFC can do now is to optimise the way they will implement cuts, through an exercise of reprioritisation. As representatives of the PPAN community in this meeting, needless to say that these conclusions were far from satisfactory.
The SIT Select Committee Rescues PPAN from STFC ‘Cutting Its Tree by the Roots’
The following day, on Wednesday 4th of March, two panels were heard by the Science, Innovation, and Technology select committee, in the House of Commons. Prof Jon Butterworth, Prof Catherine Heymans (Royal Astronomer of Scotland), and Dr Simon Williams represented the PPAN community and explained to the committee why the expected 30% cuts to PPAN grant funding announced by STFC and UKRI would be devastating for the country. After that, Prof Michele Dougherty, head of STFC and the Royal Astronomer of England, explained to the committee why she considers such cuts necessary, despite UKRI as a whole seeing its budget increase.
The first panel made very clear statements regarding the importance of PPAN science and how devastating a 30% cut would be for all the existing programmes and our international reputation. Prof Heymans started by listing the many international astronomy projects that are at risk because of these cuts. “The Vera Rubin Observatory is the biggest camera in the world, we have started making a movie of the universe” she said, and “this sort of cut means we will not be able to process that data”. Prof Butterworth reminded the committee that the LHC is “the most powerful microscope we’ve ever built”, and highlighted how essential LHCb is “to scrutinise the origins of our universe”. “Without it”, he warned, “we may end up missing some very key data there”. Prof Heymans added, “This is what gets people into physics to study at university, but then they go out and do all the amazing things. To cut these blue-skies areas of research, which are the gateway for these very important areas for the growth of our country, this is really not what the UK should be doing right now”. Freddie van Mierlo MP asked, “Does this impact how we are seen internationally?” Prof Butterworth did not hesitate to answer: “Very much”. Dame Chi Onwurah MP then asked “if funding was available in two years, would we be able to get back in?” Butterworth answered that we would try but “we would certainly not be leading anymore”.
Dr Williams then stressed how critical these cuts would be (and already are) for hiring early-career researchers, such as postdocs and PhD students. “ECRs tend to be where the economic growth comes from”, he said, “cutting at this level would be catastrophic for UK science, very much like killing the tree by cutting the roots: you might not notice it for a while, but time will come when you do”. Dr Lauren Sullivan MP asked whether it would be beneficial for ECRs if a transition mechanism, for instance, funding extensions, were provided to ensure that the workforce is not lost while the funding framework is being changed. “I agree”, said Dr Williams, “the consultation should have been done before the change. The uncertainty that has been injected into the system is catastrophic.”
After these concerns were raised, the committee questioned Prof Dougherty, who mostly blamed the previous governance of UKRI and STFC, invoking “an overabundance of ambition” leading to a “difficult shortfall” she had to handle in the best way possible. This was not, she said, “what I signed up for”. She added, “All I can talk to is what I’ve been dealing with since I arrived”. Regarding the UK’s international reputation, she sadly accepted, “it does weaken our standing, certainly”.
Michele Dougherty also insisted that for UKRI to find a quick solution to the problem, “we need to share with UKRI what the impact of these cuts is, then a final decision can be made”. “Ian Chapman is very well aware that the community […] hoping that he will see what the impact is and whether there is a way to mitigate that impact, but I cannot speak for him”, she said.
Nonetheless, Martin Wrigley MP insisted, “we heard the budget of UKRI is increasing, so they are losing, who is winning?” Prof Dougherty said, “I do not have responsibility for these new buckets”. Martin Wrigley MP is therefore not convinced: “it sounds to me like you need to be more creative in your allocation of your expanding budget to your existing people rather than projects.”, but Dougherty answered she is not responsible for the way money can be accessed from other buckets for AI and quantum, and the only thing she can do is to tell her community that “there is real potential there”, which Wrigley considered “too passive in accepting what you’re being given”.
“There are other things that could be done”, says the Rt Hon Kit Malthouse MP, “as for example, reclassifying subscriptions that you pay as international treaty obligations”. “I am having that conversation with Ian Chapman, and with DSIT as well”, says Dougherty. But Rt Hon Kit Malthouse MP insisted that “UKRI’s budget over the years has been sort of manipulated to ensure that the DSIT budget is fully spent […] There is flexibility in there, so if you are having that conversation and it is resulting in 30% cuts for some of these, should we be saying to the Minister next time we get them in front of us, ‘Why did you say no to Professor Dougherty?’“. “Nobody has said no yet” stresses the head of STFC, “but I have been asked to look at the impact that the 30% will have. I need to follow through on that while I am having this conversation.”
“The extent of the impact on our existing science, scientists and early-career researchers is unacceptable”, concludes Dame Chi Onwurah, “can you give a commitment that you will look into bringing funding to close that gap on the short and medium term?”. “Yes” said Prof Dougherty. Needless to say the PPAN community now looks forward to seeing these words put into action.
Taken together, these meetings reveal a striking contrast. On the one hand, ministers and parliamentarians appear increasingly aware that the current trajectory risks serious damage to UK particle physics and astronomy. On the other hand, UKRI and STFC leadership insist that the constraints of the current funding framework leave them little room for manoeuvre. The result is a situation in which the problem is widely acknowledged, but its resolution remains uncertain. Ideas were proposed during these meetings that are all worth exploring, but will certainly require seeking further approval from the government. Dr Dougherty has committed to find short term solutions to mitigate the damage currently inflicted on the PPAN community, but it is unclear how.
The coming months will therefore be decisive in determining whether these warnings translate into concrete action, or whether the UK will accept the long-term consequences of cutting one of its most internationally successful scientific communities.
Dr Lucien Heurtier
London, 07/03/2026
#CatherineHeymans #JonButterworth #MicheleDougherty #PPAN #STFC #STFCCrisis #STFCFunding #UKRI -
Pakistan ARFC Deploys Fatah-II Missile in Training Launch
Pakistan's Army Rocket Force Command has successfully launched the Fatah-II missile in a training exercise, showcasing its unique trajectory and marking a significant milestone in crew proficiency and readiness. This latest test validates the system's technical capabilities and paves the way for enhanced accuracy and…
#Pakistan #FatahiiMissile #ArmyRocketForceCommand #InterServicesPublicRelations #Ispr
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Lors de son périple en direction des lunes glacées de #Jupiter, la sonde #JUICE de l'ESA a analysé, au moyen de ses #instruments embarqués, la trajectoire ainsi que la composition de la #comete interstellaire 3I/ATLAS, quelques jours après son passage à proximité du #Soleil.
Il est ainsi apparu que la comète 3I/ATLAS libérait quelques 2000 kg d'eau par seconde dans l'espace, que cette vapeur d'eau provenait majoritairement de grains de #poussière glacée composant sa #coma, ...
(1/2) ...
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Lors de son périple en direction des lunes glacées de #Jupiter, la sonde #JUICE de l'ESA a analysé, au moyen de ses #instruments embarqués, la trajectoire ainsi que la composition de la #comete interstellaire 3I/ATLAS, quelques jours après son passage à proximité du #Soleil.
Il est ainsi apparu que la comète 3I/ATLAS libérait quelques 2000 kg d'eau par seconde dans l'espace, que cette vapeur d'eau provenait majoritairement de grains de #poussière glacée composant sa #coma, ...
(1/2) ...
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Lors de son périple en direction des lunes glacées de #Jupiter, la sonde #JUICE de l'ESA a analysé, au moyen de ses #instruments embarqués, la trajectoire ainsi que la composition de la #comete interstellaire 3I/ATLAS, quelques jours après son passage à proximité du #Soleil.
Il est ainsi apparu que la comète 3I/ATLAS libérait quelques 2000 kg d'eau par seconde dans l'espace, que cette vapeur d'eau provenait majoritairement de grains de #poussière glacée composant sa #coma, ...
(1/2) ...
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Lors de son périple en direction des lunes glacées de #Jupiter, la sonde #JUICE de l'ESA a analysé, au moyen de ses #instruments embarqués, la trajectoire ainsi que la composition de la #comete interstellaire 3I/ATLAS, quelques jours après son passage à proximité du #Soleil.
Il est ainsi apparu que la comète 3I/ATLAS libérait quelques 2000 kg d'eau par seconde dans l'espace, que cette vapeur d'eau provenait majoritairement de grains de #poussière glacée composant sa #coma, ...
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🅱️🅱️ BondyBlog 🅱️🅱️ Podcast & photos : Les comptines de Bobigny, saison 3 !: Pour la troisième année consécutive, le Bondy Blog et la Maison de l’enfance Mozart ont mené ensemble Les Comptines de Bobigny, un projet… #Bobigny #Podcast #EducationAuxMedias #Photographie #TrajectoiresMigratoires
Podcast & photos : Les comptin... -
🅱️🅱️ BondyBlog 🅱️🅱️ Podcast & photos : Les comptines de Bobigny, saison 3 !: Pour la troisième année consécutive, le Bondy Blog et la Maison de l’enfance Mozart ont mené ensemble Les Comptines de Bobigny, un projet… #Bobigny #Podcast #EducationAuxMedias #Photographie #TrajectoiresMigratoires
Podcast & photos : Les comptin... -
One good thing to realize about #IFT4 is that entry was less than 1/17th the heating rate you need to handle to return from cislunar trajectories. To put into context what Orion and Apollo (or, soon, returning #CE6 samples) handled vs. this. And what Starship would need to handle to have been used for human return from the #moon (say if Dear Moon hadn't been cancelled). With margins, things need to improve about two orders of magnitude for #Starship to be a safe human return S/C, probably
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Prophesy Happening
By Duane 'Chili' Yazzie, #Dine', #Shiprock, #NavajoNation
via #CensoredNews, January 6, 2025"The prophecies that foretold the shifting of the world to a new reality are happening; it will be humankind self-destructing or life rebirth to rebalance and return to the original design.
"A life of balance and keeping of the original design is lived by peoples who maintain the Original Instructions destined by the Great Creator. The Indigenous of the western hemisphere lived this idyllic life before the imperialist intrusion. A requisite of the Original Instructions for a lifeway of balance is to
understand that all of creation are intrinsically related and to regard all as relatives. The other requisite is compassion, we were to be kind, take care of each other and the earth.
"The Hopi prophesy story say that mankind would be on separate life journeys. One, the path predicated on the Original Instructions; the path originally intended for a perpetual earth life. The
other, the path of departure precipitated by ego, greed for materiality and power. The prophecies tell about when humanity will choose to continue on the path of departure from the Original Instructions or realize it is on the wrong path and realign."The Mayan calendar tells about the epictical phases in the human journey, inclusive with time endings and beginnings, the shifting of realities. The life phase we now live is shifting, we will transition into a virtuous new beginning, or it will be the beginning of the end time. Human conduct determines the
next phase."The fate of the world appears to have been decided with the trajectory of the human life path, with the divisiveness and naked hatred swirling throughout the world. This condition exacerbated by the
vicious actions of dominating players to the extreme of, the culture of hate, #selfishness and decadence of the elite becoming acceptable norms."The #WealthyElite control the systems of society and government including the apparatus of justice, manipulating the systems to assure 'justice', more wealth and power for the elite. The self-righteous, self-serving dominating elite have chosen the path with the dark ending, the disappearing The departure from the Original Instructions is apexed by the fallacy of attempting to separate the physical and spiritual paradigms. The great fallacy was an attempt to justify imperialist #genocide, #oppression, theft, #exploitation, and #colonization; perhaps, the naïve belief was, by dichotomizing the
physical and spiritual, the purveyors of imperialism would somehow not be spiritually liable."Through the political storms, the enemy of the earth has been greatly empowered, this vengeful monster with seemingly infinite worldly powers looms over our earth with intent to feed its insatiable
hunger for more wealth and power. The world’s true #Indigenous, peoples of good heart and earth advocates who want a continued earth life confront these overpowering unrelenting forces. Our lands are under imminent renewed assault."The monster is rooted to #WhiteSupremacy, the white supremacy that tormented #IndigenousPeoples
of the world for centuries. It is driven by the false conviction that it is ordained to have dominion over the earth. It has no principled conscious, in its arrogant ignorance it has not a clue, that it only
accelerates the demise of the life of the planet."We, #WaterProtectors and #EarthDefenders stand strong, we will defend the #EarthMother. We have no option but to protect the future of the grandchildren. We choose for the life of our Earth Mother.
"The monster may devour us, all we can say to it is Bring It On!
"We remain."
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2025/01/prophesy-happening-by-chili-yazzie.html
#HopiProphecy #Colonialism #Capitalism #Koyaaniqatsi #LifeOutOfBalance #ProphecyRock #TwoPaths #PurificationDay -
Mouse: P.I. For Hire Is Selling Well And Bringing In The Cheese
Three cheese for Mouse: P.I. For Hire, as publisher Playside has revealed that the game is selling pretty well.
According to their latest press release, the boomer-shooter/noir detective game has sold 730,000 copies, enough for the company to upgrade their predicted financial results for the year, which in turn indicates it has probably already exceeded their expectations.
AdvertisementsPlaySide says that their date indicates console sales account for 50% of the sales, with the other half being PC.
In total, it has brought in $21.4m in revenue, equalling “Approximately US$13.0m” net profit for PlaySide. PlaySide states that their contract with developer “prioritises the recovery of PlaySide’s milestone payments, publishing and marketing costs from initial sales”. Those expenses have apparently already been recouped.
Playside is now expecting a higher revenue for the year by several million: “The upgrade primarily reflects stronger than-expected unit sales and ongoing wishlist conversion of MOUSE: P.I. For Hire across PC and console platforms.”
Mouse P.I For Hire Review – A Boomer-Shooter For Cheese-Lovers
A boomer-shooter dressed up in endlessly charming 1930’s cartoon visuals and a noir detective vibe, with about a milllion cheese puns per second. It’s a bit basic in the shooting department, but the graphics more than make up for it.
by Baden RonieApril 27, 2026“The continued performance of MOUSE: P.I. For Hire has been really pleasing andreflects the strength of the IP, the quality and persistence of effort from all teams, and the depth of player and social engagement we are seeing across every platform,” said Benn Skender, Playside Studios CEO. “The upgrade to FY26 revenue guidance reflects both the title’s launch trajectory and our confidence in its ongoing commercial performance. We remain focused on supporting the title across its full lifecycle while continuing to execute against our broader publishing and development pipeline for Game of Thrones: War for Westeros, the Dumb Ways franchise and Dew.”
I imagine the game will continue to sell strongly throughout the year as the price drops and word of mouth keeps spreading, It’s a great little game, and probably worth playing just for the visual style alone. Of course, you’re still getting a solid shooter and a fun story on top of that.
#MousePIForHire #News #PlayStation #Switch #Xbox -
Satellites - C'est ce qu'on appelle une réaction en chaine, le même phénomène moteur que celui des explosions nucléaires. Ici, c'est appliqué aux satellites en orbite basse qui sont devenus tellement nombreux et dont le nazi milliardaire d'Afrique du Sud pourrissant toutes les sociétés veut encore augmenter le nombre à plus d'un million alors que c'est déjà un embouteillage dérivant à 27 000 km/h : le moindre événement perturbateur, vent solaire, orage magnétique ou autre pouvant rendre aléatoires et chaotiques les contrôles à distance parant aux collisions, et qui arrivera, va en déclencher une cascade exponentielle exactement comme une réaction nucléaire à masse critique : complètement et parfaitement incontrôlable. Ceci d'autant plus violemment que tout satellite désintégré se transforme en un nuage de débris tout autant à très haute vitesse, chacun d'eux étant capable de déchirer et/ou pulvériser d'autres satellites. Le réseau satellitaire de basse altitude peut donc se retrouver totalement atomisé lui-même, désintégrant du même coup de façon aussi brutale et soudaine l'essentiel des télécommunications, internet inclus, observations satellitaires, etc. Tout ça juste sur un gros orage magnétique ou perturbation solaire comme il y en a quasiment tout le temps à l'échelle géologique.
Je me demande si le "génie" autoproclamé "Asperger" a, dans son délire mégalomaniaque spatial, été assez intelligent pour le voir venir et j'ai bien l'impression que la réponse est non vu son objectif d'un million de satellites privés.
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Traduction de https://scitechdaily.com/2-8-days-to-disaster-scientists-warn-low-earth-orbit-could-suddenly-collapse/
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2,8 jours avant la catastrophe : des scientifiques mettent en garde contre l'effondrement brutal de tout le réseau de satellites en orbite bassePar SciTechDaily.com - 28 avril 2026
[Image : Débris spatiaux – Satellites en orbite autour de la Terre - Une nouvelle étude suggère que les réseaux satellitaires modernes sont bien plus fragiles qu’il n’y paraît, le risque de collisions orbitales augmentant fortement en cas de perturbation des systèmes de contrôle. Crédit : Shutterstock]
Une nouvelle étude alerte que si les opérateurs de satellites perdent brusquement le contrôle suite à une perturbation majeure, une catastrophique série de collisions en orbite pourrait se produire en seulement 2,8 jours.
Une importante tempête solaire n’a pas besoin de détruire directement les satellites pour provoquer une crise. Il suffit qu’elle interrompe le suivi, les commandes et les manœuvres d’évitement qui maintiennent sous contrôle l’environnement satellitaire actuellement de plus en plus dense. Ce risque s’accroît à mesure qu'on surcharge l’orbite terrestre basse de méga-constellations de satellites, de vastes réseaux de satellites lancés et remplacés à un rythme soutenu. Ces engins spatiaux fournissent l’accès à Internet, les communications, la surveillance météorologique, la navigation et d’autres services. Ceci étant, ça concourt à la congestion d'une région orbitale où les objets se déplacent à environ 27 000 km/h.
Une nouvelle étude, menée par Sarah Thiele, qui a débuté ses travaux en tant que doctorante à l'Université de Colombie-Britannique et travaille désormais à Princeton, tente de mesurer la fragilité de ce système. L'étude introduit un indicateur appelé « Horloge CRASH » (Collision Realization And Significant Harm), qui évalue le délai avant qu'une grave série de collisions ne se produise si les satellites ne peuvent plus être manœuvrés ou si les opérateurs perdent la possibilité de connaître leur position. Le résultat est alarmant. À partir des données du catalogue de satellites de juin 2025, les chercheurs ont calculé que si les opérateurs perdent la possibilité d'envoyer les ordres de manœuvre d'évitement, une dantesque série de collisions pourrait se produire en environ 2,8 jours. Une version plus large de l'Horloge CRASH prenant en compte toutes les interactions des objets spatiaux en orbite donne un délai de 5,5 jours. En 2018, avant l'expansion rapide des méga-constellations de satellites, ce délai était de 164 jours.
Les tempêtes solaires : une menace systémique
Les satellites en orbite terrestre basse ne suivent pas des trajectoires fixes. Leur fonctionnement repose sur le maintien à poste, la mise à jour des données de suivi et les manœuvres d'évitement de collision. Selon le dernier rapport bisannuel de SpaceX cité dans l'étude, les satellites Starlink ont effectué 144 404 manœuvres d'évitement entre le 1ᵉʳ décembre 2024 et le 31 mai 2025. Cela représente en moyenne 41 manœuvres par satellite et par an, soit une manœuvre d'évitement toutes les 1,8 minutes sur l'ensemble du réseau Starlink.
[Photo : Trajectoires des satellites Starlink (février 2024). Crédit : NASA Scientific Visualization Studio]
Lors d'une tempête solaire majeure, ce système, pourtant géré avec précision, peut devenir plus difficile à contrôler. Les tempêtes solaires réchauffent la haute atmosphère terrestre, provoquant son expansion. Cette expansion accroît la résistance de l'air sur les satellites, les dévie de leurs trajectoires, oblige les opérateurs à consommer du carburant pour les maintenir à leur altitude et rend moins fiables la prévision de leur orbite. La "tempête de Gannon" de mai 2024 a démontré l'ampleur des perturbations que peut engendrer ce phénomène : près de la moitié des satellites actifs en orbite terrestre basse ont dû être manœuvrés à cause de l'augmentation de la résistance de l'atmosphère. L'étude relève que ces nombreux repositionnements combinés à une résistance imprévisible ont considérablement compliqué l'évaluation des risques de collision pendant et après la tempête. Le danger s'accroît si une tempête perturbe également la navigation, les communications ou le contrôle au sol. Dans ce cas, les satellites deviennent plus difficiles à suivre juste au moment où ils deviennent plus lents à réagir.
Pourquoi une seule collision est cruciale
Le syndrome de Kessler est la version la plus connue de ce type de catastrophe. Des collisions en cascade saturent l'orbite de débris et finissent par rendre extrêmement difficile le lancement et l'exploitation de vaisseaux spatiaux en toute sécurité. Néanmoins ce scénario d'emballement prendrait des années, voire des décennies, à se concrétiser. Les chercheurs ont introduit un nouvel indicateur, l'horloge CRASH (Collision Realization And Significant Harm) qui estime la rapidité avec laquelle une collision majeure, génératrice de débris, pourrait se produire si le contrôle et la coordination des satellites actifs étaient perturbés, ce afin de bien voir le danger beaucoup plus immédiat. Même un seul impact à grande vitesse peut avoir des conséquences à long terme. Une collision entre de gros objets peut créer des milliers de fragments, chacun constituant un nouveau danger. L'environnement actuel des débris spatiaux est encore marqué par l'essai anti-satellite chinois de 2007 impliquant Fengyun 1C et la collision de 2009 entre Iridium 33 et Kosmos 2251. La nouvelle étude révèle que les zones les plus denses des réseaux satellitaires actuels sont particulièrement préoccupantes. L'enveloppe principale de Starlink à environ 550 kilomètres d'altitude atteint des densités plus de dix fois supérieures au pic de densité des débris suivis vers 800 kilomètres d'altitude.
Une marge d'erreur de plus en plus réduite
Les chercheurs estiment que sur l'ensemble de l'orbite terrestre basse des croisements à moins d'un kilomètre de distance se produisent toutes les 36 secondes. Les rencontres entre au moins deux satellites ont lieu environ toutes les 41 secondes, celles entre un satellite Starlink et un autre objet spatial environ toutes les 47 secondes. Un croisement rapproché n'équivaut pas à une collision. Les opérateurs évaluent la distance, la taille du satellite, l'incertitude et la probabilité de collision avant de décider de le déplacer ou pas. Quoi qu'il en soit, la fréquence de ces rencontres démontre à quel point les orbites dépendent d'un contrôle rapide, précis et coordonné. Les tempêtes solaires majeures sont rares mais bien réelles. La tempête de Gannon de mai 2024 a été la plus puissante tempête géomagnétique de ces dernières décennies. L'événement de Carrington en septembre 1859 était au moins deux fois plus intense, selon l'étude, et a comporté deux fortes tempêtes en quelques jours. Si une tempête de l'ampleur de Carrington se produisait aujourd'hui elle frapperait un monde fortement dépendant des satellites pour les communications, la synchronisation, l'observation de la Terre, les prévisions météorologiques, les opérations militaires, la gestion des catastrophes, la finance et la navigation. Elle impacterait un environnement orbital bien plus encombré qu'il y a seulement dix ans. En plus du risque de collisions, les méga-constellations de satellites participent aussi à la multiplication des débris spatiaux, aux rentrées atmosphériques accidentelles, aux perturbations des observations d'astronomie et à la pollution atmosphérique. L'étude ne préconise pas la suppression des satellites, elle pointe une vulnérabilité critique. L'orbite terrestre basse repose désormais sur un contrôle constant et précis et si ce contrôle est interrompu, la fenêtre d'opportunité permettant d'éviter une série de collisions majeure pourrait se réduire à quelques jours seulement.
Référence : "An orbital house of cards: Frequent megaconstellation close conjunctions" (= Un château de cartes orbital : les fréquentes conjonctions rapprochées de mégaconstellations) par Sarah Thiele, Skye R. Heiland, Aaron C. Boley et Samantha M. Lawler, 10 décembre 2025, arXiv.
DOI : https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2512.09643
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#Science #Astrophysics #Satellites #Musk #Starlink #SolarStorms #SpaceDebris #SpaceWeather -
En el último número del año de la revista literaria Beyond Dimensions, aparece el arte de Laura Quintanilla, artista plástica mexicana con trayectoria internacional. Poesía de regiones de hispanoamérica y, publicada por primera vez al español, la conferencia que la poeta Lola Ridge diera en 1919 (10 años antes que Una habitación propia de VIrginia Woolf) sobre el papel histórico y en prospectiva de la mujer como creadora.
https://beyonddimensionsrevista.com/
#arte #art #literatura #literature #bilingual #poesia #poetry
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RT @laviedesidees - Perec aux Archives de Paris: Quelles traces de la vie de Georges Perec portent les archives publiques ? Comment éclairent-elles l'histoire populaire de Belleville autant que la trajectoire de l'écrivain ? Une exposition sur l'enfance de l'auteur explore ces pistes, aux archives de Paris. https://laviedesidees.fr/Perec-aux-Archives-de-Paris
#archives #georgesperec #ADP #archivesdeParis #exposition #veille
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RT @laviedesidees - Perec aux Archives de Paris: Quelles traces de la vie de Georges Perec portent les archives publiques ? Comment éclairent-elles l'histoire populaire de Belleville autant que la trajectoire de l'écrivain ? Une exposition sur l'enfance de l'auteur explore ces pistes, aux archives de Paris. https://laviedesidees.fr/Perec-aux-Archives-de-Paris
#archives #georgesperec #ADP #archivesdeParis #exposition #veille
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RT @laviedesidees - Perec aux Archives de Paris: Quelles traces de la vie de Georges Perec portent les archives publiques ? Comment éclairent-elles l'histoire populaire de Belleville autant que la trajectoire de l'écrivain ? Une exposition sur l'enfance de l'auteur explore ces pistes, aux archives de Paris. https://laviedesidees.fr/Perec-aux-Archives-de-Paris
#archives #georgesperec #ADP #archivesdeParis #exposition #veille
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Autisme et (péri)ménopause : des enjeux invisibilisés
L’autisme, étudié surtout chez les hommes et les enfants, a historiquement laissé dans l’ombre les parcours des femmes autistes, notamment les périodes biologiques spécifiques comme la maternité, le cycle menstruel et la ménopause. Ces périodes peuvent être bouleversantes pour les personnes concernées. La périménopause et la ménopause sont des moments où s’entremêlent des transformations corporelles et émotionnelles, et une modification de la perception sociale. Les spécificités des TND entraînent leur propre symptomatique, avec avec des impacts peu reconnus. On fait le point.
Cet article propose le téléchargement d’une fiche pratique, le téléchargement de l’outil Menstruomètre, et des liens complémentaires en fin d’article.
La ménopause
Définition
La ménopause c’est l’arrêt définitif des menstruations, lié à l’arrêt de la fonction ovarienne. Elle est diagnostiquée après 12 mois sans règles, en l’absence d’autre cause. Elle survient en moyenne vers 51 ans, avec une grande variabilité individuelle. C’est le résultat d’une diminution progressive puis d’un effondrement de la production des hormones sexuelles ovariennes, surtout les œstrogènes et la progestérone. C’est une étape physiologique normale de la vie.
Les symptômes de la ménopause sont variables en nature, en intensité et en durée : d’une personne à une autre, le vécu est différent, mais aussi l’impact sur le confort de vie.
Périménopause
La périménopause (ou transition ménopausique) c’est la période avant la ménopause proprement dite. Elle peut commencer plusieurs années avant l’arrêt des règles, parfois dès la fin de la trentaine. Elle se caractérise par une instabilité hormonale marquée, avec des fluctuations importantes et imprévisibles des taux d’œstrogènes et de progestérone. Cette phase se termine un an après les dernières règles. C’est souvent la période la plus symptomatique et la plus difficile à vivre.
Symptômes courants
- Bouffées de chaleur, sueurs nocturnes
- Irritabilité, fatigue accrue, voire épuisement
- Palpitations cardiaques
- Douleurs articulaires et/ou musculaires
- Maux de tête, migraines
- Troubles du sommeil
- Troubles de la mémoire
- Troubles de la concentration, brouillard mental
- Troubles digestifs, ballonnements
- Changements corporels (forme du corps, état de la peau, démangeaisons, pilosité du visage…)
- Prise de poids
- Chute de cheveux, ongles cassants
- Difficultés urinaires
Ces symptômes courants sont souvent accompagnés de changements génitaux, en particulier :
- Diminution de la libido
- Sécheresse vaginale
- Sensibilité des seins
- Gêne, douleur ou démangeaison pendant les rapports
- Evolution du cycle menstruel (durée, intensité, importance des saignements)
Lors de la périménopause, on retrouve régulièrement au premier plan :
- Des troubles du sommeil sévères
- Une hypersensibilité émotionnelle
- Une irritabilité accrue
- Une anxiété majorée et une baisse de la tolérance au stress
- Des symptômes dépressifs
Les effets de la périménopause et de la ménopause peuvent avoir un retentissement fonctionnel, psychologique et social important.
La périménopause souffre d’un manque de sensibilisation, reste largement sous-diagnostiquée, et est encore fréquemment confondue avec des troubles psychiatriques, ce qui induit un risque fort de prise en charge inadaptée.
Stéréotypes
La ménopause – et tout ce qui va avec – est entourée d’un ensemble d’idées reçues ancrées dans les représentations sociales, médicales et culturelles, qui contribuent à l’invisibilisation de ses effets et à la délégitimation de l’expérience vécue par les personnes concernées.
Souvent présentée comme un événement ponctuel, limité à l’arrêt des règles et à quelques bouffées de chaleur, cette réduction contribue à minimiser les symptômes, à retarder leur reconnaissance et à maintenir l’idée que ça fait partie de la vie (au même titre que souffrir pendant les règles) et qu’il n’y aurait rien à comprendre ou accompagner.
La ménopause est marquée par une forte charge âgiste et sexiste, associée à une perte de valeur sociale, à la fin de la désirabilité, à une perte de compétence ou à une supposée instabilité émotionnelle. Ces stéréotypes alimentent une disqualification de la parole des personnes concernées. Dans le champ médical, les symptômes cognitifs, émotionnels ou anxieux sont souvent minimisés ou réduits à de la fragilité psychologique, sans exploration de la dimension hormonale.
L’invisibilisation de cette période se manifeste par un manque de recherche scientifique, de formation médicale et de sensibilisation. Les études restent insuffisantes, en particulier à propos des effets neurologiques, psy et fonctionnels à moyen et long terme. Cette carence nourrit les prises en charge inadaptées.
La ménopause est généralement considérée comme un problème strictement individuel, relevant de la sphère privée, voire de l’intime honteux. Cette conception empêche toute prise en compte collective, organisationnelle ou politique des effets de la périménopause, dans le monde du travail comme de la santé. Elle s’inscrit dans une longue tradition de pathologisation du corps féminin, dans laquelle la souffrance est tolérée tant qu’elle ne perturbe pas l’ordre social ou productif.
La ménopause est la plupart du temps pensée à travers une norme implicite : celle d’un corps féminin, valide, hétéro, cis, socialement intégré. Cette norme invisibilise les vécus des personnes handies, précaires, racisées et marginalisées, pour lesquelles cette période peut amplifier des vulnérabilités existantes. L’absence de prise en compte de cette dimension intersectionnelle renforce les inégalités de santé et contribue à une marginalisation pluridimensionnelle : être femme, être vieillissante, et ne pas correspondre aux normes dominantes.
Autisme et ménopause
Pour de nombreuses personnes autistes, et plus particulièrement les personnes sexisées, le diagnostic arrive tardivement. Dans ce contexte, la périménopause peut apparaître avant que la personne n’ait les clés pour comprendre son fonctionnement particulier. Les personnes AFAB autistes vivent à l’intersection d’une pression sociale normative forte (être sociable, performante, conforme au modèle féminin attendu) et d’un profil neurodéveloppemental qui amplifie les difficultés sociales et sensorielles. Cette intersection peut rendre les changements hormonaux comme la ménopause plus difficiles à comprendre et supporter.
Des vécus exacerbés
Les variations hormonales influencent des zones du cerveau impliquées dans l’humeur, la régulation émotionnelle, l’attention et la cognition sociale. Pendant la périménopause, ces fluctuations hormonales sont intenses et durables : cela implique une variation des symptômes attribués à l’autisme (mais aussi à d’autres TND) et une amplification des surcharges sensorielles ou de la dysrégulation émotionnelle.
La (péri)ménopause dans l’autisme s’accompagne très souvent de fluctuations émotionnelles intenses, de fatigue extrême, de troubles du sommeil exacerbés, de difficultés d’attention accrues.
La cooccurrence fréquente d’autisme et de TDAH complique encore l’expérience de la périménopause. Les difficultés d’attention, la charge cognitive, les fluctuations de dopamine, peuvent amplifier les symptômes ménopausiques, et rendre difficile la différenciation entre ce qui est lié aux hormones et ce qui est lié au fonctionnement autistique.
Chez de nombreuses personnes concernées, l’avancée en âge s’accompagne d’une intensification des manifestations de l’autisme, vécue comme à la fois incontrôlable et difficilement compréhensible. Cette amplification correspond à une modification de l’équilibre entre les capacités d’adaptation et les contraintes physiologiques, psychiques et sociales qui s’accumulent avec le temps. Ces phénomènes sont régulièrement rapportés dans le contexte de la (péri)ménopause.
À l’âge adulte, surtout à partir de la quarantaine, plusieurs facteurs convergent pour fragiliser les stratégies de compensation mises en place. A la charge mentale liée au travail, à la parentalité, aux responsabilités sociales, s’ajoutent des changements corporels et hormonaux qui perturbent la régulation émotionnelle, le sommeil, l’énergie et la tolérance sensorielle. Pour les personnes dont le fonctionnement repose sur des équilibres coûteux en énergie, ces variations entraînent une perte de capacité de masking.
Dans ce contexte, l’arrivée, même non identifiée, de la périménopause, peut aussi être à l’origine d’une découverte tardive de son autisme, au même titre que d’autres périodes à fortes variations hormonales.
Attention : les créations présentes sur ce site sont soumises au droit d’auteur. L’utilisation pour votre usage personnel est autorisé, mais aucune modification sans autorisation préalable de l’auteure n’est permise. Pour toute autre utilisation que personnelle, me contacter. Merci, en règle générale, de respecter le travail d’autrui.
TéléchargerUne invisibilité systémique
L’intersection entre autisme, âge et genre constitue un angle mort des politiques publiques, de la recherche scientifique et des pratiques de soin. Être une femme autiste vieillissante expose à une superposition de mécanismes de disqualification sociale, médicale et institutionnelle, qui se renforcent mutuellement. Cette configuration produit des formes spécifiques de vulnérabilité invisibilisée.
L’errance diagnostique entraîne une absence de compréhension du fonctionnement pendant une partie de la vie, avec des conséquences cumulatives sur la santé, l’estime de soi et la trajectoire socio-professionnelle. Le coût psychique du camouflage social s’accumule sur plusieurs décennies avant d’atteindre des seuils de rupture.
Le vieillissement féminin est constamment dévalorisé : la valeur sociale des femmes est largement corrélée à la productivité, y compris démographique, à la conformité relationnelle et à la disponibilité physique et émotionnelle.
L’autisme est profondément stigmatisé et mal compris. Chez l’adulte, il continue d’être perçu à travers des stéréotypes infantiles ou masculins. Cette méconnaissance favorise une invalidation systématique des besoins.
À l’intersection de ces dimensions, les femmes autistes vieillissantes sont privées de cadre de compréhension cohérent. Les difficultés sont fragmentées, ou renvoyées à des causes psychologiques individuelles, sans analyse globale. Cette fragmentation empêche les accompagnements adaptés, et favorise une psychiatrisation des vécus. Elle alimente une violence dans laquelle la personne doit s’adapter encore, sans que l’environnement ne soit interrogé.
Cette intersection d’oppressions se traduit par une invisibilisation statistique et politique. Les femmes autistes âgées sont peu représentées dans les études, rarement ciblées par les dispositifs d’accompagnement et quasi absentes des discours publics sur l’autisme ou le vieillissement.
Une problématique handicapante (ou handicapée ?)
Le manque de formation et de sensibilisation au corps, aux cycles menstruels et à la sexualité des femmes handicapées constitue une défaillance des politiques de santé, d’éducation et d’accompagnement. Cette carence vient d’une logique durable d’infantilisation, de contrôle et de désexualisation du handicap.
Les personnes repérées comme handies ont souvent un accès limité à l’éducation à la santé sexuelle et reproductive. Les informations relatives aux règles, aux variations hormonales, à la douleur, au consentement ou au plaisir sont absentes ou transmises de manière partielle, normative et infantilisante. Cette transmission déficiente empêche la construction d’un rapport sécurisé au corps. Elle installe une méconnaissance durable des signaux physiologiques, des variations normales et des situations nécessitant une prise en charge médicale.
Cette lacune est renforcée par des représentations sociales qui considèrent les femmes handies comme asexuées, éternellement mineures ou inaptes à comprendre leur propre corps. Ces représentations influencent les pratiques des milieux éducatifs, médico-sociaux ou de santé. Ces questions sont souvent minimisées ou traitées sous un angle gestionnaire, centré sur la prévention des risques plutôt que sur l’autonomie, le plaisir et le consentement.
La (péri)ménopause est elle aussi révélatrice de ces inégalités. L’absence de préparation et de repères favorise l’anxiété, la confusion et l’auto-disqualification, lorsque les symptômes sont interprétés comme une dégradation personnelle, une instabilité psychique ou une perte de capacités, plutôt que comme une étape identifiable de la vie.
Quelques outils
Une check list, pour soi, ou pour préparer une consultation
Voici une fiche pratique qui permet de cocher les symptômes qui interrogent concernant une possible périmenopause. On peut l’utiliser pour soi-même, ou la présenter en consultation auprès d’un·e médecin généraliste, d’un·e sage femme ou d’un·e gynécologue.
Attention : les créations présentes sur ce site sont soumises au droit d’auteur. L’utilisation pour votre usage personnel est autorisé, mais aucune modification sans autorisation préalable de l’auteure n’est permise. Pour toute autre utilisation que personnelle, me contacter. Merci, en règle générale, de respecter le travail d’autrui.
TéléchargerLe menstruomètre, pour communiquer sur son état et ses besoins
Le menstruomètre est un outil facilitant la communication avec les proches au quotidien, durant les périodes menstruelles. Son utilisation est détaillée dans un article spécifique. Il propose un complément spécifique aux personnes autistes et TDAH.
Attention : les créations présentes sur ce site sont soumises au droit d’auteur. L’utilisation pour votre usage personnel est autorisé, mais aucune modification sans autorisation préalable de l’auteure n’est permise. Pour toute autre utilisation que personnelle, me contacter. Merci, en règle générale, de respecter le travail d’autrui.
En savoir plus TéléchargerLe site Parlons Règles intègre un chatbot qui peut répondre aux questions courantes.
Ces vécus complexes, illustrées dans le cadre de l’autisme et de la (péri)ménopause, ne relèvent pas d’une fragilité individuelle, mais d’un système qui exige une adaptation constante aux normes dominantes, tout en invisibilisant celleux qui y parviennent au prix d’un épuisement profond.
Nous sommes, une fois de plus, au croisement du validisme et du patriarcat.
La difficulté à comprendre et anticiper le vécu difficile de la (péri)ménopause dans nos sociétés est le symptôme collectif d’un système de savoirs, de soins et de représentations qui échoue à penser la diversité humaine, à reconnaître l’impact du temps, du corps et des rapports de pouvoir, et à offrir des ressources accessibles à toustes.
Sources
- A la croisée du genre et de l’autisme
- Autisme et Ménopause aide Canada
- Les femmes autistes plus susceptibles de souffrir de la ménopause AFFA
- National Autistic Society: menopause
- Pourquoi tant de femmes neurodivergentes découvrent leur autisme ou leur TDAH au moment de la périménopause
Aller plus loin
- Pour les femmes de couleur, la ménopause est différente
- Tout est politique – La ménopause en marge
- Queer menopause (vidéo en anglais)
- Expériences de la ménopause chez les personnes non binaires et trans
- La ménopause et moi – quand on est non-binaire
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Tu es autiste, ou en questionnement sur un éventuel autisme te concernant ? Tu veux rejoindre un espace en ligne pour discuter ?
Clique iciDerniers Articles
Ministère des trucs importants #2 – La santé mentale
Autisme et fêtes : Des outils pour expliquer aux proches comment s’adapter
-
Autisme et (péri)ménopause : des enjeux invisibilisés
L’autisme, étudié surtout chez les hommes et les enfants, a historiquement laissé dans l’ombre les parcours des femmes autistes, notamment les périodes biologiques spécifiques comme la maternité, le cycle menstruel et la ménopause. Ces périodes peuvent être bouleversantes pour les personnes concernées. La périménopause et la ménopause sont des moments où s’entremêlent des transformations corporelles et émotionnelles, et une modification de la perception sociale. Les spécificités des TND entraînent leur propre symptomatique, avec avec des impacts peu reconnus. On fait le point.
Cet article propose le téléchargement d’une fiche pratique, le téléchargement de l’outil Menstruomètre, et des liens complémentaires en fin d’article.
La ménopause
Définition
La ménopause c’est l’arrêt définitif des menstruations, lié à l’arrêt de la fonction ovarienne. Elle est diagnostiquée après 12 mois sans règles, en l’absence d’autre cause. Elle survient en moyenne vers 51 ans, avec une grande variabilité individuelle. C’est le résultat d’une diminution progressive puis d’un effondrement de la production des hormones sexuelles ovariennes, surtout les œstrogènes et la progestérone. C’est une étape physiologique normale de la vie.
Les symptômes de la ménopause sont variables en nature, en intensité et en durée : d’une personne à une autre, le vécu est différent, mais aussi l’impact sur le confort de vie.
Périménopause
La périménopause (ou transition ménopausique) c’est la période avant la ménopause proprement dite. Elle peut commencer plusieurs années avant l’arrêt des règles, parfois dès la fin de la trentaine. Elle se caractérise par une instabilité hormonale marquée, avec des fluctuations importantes et imprévisibles des taux d’œstrogènes et de progestérone. Cette phase se termine un an après les dernières règles. C’est souvent la période la plus symptomatique et la plus difficile à vivre.
Symptômes courants
- Bouffées de chaleur, sueurs nocturnes
- Irritabilité, fatigue accrue, voire épuisement
- Palpitations cardiaques
- Douleurs articulaires et/ou musculaires
- Maux de tête, migraines
- Troubles du sommeil
- Troubles de la mémoire
- Troubles de la concentration, brouillard mental
- Troubles digestifs, ballonnements
- Changements corporels (forme du corps, état de la peau, démangeaisons, pilosité du visage…)
- Prise de poids
- Chute de cheveux, ongles cassants
- Difficultés urinaires
Ces symptômes courants sont souvent accompagnés de changements génitaux, en particulier :
- Diminution de la libido
- Sécheresse vaginale
- Sensibilité des seins
- Gêne, douleur ou démangeaison pendant les rapports
- Evolution du cycle menstruel (durée, intensité, importance des saignements)
Lors de la périménopause, on retrouve régulièrement au premier plan :
- Des troubles du sommeil sévères
- Une hypersensibilité émotionnelle
- Une irritabilité accrue
- Une anxiété majorée et une baisse de la tolérance au stress
- Des symptômes dépressifs
Les effets de la périménopause et de la ménopause peuvent avoir un retentissement fonctionnel, psychologique et social important.
La périménopause souffre d’un manque de sensibilisation, reste largement sous-diagnostiquée, et est encore fréquemment confondue avec des troubles psychiatriques, ce qui induit un risque fort de prise en charge inadaptée.
Stéréotypes
La ménopause – et tout ce qui va avec – est entourée d’un ensemble d’idées reçues ancrées dans les représentations sociales, médicales et culturelles, qui contribuent à l’invisibilisation de ses effets et à la délégitimation de l’expérience vécue par les personnes concernées.
Souvent présentée comme un événement ponctuel, limité à l’arrêt des règles et à quelques bouffées de chaleur, cette réduction contribue à minimiser les symptômes, à retarder leur reconnaissance et à maintenir l’idée que ça fait partie de la vie (au même titre que souffrir pendant les règles) et qu’il n’y aurait rien à comprendre ou accompagner.
La ménopause est marquée par une forte charge âgiste et sexiste, associée à une perte de valeur sociale, à la fin de la désirabilité, à une perte de compétence ou à une supposée instabilité émotionnelle. Ces stéréotypes alimentent une disqualification de la parole des personnes concernées. Dans le champ médical, les symptômes cognitifs, émotionnels ou anxieux sont souvent minimisés ou réduits à de la fragilité psychologique, sans exploration de la dimension hormonale.
L’invisibilisation de cette période se manifeste par un manque de recherche scientifique, de formation médicale et de sensibilisation. Les études restent insuffisantes, en particulier à propos des effets neurologiques, psy et fonctionnels à moyen et long terme. Cette carence nourrit les prises en charge inadaptées.
La ménopause est généralement considérée comme un problème strictement individuel, relevant de la sphère privée, voire de l’intime honteux. Cette conception empêche toute prise en compte collective, organisationnelle ou politique des effets de la périménopause, dans le monde du travail comme de la santé. Elle s’inscrit dans une longue tradition de pathologisation du corps féminin, dans laquelle la souffrance est tolérée tant qu’elle ne perturbe pas l’ordre social ou productif.
La ménopause est la plupart du temps pensée à travers une norme implicite : celle d’un corps féminin, valide, hétéro, cis, socialement intégré. Cette norme invisibilise les vécus des personnes handies, précaires, racisées et marginalisées, pour lesquelles cette période peut amplifier des vulnérabilités existantes. L’absence de prise en compte de cette dimension intersectionnelle renforce les inégalités de santé et contribue à une marginalisation pluridimensionnelle : être femme, être vieillissante, et ne pas correspondre aux normes dominantes.
Autisme et ménopause
Pour de nombreuses personnes autistes, et plus particulièrement les personnes sexisées, le diagnostic arrive tardivement. Dans ce contexte, la périménopause peut apparaître avant que la personne n’ait les clés pour comprendre son fonctionnement particulier. Les personnes AFAB autistes vivent à l’intersection d’une pression sociale normative forte (être sociable, performante, conforme au modèle féminin attendu) et d’un profil neurodéveloppemental qui amplifie les difficultés sociales et sensorielles. Cette intersection peut rendre les changements hormonaux comme la ménopause plus difficiles à comprendre et supporter.
Des vécus exacerbés
Les variations hormonales influencent des zones du cerveau impliquées dans l’humeur, la régulation émotionnelle, l’attention et la cognition sociale. Pendant la périménopause, ces fluctuations hormonales sont intenses et durables : cela implique une variation des symptômes attribués à l’autisme (mais aussi à d’autres TND) et une amplification des surcharges sensorielles ou de la dysrégulation émotionnelle.
La (péri)ménopause dans l’autisme s’accompagne très souvent de fluctuations émotionnelles intenses, de fatigue extrême, de troubles du sommeil exacerbés, de difficultés d’attention accrues.
La cooccurrence fréquente d’autisme et de TDAH complique encore l’expérience de la périménopause. Les difficultés d’attention, la charge cognitive, les fluctuations de dopamine, peuvent amplifier les symptômes ménopausiques, et rendre difficile la différenciation entre ce qui est lié aux hormones et ce qui est lié au fonctionnement autistique.
Chez de nombreuses personnes concernées, l’avancée en âge s’accompagne d’une intensification des manifestations de l’autisme, vécue comme à la fois incontrôlable et difficilement compréhensible. Cette amplification correspond à une modification de l’équilibre entre les capacités d’adaptation et les contraintes physiologiques, psychiques et sociales qui s’accumulent avec le temps. Ces phénomènes sont régulièrement rapportés dans le contexte de la (péri)ménopause.
À l’âge adulte, surtout à partir de la quarantaine, plusieurs facteurs convergent pour fragiliser les stratégies de compensation mises en place. A la charge mentale liée au travail, à la parentalité, aux responsabilités sociales, s’ajoutent des changements corporels et hormonaux qui perturbent la régulation émotionnelle, le sommeil, l’énergie et la tolérance sensorielle. Pour les personnes dont le fonctionnement repose sur des équilibres coûteux en énergie, ces variations entraînent une perte de capacité de masking.
Dans ce contexte, l’arrivée, même non identifiée, de la périménopause, peut aussi être à l’origine d’une découverte tardive de son autisme, au même titre que d’autres périodes à fortes variations hormonales.
Attention : les créations présentes sur ce site sont soumises au droit d’auteur. L’utilisation pour votre usage personnel est autorisé, mais aucune modification sans autorisation préalable de l’auteure n’est permise. Pour toute autre utilisation que personnelle, me contacter. Merci, en règle générale, de respecter le travail d’autrui.
TéléchargerUne invisibilité systémique
L’intersection entre autisme, âge et genre constitue un angle mort des politiques publiques, de la recherche scientifique et des pratiques de soin. Être une femme autiste vieillissante expose à une superposition de mécanismes de disqualification sociale, médicale et institutionnelle, qui se renforcent mutuellement. Cette configuration produit des formes spécifiques de vulnérabilité invisibilisée.
L’errance diagnostique entraîne une absence de compréhension du fonctionnement pendant une partie de la vie, avec des conséquences cumulatives sur la santé, l’estime de soi et la trajectoire socio-professionnelle. Le coût psychique du camouflage social s’accumule sur plusieurs décennies avant d’atteindre des seuils de rupture.
Le vieillissement féminin est constamment dévalorisé : la valeur sociale des femmes est largement corrélée à la productivité, y compris démographique, à la conformité relationnelle et à la disponibilité physique et émotionnelle.
L’autisme est profondément stigmatisé et mal compris. Chez l’adulte, il continue d’être perçu à travers des stéréotypes infantiles ou masculins. Cette méconnaissance favorise une invalidation systématique des besoins.
À l’intersection de ces dimensions, les femmes autistes vieillissantes sont privées de cadre de compréhension cohérent. Les difficultés sont fragmentées, ou renvoyées à des causes psychologiques individuelles, sans analyse globale. Cette fragmentation empêche les accompagnements adaptés, et favorise une psychiatrisation des vécus. Elle alimente une violence dans laquelle la personne doit s’adapter encore, sans que l’environnement ne soit interrogé.
Cette intersection d’oppressions se traduit par une invisibilisation statistique et politique. Les femmes autistes âgées sont peu représentées dans les études, rarement ciblées par les dispositifs d’accompagnement et quasi absentes des discours publics sur l’autisme ou le vieillissement.
Une problématique handicapante (ou handicapée ?)
Le manque de formation et de sensibilisation au corps, aux cycles menstruels et à la sexualité des femmes handicapées constitue une défaillance des politiques de santé, d’éducation et d’accompagnement. Cette carence vient d’une logique durable d’infantilisation, de contrôle et de désexualisation du handicap.
Les personnes repérées comme handies ont souvent un accès limité à l’éducation à la santé sexuelle et reproductive. Les informations relatives aux règles, aux variations hormonales, à la douleur, au consentement ou au plaisir sont absentes ou transmises de manière partielle, normative et infantilisante. Cette transmission déficiente empêche la construction d’un rapport sécurisé au corps. Elle installe une méconnaissance durable des signaux physiologiques, des variations normales et des situations nécessitant une prise en charge médicale.
Cette lacune est renforcée par des représentations sociales qui considèrent les femmes handies comme asexuées, éternellement mineures ou inaptes à comprendre leur propre corps. Ces représentations influencent les pratiques des milieux éducatifs, médico-sociaux ou de santé. Ces questions sont souvent minimisées ou traitées sous un angle gestionnaire, centré sur la prévention des risques plutôt que sur l’autonomie, le plaisir et le consentement.
La (péri)ménopause est elle aussi révélatrice de ces inégalités. L’absence de préparation et de repères favorise l’anxiété, la confusion et l’auto-disqualification, lorsque les symptômes sont interprétés comme une dégradation personnelle, une instabilité psychique ou une perte de capacités, plutôt que comme une étape identifiable de la vie.
Quelques outils
Une check list, pour soi, ou pour préparer une consultation
Voici une fiche pratique qui permet de cocher les symptômes qui interrogent concernant une possible périmenopause. On peut l’utiliser pour soi-même, ou la présenter en consultation auprès d’un·e médecin généraliste, d’un·e sage femme ou d’un·e gynécologue.
Attention : les créations présentes sur ce site sont soumises au droit d’auteur. L’utilisation pour votre usage personnel est autorisé, mais aucune modification sans autorisation préalable de l’auteure n’est permise. Pour toute autre utilisation que personnelle, me contacter. Merci, en règle générale, de respecter le travail d’autrui.
TéléchargerLe menstruomètre, pour communiquer sur son état et ses besoins
Le menstruomètre est un outil facilitant la communication avec les proches au quotidien, durant les périodes menstruelles. Son utilisation est détaillée dans un article spécifique. Il propose un complément spécifique aux personnes autistes et TDAH.
Attention : les créations présentes sur ce site sont soumises au droit d’auteur. L’utilisation pour votre usage personnel est autorisé, mais aucune modification sans autorisation préalable de l’auteure n’est permise. Pour toute autre utilisation que personnelle, me contacter. Merci, en règle générale, de respecter le travail d’autrui.
En savoir plus TéléchargerLe site Parlons Règles intègre un chatbot qui peut répondre aux questions courantes.
Ces vécus complexes, illustrées dans le cadre de l’autisme et de la (péri)ménopause, ne relèvent pas d’une fragilité individuelle, mais d’un système qui exige une adaptation constante aux normes dominantes, tout en invisibilisant celleux qui y parviennent au prix d’un épuisement profond.
Nous sommes, une fois de plus, au croisement du validisme et du patriarcat.
La difficulté à comprendre et anticiper le vécu difficile de la (péri)ménopause dans nos sociétés est le symptôme collectif d’un système de savoirs, de soins et de représentations qui échoue à penser la diversité humaine, à reconnaître l’impact du temps, du corps et des rapports de pouvoir, et à offrir des ressources accessibles à toustes.
Sources
- A la croisée du genre et de l’autisme
- Autisme et Ménopause aide Canada
- Les femmes autistes plus susceptibles de souffrir de la ménopause AFFA
- National Autistic Society: menopause
- Pourquoi tant de femmes neurodivergentes découvrent leur autisme ou leur TDAH au moment de la périménopause
Aller plus loin
- Pour les femmes de couleur, la ménopause est différente
- Tout est politique – La ménopause en marge
- Queer menopause (vidéo en anglais)
- Expériences de la ménopause chez les personnes non binaires et trans
- La ménopause et moi – quand on est non-binaire
https://www.instagram.com/p/DA5JKogMrVk/?img_index=1
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Indique ton mail
Abonne toi
Rejoignez les 1 883 autres abonnésSoutenir mon travail
L’argent récolté sert à payer les frais engendrés par la tenue de ce blog, merci ! <3
Aller sur Ko-FiEspace d’échange
Tu es autiste, ou en questionnement sur un éventuel autisme te concernant ? Tu veux rejoindre un espace en ligne pour discuter ?
Clique iciDerniers Articles
Ministère des trucs importants #2 – La santé mentale
Autisme et fêtes : Des outils pour expliquer aux proches comment s’adapter
-
Autisme et (péri)ménopause : des enjeux invisibilisés
L’autisme, étudié surtout chez les hommes et les enfants, a historiquement laissé dans l’ombre les parcours des femmes autistes, notamment les périodes biologiques spécifiques comme la maternité, le cycle menstruel et la ménopause. Ces périodes peuvent être bouleversantes pour les personnes concernées. La périménopause et la ménopause sont des moments où s’entremêlent des transformations corporelles et émotionnelles, et une modification de la perception sociale. Les spécificités des TND entraînent leur propre symptomatique, avec avec des impacts peu reconnus. On fait le point.
Cet article propose le téléchargement d’une fiche pratique, le téléchargement de l’outil Menstruomètre, et des liens complémentaires en fin d’article.
La ménopause
Définition
La ménopause c’est l’arrêt définitif des menstruations, lié à l’arrêt de la fonction ovarienne. Elle est diagnostiquée après 12 mois sans règles, en l’absence d’autre cause. Elle survient en moyenne vers 51 ans, avec une grande variabilité individuelle. C’est le résultat d’une diminution progressive puis d’un effondrement de la production des hormones sexuelles ovariennes, surtout les œstrogènes et la progestérone. C’est une étape physiologique normale de la vie.
Les symptômes de la ménopause sont variables en nature, en intensité et en durée : d’une personne à une autre, le vécu est différent, mais aussi l’impact sur le confort de vie.
Périménopause
La périménopause (ou transition ménopausique) c’est la période avant la ménopause proprement dite. Elle peut commencer plusieurs années avant l’arrêt des règles, parfois dès la fin de la trentaine. Elle se caractérise par une instabilité hormonale marquée, avec des fluctuations importantes et imprévisibles des taux d’œstrogènes et de progestérone. Cette phase se termine un an après les dernières règles. C’est souvent la période la plus symptomatique et la plus difficile à vivre.
Symptômes courants
- Bouffées de chaleur, sueurs nocturnes
- Irritabilité, fatigue accrue, voire épuisement
- Palpitations cardiaques
- Douleurs articulaires et/ou musculaires
- Maux de tête, migraines
- Troubles du sommeil
- Troubles de la mémoire
- Troubles de la concentration, brouillard mental
- Troubles digestifs, ballonnements
- Changements corporels (forme du corps, état de la peau, démangeaisons, pilosité du visage…)
- Prise de poids
- Chute de cheveux, ongles cassants
- Difficultés urinaires
Ces symptômes courants sont souvent accompagnés de changements génitaux, en particulier :
- Diminution de la libido
- Sécheresse vaginale
- Sensibilité des seins
- Gêne, douleur ou démangeaison pendant les rapports
- Evolution du cycle menstruel (durée, intensité, importance des saignements)
Lors de la périménopause, on retrouve régulièrement au premier plan :
- Des troubles du sommeil sévères
- Une hypersensibilité émotionnelle
- Une irritabilité accrue
- Une anxiété majorée et une baisse de la tolérance au stress
- Des symptômes dépressifs
Les effets de la périménopause et de la ménopause peuvent avoir un retentissement fonctionnel, psychologique et social important.
La périménopause souffre d’un manque de sensibilisation, reste largement sous-diagnostiquée, et est encore fréquemment confondue avec des troubles psychiatriques, ce qui induit un risque fort de prise en charge inadaptée.
Stéréotypes
La ménopause – et tout ce qui va avec – est entourée d’un ensemble d’idées reçues ancrées dans les représentations sociales, médicales et culturelles, qui contribuent à l’invisibilisation de ses effets et à la délégitimation de l’expérience vécue par les personnes concernées.
Souvent présentée comme un événement ponctuel, limité à l’arrêt des règles et à quelques bouffées de chaleur, cette réduction contribue à minimiser les symptômes, à retarder leur reconnaissance et à maintenir l’idée que ça fait partie de la vie (au même titre que souffrir pendant les règles) et qu’il n’y aurait rien à comprendre ou accompagner.
La ménopause est marquée par une forte charge âgiste et sexiste, associée à une perte de valeur sociale, à la fin de la désirabilité, à une perte de compétence ou à une supposée instabilité émotionnelle. Ces stéréotypes alimentent une disqualification de la parole des personnes concernées. Dans le champ médical, les symptômes cognitifs, émotionnels ou anxieux sont souvent minimisés ou réduits à de la fragilité psychologique, sans exploration de la dimension hormonale.
L’invisibilisation de cette période se manifeste par un manque de recherche scientifique, de formation médicale et de sensibilisation. Les études restent insuffisantes, en particulier à propos des effets neurologiques, psy et fonctionnels à moyen et long terme. Cette carence nourrit les prises en charge inadaptées.
La ménopause est généralement considérée comme un problème strictement individuel, relevant de la sphère privée, voire de l’intime honteux. Cette conception empêche toute prise en compte collective, organisationnelle ou politique des effets de la périménopause, dans le monde du travail comme de la santé. Elle s’inscrit dans une longue tradition de pathologisation du corps féminin, dans laquelle la souffrance est tolérée tant qu’elle ne perturbe pas l’ordre social ou productif.
La ménopause est la plupart du temps pensée à travers une norme implicite : celle d’un corps féminin, valide, hétéro, cis, socialement intégré. Cette norme invisibilise les vécus des personnes handies, précaires, racisées et marginalisées, pour lesquelles cette période peut amplifier des vulnérabilités existantes. L’absence de prise en compte de cette dimension intersectionnelle renforce les inégalités de santé et contribue à une marginalisation pluridimensionnelle : être femme, être vieillissante, et ne pas correspondre aux normes dominantes.
Autisme et ménopause
Pour de nombreuses personnes autistes, et plus particulièrement les personnes sexisées, le diagnostic arrive tardivement. Dans ce contexte, la périménopause peut apparaître avant que la personne n’ait les clés pour comprendre son fonctionnement particulier. Les personnes AFAB autistes vivent à l’intersection d’une pression sociale normative forte (être sociable, performante, conforme au modèle féminin attendu) et d’un profil neurodéveloppemental qui amplifie les difficultés sociales et sensorielles. Cette intersection peut rendre les changements hormonaux comme la ménopause plus difficiles à comprendre et supporter.
Des vécus exacerbés
Les variations hormonales influencent des zones du cerveau impliquées dans l’humeur, la régulation émotionnelle, l’attention et la cognition sociale. Pendant la périménopause, ces fluctuations hormonales sont intenses et durables : cela implique une variation des symptômes attribués à l’autisme (mais aussi à d’autres TND) et une amplification des surcharges sensorielles ou de la dysrégulation émotionnelle.
La (péri)ménopause dans l’autisme s’accompagne très souvent de fluctuations émotionnelles intenses, de fatigue extrême, de troubles du sommeil exacerbés, de difficultés d’attention accrues.
La cooccurrence fréquente d’autisme et de TDAH complique encore l’expérience de la périménopause. Les difficultés d’attention, la charge cognitive, les fluctuations de dopamine, peuvent amplifier les symptômes ménopausiques, et rendre difficile la différenciation entre ce qui est lié aux hormones et ce qui est lié au fonctionnement autistique.
Chez de nombreuses personnes concernées, l’avancée en âge s’accompagne d’une intensification des manifestations de l’autisme, vécue comme à la fois incontrôlable et difficilement compréhensible. Cette amplification correspond à une modification de l’équilibre entre les capacités d’adaptation et les contraintes physiologiques, psychiques et sociales qui s’accumulent avec le temps. Ces phénomènes sont régulièrement rapportés dans le contexte de la (péri)ménopause.
À l’âge adulte, surtout à partir de la quarantaine, plusieurs facteurs convergent pour fragiliser les stratégies de compensation mises en place. A la charge mentale liée au travail, à la parentalité, aux responsabilités sociales, s’ajoutent des changements corporels et hormonaux qui perturbent la régulation émotionnelle, le sommeil, l’énergie et la tolérance sensorielle. Pour les personnes dont le fonctionnement repose sur des équilibres coûteux en énergie, ces variations entraînent une perte de capacité de masking.
Dans ce contexte, l’arrivée, même non identifiée, de la périménopause, peut aussi être à l’origine d’une découverte tardive de son autisme, au même titre que d’autres périodes à fortes variations hormonales.
Attention : les créations présentes sur ce site sont soumises au droit d’auteur. L’utilisation pour votre usage personnel est autorisé, mais aucune modification sans autorisation préalable de l’auteure n’est permise. Pour toute autre utilisation que personnelle, me contacter. Merci, en règle générale, de respecter le travail d’autrui.
TéléchargerUne invisibilité systémique
L’intersection entre autisme, âge et genre constitue un angle mort des politiques publiques, de la recherche scientifique et des pratiques de soin. Être une femme autiste vieillissante expose à une superposition de mécanismes de disqualification sociale, médicale et institutionnelle, qui se renforcent mutuellement. Cette configuration produit des formes spécifiques de vulnérabilité invisibilisée.
L’errance diagnostique entraîne une absence de compréhension du fonctionnement pendant une partie de la vie, avec des conséquences cumulatives sur la santé, l’estime de soi et la trajectoire socio-professionnelle. Le coût psychique du camouflage social s’accumule sur plusieurs décennies avant d’atteindre des seuils de rupture.
Le vieillissement féminin est constamment dévalorisé : la valeur sociale des femmes est largement corrélée à la productivité, y compris démographique, à la conformité relationnelle et à la disponibilité physique et émotionnelle.
L’autisme est profondément stigmatisé et mal compris. Chez l’adulte, il continue d’être perçu à travers des stéréotypes infantiles ou masculins. Cette méconnaissance favorise une invalidation systématique des besoins.
À l’intersection de ces dimensions, les femmes autistes vieillissantes sont privées de cadre de compréhension cohérent. Les difficultés sont fragmentées, ou renvoyées à des causes psychologiques individuelles, sans analyse globale. Cette fragmentation empêche les accompagnements adaptés, et favorise une psychiatrisation des vécus. Elle alimente une violence dans laquelle la personne doit s’adapter encore, sans que l’environnement ne soit interrogé.
Cette intersection d’oppressions se traduit par une invisibilisation statistique et politique. Les femmes autistes âgées sont peu représentées dans les études, rarement ciblées par les dispositifs d’accompagnement et quasi absentes des discours publics sur l’autisme ou le vieillissement.
Une problématique handicapante (ou handicapée ?)
Le manque de formation et de sensibilisation au corps, aux cycles menstruels et à la sexualité des femmes handicapées constitue une défaillance des politiques de santé, d’éducation et d’accompagnement. Cette carence vient d’une logique durable d’infantilisation, de contrôle et de désexualisation du handicap.
Les personnes repérées comme handies ont souvent un accès limité à l’éducation à la santé sexuelle et reproductive. Les informations relatives aux règles, aux variations hormonales, à la douleur, au consentement ou au plaisir sont absentes ou transmises de manière partielle, normative et infantilisante. Cette transmission déficiente empêche la construction d’un rapport sécurisé au corps. Elle installe une méconnaissance durable des signaux physiologiques, des variations normales et des situations nécessitant une prise en charge médicale.
Cette lacune est renforcée par des représentations sociales qui considèrent les femmes handies comme asexuées, éternellement mineures ou inaptes à comprendre leur propre corps. Ces représentations influencent les pratiques des milieux éducatifs, médico-sociaux ou de santé. Ces questions sont souvent minimisées ou traitées sous un angle gestionnaire, centré sur la prévention des risques plutôt que sur l’autonomie, le plaisir et le consentement.
La (péri)ménopause est elle aussi révélatrice de ces inégalités. L’absence de préparation et de repères favorise l’anxiété, la confusion et l’auto-disqualification, lorsque les symptômes sont interprétés comme une dégradation personnelle, une instabilité psychique ou une perte de capacités, plutôt que comme une étape identifiable de la vie.
Quelques outils
Une check list, pour soi, ou pour préparer une consultation
Voici une fiche pratique qui permet de cocher les symptômes qui interrogent concernant une possible périmenopause. On peut l’utiliser pour soi-même, ou la présenter en consultation auprès d’un·e médecin généraliste, d’un·e sage femme ou d’un·e gynécologue.
Attention : les créations présentes sur ce site sont soumises au droit d’auteur. L’utilisation pour votre usage personnel est autorisé, mais aucune modification sans autorisation préalable de l’auteure n’est permise. Pour toute autre utilisation que personnelle, me contacter. Merci, en règle générale, de respecter le travail d’autrui.
TéléchargerLe menstruomètre, pour communiquer sur son état et ses besoins
Le menstruomètre est un outil facilitant la communication avec les proches au quotidien, durant les périodes menstruelles. Son utilisation est détaillée dans un article spécifique. Il propose un complément spécifique aux personnes autistes et TDAH.
Attention : les créations présentes sur ce site sont soumises au droit d’auteur. L’utilisation pour votre usage personnel est autorisé, mais aucune modification sans autorisation préalable de l’auteure n’est permise. Pour toute autre utilisation que personnelle, me contacter. Merci, en règle générale, de respecter le travail d’autrui.
En savoir plus TéléchargerLe site Parlons Règles intègre un chatbot qui peut répondre aux questions courantes.
Ces vécus complexes, illustrées dans le cadre de l’autisme et de la (péri)ménopause, ne relèvent pas d’une fragilité individuelle, mais d’un système qui exige une adaptation constante aux normes dominantes, tout en invisibilisant celleux qui y parviennent au prix d’un épuisement profond.
Nous sommes, une fois de plus, au croisement du validisme et du patriarcat.
La difficulté à comprendre et anticiper le vécu difficile de la (péri)ménopause dans nos sociétés est le symptôme collectif d’un système de savoirs, de soins et de représentations qui échoue à penser la diversité humaine, à reconnaître l’impact du temps, du corps et des rapports de pouvoir, et à offrir des ressources accessibles à toustes.
Sources
- A la croisée du genre et de l’autisme
- Autisme et Ménopause aide Canada
- Les femmes autistes plus susceptibles de souffrir de la ménopause AFFA
- National Autistic Society: menopause
- Pourquoi tant de femmes neurodivergentes découvrent leur autisme ou leur TDAH au moment de la périménopause
Aller plus loin
- Pour les femmes de couleur, la ménopause est différente
- Tout est politique – La ménopause en marge
- Queer menopause (vidéo en anglais)
- Expériences de la ménopause chez les personnes non binaires et trans
- La ménopause et moi – quand on est non-binaire
https://www.instagram.com/p/DA5JKogMrVk/?img_index=1
Petite Loutre
Indique ton mail
Abonne toi
Rejoignez les 1 883 autres abonnésSoutenir mon travail
L’argent récolté sert à payer les frais engendrés par la tenue de ce blog, merci ! <3
Aller sur Ko-FiEspace d’échange
Tu es autiste, ou en questionnement sur un éventuel autisme te concernant ? Tu veux rejoindre un espace en ligne pour discuter ?
Clique iciDerniers Articles
Ministère des trucs importants #2 – La santé mentale
Autisme et fêtes : Des outils pour expliquer aux proches comment s’adapter
-
Autisme et (péri)ménopause : des enjeux invisibilisés
L’autisme, étudié surtout chez les hommes et les enfants, a historiquement laissé dans l’ombre les parcours des femmes autistes, notamment les périodes biologiques spécifiques comme la maternité, le cycle menstruel et la ménopause. Ces périodes peuvent être bouleversantes pour les personnes concernées. La périménopause et la ménopause sont des moments où s’entremêlent des transformations corporelles et émotionnelles, et une modification de la perception sociale. Les spécificités des TND entraînent leur propre symptomatique, avec avec des impacts peu reconnus. On fait le point.
Cet article propose le téléchargement d’une fiche pratique, le téléchargement de l’outil Menstruomètre, et des liens complémentaires en fin d’article.
La ménopause
Définition
La ménopause c’est l’arrêt définitif des menstruations, lié à l’arrêt de la fonction ovarienne. Elle est diagnostiquée après 12 mois sans règles, en l’absence d’autre cause. Elle survient en moyenne vers 51 ans, avec une grande variabilité individuelle. C’est le résultat d’une diminution progressive puis d’un effondrement de la production des hormones sexuelles ovariennes, surtout les œstrogènes et la progestérone. C’est une étape physiologique normale de la vie.
Les symptômes de la ménopause sont variables en nature, en intensité et en durée : d’une personne à une autre, le vécu est différent, mais aussi l’impact sur le confort de vie.
Périménopause
La périménopause (ou transition ménopausique) c’est la période avant la ménopause proprement dite. Elle peut commencer plusieurs années avant l’arrêt des règles, parfois dès la fin de la trentaine. Elle se caractérise par une instabilité hormonale marquée, avec des fluctuations importantes et imprévisibles des taux d’œstrogènes et de progestérone. Cette phase se termine un an après les dernières règles. C’est souvent la période la plus symptomatique et la plus difficile à vivre.
Symptômes courants
- Bouffées de chaleur, sueurs nocturnes
- Irritabilité, fatigue accrue, voire épuisement
- Palpitations cardiaques
- Douleurs articulaires et/ou musculaires
- Maux de tête, migraines
- Troubles du sommeil
- Troubles de la mémoire
- Troubles de la concentration, brouillard mental
- Troubles digestifs, ballonnements
- Changements corporels (forme du corps, état de la peau, démangeaisons, pilosité du visage…)
- Prise de poids
- Chute de cheveux, ongles cassants
- Difficultés urinaires
Ces symptômes courants sont souvent accompagnés de changements génitaux, en particulier :
- Diminution de la libido
- Sécheresse vaginale
- Sensibilité des seins
- Gêne, douleur ou démangeaison pendant les rapports
- Evolution du cycle menstruel (durée, intensité, importance des saignements)
Lors de la périménopause, on retrouve régulièrement au premier plan :
- Des troubles du sommeil sévères
- Une hypersensibilité émotionnelle
- Une irritabilité accrue
- Une anxiété majorée et une baisse de la tolérance au stress
- Des symptômes dépressifs
Les effets de la périménopause et de la ménopause peuvent avoir un retentissement fonctionnel, psychologique et social important.
La périménopause souffre d’un manque de sensibilisation, reste largement sous-diagnostiquée, et est encore fréquemment confondue avec des troubles psychiatriques, ce qui induit un risque fort de prise en charge inadaptée.
Stéréotypes
La ménopause – et tout ce qui va avec – est entourée d’un ensemble d’idées reçues ancrées dans les représentations sociales, médicales et culturelles, qui contribuent à l’invisibilisation de ses effets et à la délégitimation de l’expérience vécue par les personnes concernées.
Souvent présentée comme un événement ponctuel, limité à l’arrêt des règles et à quelques bouffées de chaleur, cette réduction contribue à minimiser les symptômes, à retarder leur reconnaissance et à maintenir l’idée que ça fait partie de la vie (au même titre que souffrir pendant les règles) et qu’il n’y aurait rien à comprendre ou accompagner.
La ménopause est marquée par une forte charge âgiste et sexiste, associée à une perte de valeur sociale, à la fin de la désirabilité, à une perte de compétence ou à une supposée instabilité émotionnelle. Ces stéréotypes alimentent une disqualification de la parole des personnes concernées. Dans le champ médical, les symptômes cognitifs, émotionnels ou anxieux sont souvent minimisés ou réduits à de la fragilité psychologique, sans exploration de la dimension hormonale.
L’invisibilisation de cette période se manifeste par un manque de recherche scientifique, de formation médicale et de sensibilisation. Les études restent insuffisantes, en particulier à propos des effets neurologiques, psy et fonctionnels à moyen et long terme. Cette carence nourrit les prises en charge inadaptées.
La ménopause est généralement considérée comme un problème strictement individuel, relevant de la sphère privée, voire de l’intime honteux. Cette conception empêche toute prise en compte collective, organisationnelle ou politique des effets de la périménopause, dans le monde du travail comme de la santé. Elle s’inscrit dans une longue tradition de pathologisation du corps féminin, dans laquelle la souffrance est tolérée tant qu’elle ne perturbe pas l’ordre social ou productif.
La ménopause est la plupart du temps pensée à travers une norme implicite : celle d’un corps féminin, valide, hétéro, cis, socialement intégré. Cette norme invisibilise les vécus des personnes handies, précaires, racisées et marginalisées, pour lesquelles cette période peut amplifier des vulnérabilités existantes. L’absence de prise en compte de cette dimension intersectionnelle renforce les inégalités de santé et contribue à une marginalisation pluridimensionnelle : être femme, être vieillissante, et ne pas correspondre aux normes dominantes.
Autisme et ménopause
Pour de nombreuses personnes autistes, et plus particulièrement les personnes sexisées, le diagnostic arrive tardivement. Dans ce contexte, la périménopause peut apparaître avant que la personne n’ait les clés pour comprendre son fonctionnement particulier. Les personnes AFAB autistes vivent à l’intersection d’une pression sociale normative forte (être sociable, performante, conforme au modèle féminin attendu) et d’un profil neurodéveloppemental qui amplifie les difficultés sociales et sensorielles. Cette intersection peut rendre les changements hormonaux comme la ménopause plus difficiles à comprendre et supporter.
Des vécus exacerbés
Les variations hormonales influencent des zones du cerveau impliquées dans l’humeur, la régulation émotionnelle, l’attention et la cognition sociale. Pendant la périménopause, ces fluctuations hormonales sont intenses et durables : cela implique une variation des symptômes attribués à l’autisme (mais aussi à d’autres TND) et une amplification des surcharges sensorielles ou de la dysrégulation émotionnelle.
La (péri)ménopause dans l’autisme s’accompagne très souvent de fluctuations émotionnelles intenses, de fatigue extrême, de troubles du sommeil exacerbés, de difficultés d’attention accrues.
La cooccurrence fréquente d’autisme et de TDAH complique encore l’expérience de la périménopause. Les difficultés d’attention, la charge cognitive, les fluctuations de dopamine, peuvent amplifier les symptômes ménopausiques, et rendre difficile la différenciation entre ce qui est lié aux hormones et ce qui est lié au fonctionnement autistique.
Chez de nombreuses personnes concernées, l’avancée en âge s’accompagne d’une intensification des manifestations de l’autisme, vécue comme à la fois incontrôlable et difficilement compréhensible. Cette amplification correspond à une modification de l’équilibre entre les capacités d’adaptation et les contraintes physiologiques, psychiques et sociales qui s’accumulent avec le temps. Ces phénomènes sont régulièrement rapportés dans le contexte de la (péri)ménopause.
À l’âge adulte, surtout à partir de la quarantaine, plusieurs facteurs convergent pour fragiliser les stratégies de compensation mises en place. A la charge mentale liée au travail, à la parentalité, aux responsabilités sociales, s’ajoutent des changements corporels et hormonaux qui perturbent la régulation émotionnelle, le sommeil, l’énergie et la tolérance sensorielle. Pour les personnes dont le fonctionnement repose sur des équilibres coûteux en énergie, ces variations entraînent une perte de capacité de masking.
Dans ce contexte, l’arrivée, même non identifiée, de la périménopause, peut aussi être à l’origine d’une découverte tardive de son autisme, au même titre que d’autres périodes à fortes variations hormonales.
Attention : les créations présentes sur ce site sont soumises au droit d’auteur. L’utilisation pour votre usage personnel est autorisé, mais aucune modification sans autorisation préalable de l’auteure n’est permise. Pour toute autre utilisation que personnelle, me contacter. Merci, en règle générale, de respecter le travail d’autrui.
TéléchargerUne invisibilité systémique
L’intersection entre autisme, âge et genre constitue un angle mort des politiques publiques, de la recherche scientifique et des pratiques de soin. Être une femme autiste vieillissante expose à une superposition de mécanismes de disqualification sociale, médicale et institutionnelle, qui se renforcent mutuellement. Cette configuration produit des formes spécifiques de vulnérabilité invisibilisée.
L’errance diagnostique entraîne une absence de compréhension du fonctionnement pendant une partie de la vie, avec des conséquences cumulatives sur la santé, l’estime de soi et la trajectoire socio-professionnelle. Le coût psychique du camouflage social s’accumule sur plusieurs décennies avant d’atteindre des seuils de rupture.
Le vieillissement féminin est constamment dévalorisé : la valeur sociale des femmes est largement corrélée à la productivité, y compris démographique, à la conformité relationnelle et à la disponibilité physique et émotionnelle.
L’autisme est profondément stigmatisé et mal compris. Chez l’adulte, il continue d’être perçu à travers des stéréotypes infantiles ou masculins. Cette méconnaissance favorise une invalidation systématique des besoins.
À l’intersection de ces dimensions, les femmes autistes vieillissantes sont privées de cadre de compréhension cohérent. Les difficultés sont fragmentées, ou renvoyées à des causes psychologiques individuelles, sans analyse globale. Cette fragmentation empêche les accompagnements adaptés, et favorise une psychiatrisation des vécus. Elle alimente une violence dans laquelle la personne doit s’adapter encore, sans que l’environnement ne soit interrogé.
Cette intersection d’oppressions se traduit par une invisibilisation statistique et politique. Les femmes autistes âgées sont peu représentées dans les études, rarement ciblées par les dispositifs d’accompagnement et quasi absentes des discours publics sur l’autisme ou le vieillissement.
Une problématique handicapante (ou handicapée ?)
Le manque de formation et de sensibilisation au corps, aux cycles menstruels et à la sexualité des femmes handicapées constitue une défaillance des politiques de santé, d’éducation et d’accompagnement. Cette carence vient d’une logique durable d’infantilisation, de contrôle et de désexualisation du handicap.
Les personnes repérées comme handies ont souvent un accès limité à l’éducation à la santé sexuelle et reproductive. Les informations relatives aux règles, aux variations hormonales, à la douleur, au consentement ou au plaisir sont absentes ou transmises de manière partielle, normative et infantilisante. Cette transmission déficiente empêche la construction d’un rapport sécurisé au corps. Elle installe une méconnaissance durable des signaux physiologiques, des variations normales et des situations nécessitant une prise en charge médicale.
Cette lacune est renforcée par des représentations sociales qui considèrent les femmes handies comme asexuées, éternellement mineures ou inaptes à comprendre leur propre corps. Ces représentations influencent les pratiques des milieux éducatifs, médico-sociaux ou de santé. Ces questions sont souvent minimisées ou traitées sous un angle gestionnaire, centré sur la prévention des risques plutôt que sur l’autonomie, le plaisir et le consentement.
La (péri)ménopause est elle aussi révélatrice de ces inégalités. L’absence de préparation et de repères favorise l’anxiété, la confusion et l’auto-disqualification, lorsque les symptômes sont interprétés comme une dégradation personnelle, une instabilité psychique ou une perte de capacités, plutôt que comme une étape identifiable de la vie.
Quelques outils
Une check list, pour soi, ou pour préparer une consultation
Voici une fiche pratique qui permet de cocher les symptômes qui interrogent concernant une possible périmenopause. On peut l’utiliser pour soi-même, ou la présenter en consultation auprès d’un·e médecin généraliste, d’un·e sage femme ou d’un·e gynécologue.
Attention : les créations présentes sur ce site sont soumises au droit d’auteur. L’utilisation pour votre usage personnel est autorisé, mais aucune modification sans autorisation préalable de l’auteure n’est permise. Pour toute autre utilisation que personnelle, me contacter. Merci, en règle générale, de respecter le travail d’autrui.
TéléchargerLe menstruomètre, pour communiquer sur son état et ses besoins
Le menstruomètre est un outil facilitant la communication avec les proches au quotidien, durant les périodes menstruelles. Son utilisation est détaillée dans un article spécifique. Il propose un complément spécifique aux personnes autistes et TDAH.
Attention : les créations présentes sur ce site sont soumises au droit d’auteur. L’utilisation pour votre usage personnel est autorisé, mais aucune modification sans autorisation préalable de l’auteure n’est permise. Pour toute autre utilisation que personnelle, me contacter. Merci, en règle générale, de respecter le travail d’autrui.
En savoir plus TéléchargerLe site Parlons Règles intègre un chatbot qui peut répondre aux questions courantes.
Ces vécus complexes, illustrées dans le cadre de l’autisme et de la (péri)ménopause, ne relèvent pas d’une fragilité individuelle, mais d’un système qui exige une adaptation constante aux normes dominantes, tout en invisibilisant celleux qui y parviennent au prix d’un épuisement profond.
Nous sommes, une fois de plus, au croisement du validisme et du patriarcat.
La difficulté à comprendre et anticiper le vécu difficile de la (péri)ménopause dans nos sociétés est le symptôme collectif d’un système de savoirs, de soins et de représentations qui échoue à penser la diversité humaine, à reconnaître l’impact du temps, du corps et des rapports de pouvoir, et à offrir des ressources accessibles à toustes.
Sources
- A la croisée du genre et de l’autisme
- Autisme et Ménopause aide Canada
- Les femmes autistes plus susceptibles de souffrir de la ménopause AFFA
- National Autistic Society: menopause
- Pourquoi tant de femmes neurodivergentes découvrent leur autisme ou leur TDAH au moment de la périménopause
Aller plus loin
- Pour les femmes de couleur, la ménopause est différente
- Tout est politique – La ménopause en marge
- Queer menopause (vidéo en anglais)
- Expériences de la ménopause chez les personnes non binaires et trans
- La ménopause et moi – quand on est non-binaire
https://www.instagram.com/p/DA5JKogMrVk/?img_index=1
Petite Loutre
Indique ton mail
Abonne toi
Rejoignez les 1 884 autres abonnésSoutenir mon travail
L’argent récolté sert à payer les frais engendrés par la tenue de ce blog, merci ! <3
Aller sur Ko-FiEspace d’échange
Tu es autiste, ou en questionnement sur un éventuel autisme te concernant ? Tu veux rejoindre un espace en ligne pour discuter ?
Clique iciDerniers Articles
Ministère des trucs importants #2 – La santé mentale
Autisme et fêtes : Des outils pour expliquer aux proches comment s’adapter
-
Autisme et (péri)ménopause : des enjeux invisibilisés
L’autisme, étudié surtout chez les hommes et les enfants, a historiquement laissé dans l’ombre les parcours des femmes autistes, notamment les périodes biologiques spécifiques comme la maternité, le cycle menstruel et la ménopause. Ces périodes peuvent être bouleversantes pour les personnes concernées. La périménopause et la ménopause sont des moments où s’entremêlent des transformations corporelles et émotionnelles, et une modification de la perception sociale. Les spécificités des TND entraînent leur propre symptomatique, avec avec des impacts peu reconnus. On fait le point.
Cet article propose le téléchargement d’une fiche pratique, le téléchargement de l’outil Menstruomètre, et des liens complémentaires en fin d’article.
La ménopause
Définition
La ménopause c’est l’arrêt définitif des menstruations, lié à l’arrêt de la fonction ovarienne. Elle est diagnostiquée après 12 mois sans règles, en l’absence d’autre cause. Elle survient en moyenne vers 51 ans, avec une grande variabilité individuelle. C’est le résultat d’une diminution progressive puis d’un effondrement de la production des hormones sexuelles ovariennes, surtout les œstrogènes et la progestérone. C’est une étape physiologique normale de la vie.
Les symptômes de la ménopause sont variables en nature, en intensité et en durée : d’une personne à une autre, le vécu est différent, mais aussi l’impact sur le confort de vie.
Périménopause
La périménopause (ou transition ménopausique) c’est la période avant la ménopause proprement dite. Elle peut commencer plusieurs années avant l’arrêt des règles, parfois dès la fin de la trentaine. Elle se caractérise par une instabilité hormonale marquée, avec des fluctuations importantes et imprévisibles des taux d’œstrogènes et de progestérone. Cette phase se termine un an après les dernières règles. C’est souvent la période la plus symptomatique et la plus difficile à vivre.
Symptômes courants
- Bouffées de chaleur, sueurs nocturnes
- Irritabilité, fatigue accrue, voire épuisement
- Palpitations cardiaques
- Douleurs articulaires et/ou musculaires
- Maux de tête, migraines
- Troubles du sommeil
- Troubles de la mémoire
- Troubles de la concentration, brouillard mental
- Troubles digestifs, ballonnements
- Changements corporels (forme du corps, état de la peau, démangeaisons, pilosité du visage…)
- Prise de poids
- Chute de cheveux, ongles cassants
- Difficultés urinaires
Ces symptômes courants sont souvent accompagnés de changements génitaux, en particulier :
- Diminution de la libido
- Sécheresse vaginale
- Sensibilité des seins
- Gêne, douleur ou démangeaison pendant les rapports
- Evolution du cycle menstruel (durée, intensité, importance des saignements)
Lors de la périménopause, on retrouve régulièrement au premier plan :
- Des troubles du sommeil sévères
- Une hypersensibilité émotionnelle
- Une irritabilité accrue
- Une anxiété majorée et une baisse de la tolérance au stress
- Des symptômes dépressifs
Les effets de la périménopause et de la ménopause peuvent avoir un retentissement fonctionnel, psychologique et social important.
La périménopause souffre d’un manque de sensibilisation, reste largement sous-diagnostiquée, et est encore fréquemment confondue avec des troubles psychiatriques, ce qui induit un risque fort de prise en charge inadaptée.
Stéréotypes
La ménopause – et tout ce qui va avec – est entourée d’un ensemble d’idées reçues ancrées dans les représentations sociales, médicales et culturelles, qui contribuent à l’invisibilisation de ses effets et à la délégitimation de l’expérience vécue par les personnes concernées.
Souvent présentée comme un événement ponctuel, limité à l’arrêt des règles et à quelques bouffées de chaleur, cette réduction contribue à minimiser les symptômes, à retarder leur reconnaissance et à maintenir l’idée que ça fait partie de la vie (au même titre que souffrir pendant les règles) et qu’il n’y aurait rien à comprendre ou accompagner.
La ménopause est marquée par une forte charge âgiste et sexiste, associée à une perte de valeur sociale, à la fin de la désirabilité, à une perte de compétence ou à une supposée instabilité émotionnelle. Ces stéréotypes alimentent une disqualification de la parole des personnes concernées. Dans le champ médical, les symptômes cognitifs, émotionnels ou anxieux sont souvent minimisés ou réduits à de la fragilité psychologique, sans exploration de la dimension hormonale.
L’invisibilisation de cette période se manifeste par un manque de recherche scientifique, de formation médicale et de sensibilisation. Les études restent insuffisantes, en particulier à propos des effets neurologiques, psy et fonctionnels à moyen et long terme. Cette carence nourrit les prises en charge inadaptées.
La ménopause est généralement considérée comme un problème strictement individuel, relevant de la sphère privée, voire de l’intime honteux. Cette conception empêche toute prise en compte collective, organisationnelle ou politique des effets de la périménopause, dans le monde du travail comme de la santé. Elle s’inscrit dans une longue tradition de pathologisation du corps féminin, dans laquelle la souffrance est tolérée tant qu’elle ne perturbe pas l’ordre social ou productif.
La ménopause est la plupart du temps pensée à travers une norme implicite : celle d’un corps féminin, valide, hétéro, cis, socialement intégré. Cette norme invisibilise les vécus des personnes handies, précaires, racisées et marginalisées, pour lesquelles cette période peut amplifier des vulnérabilités existantes. L’absence de prise en compte de cette dimension intersectionnelle renforce les inégalités de santé et contribue à une marginalisation pluridimensionnelle : être femme, être vieillissante, et ne pas correspondre aux normes dominantes.
Autisme et ménopause
Pour de nombreuses personnes autistes, et plus particulièrement les personnes sexisées, le diagnostic arrive tardivement. Dans ce contexte, la périménopause peut apparaître avant que la personne n’ait les clés pour comprendre son fonctionnement particulier. Les personnes AFAB autistes vivent à l’intersection d’une pression sociale normative forte (être sociable, performante, conforme au modèle féminin attendu) et d’un profil neurodéveloppemental qui amplifie les difficultés sociales et sensorielles. Cette intersection peut rendre les changements hormonaux comme la ménopause plus difficiles à comprendre et supporter.
Des vécus exacerbés
Les variations hormonales influencent des zones du cerveau impliquées dans l’humeur, la régulation émotionnelle, l’attention et la cognition sociale. Pendant la périménopause, ces fluctuations hormonales sont intenses et durables : cela implique une variation des symptômes attribués à l’autisme (mais aussi à d’autres TND) et une amplification des surcharges sensorielles ou de la dysrégulation émotionnelle.
La (péri)ménopause dans l’autisme s’accompagne très souvent de fluctuations émotionnelles intenses, de fatigue extrême, de troubles du sommeil exacerbés, de difficultés d’attention accrues.
La cooccurrence fréquente d’autisme et de TDAH complique encore l’expérience de la périménopause. Les difficultés d’attention, la charge cognitive, les fluctuations de dopamine, peuvent amplifier les symptômes ménopausiques, et rendre difficile la différenciation entre ce qui est lié aux hormones et ce qui est lié au fonctionnement autistique.
Chez de nombreuses personnes concernées, l’avancée en âge s’accompagne d’une intensification des manifestations de l’autisme, vécue comme à la fois incontrôlable et difficilement compréhensible. Cette amplification correspond à une modification de l’équilibre entre les capacités d’adaptation et les contraintes physiologiques, psychiques et sociales qui s’accumulent avec le temps. Ces phénomènes sont régulièrement rapportés dans le contexte de la (péri)ménopause.
À l’âge adulte, surtout à partir de la quarantaine, plusieurs facteurs convergent pour fragiliser les stratégies de compensation mises en place. A la charge mentale liée au travail, à la parentalité, aux responsabilités sociales, s’ajoutent des changements corporels et hormonaux qui perturbent la régulation émotionnelle, le sommeil, l’énergie et la tolérance sensorielle. Pour les personnes dont le fonctionnement repose sur des équilibres coûteux en énergie, ces variations entraînent une perte de capacité de masking.
Dans ce contexte, l’arrivée, même non identifiée, de la périménopause, peut aussi être à l’origine d’une découverte tardive de son autisme, au même titre que d’autres périodes à fortes variations hormonales.
Attention : les créations présentes sur ce site sont soumises au droit d’auteur. L’utilisation pour votre usage personnel est autorisé, mais aucune modification sans autorisation préalable de l’auteure n’est permise. Pour toute autre utilisation que personnelle, me contacter. Merci, en règle générale, de respecter le travail d’autrui.
TéléchargerUne invisibilité systémique
L’intersection entre autisme, âge et genre constitue un angle mort des politiques publiques, de la recherche scientifique et des pratiques de soin. Être une femme autiste vieillissante expose à une superposition de mécanismes de disqualification sociale, médicale et institutionnelle, qui se renforcent mutuellement. Cette configuration produit des formes spécifiques de vulnérabilité invisibilisée.
L’errance diagnostique entraîne une absence de compréhension du fonctionnement pendant une partie de la vie, avec des conséquences cumulatives sur la santé, l’estime de soi et la trajectoire socio-professionnelle. Le coût psychique du camouflage social s’accumule sur plusieurs décennies avant d’atteindre des seuils de rupture.
Le vieillissement féminin est constamment dévalorisé : la valeur sociale des femmes est largement corrélée à la productivité, y compris démographique, à la conformité relationnelle et à la disponibilité physique et émotionnelle.
L’autisme est profondément stigmatisé et mal compris. Chez l’adulte, il continue d’être perçu à travers des stéréotypes infantiles ou masculins. Cette méconnaissance favorise une invalidation systématique des besoins.
À l’intersection de ces dimensions, les femmes autistes vieillissantes sont privées de cadre de compréhension cohérent. Les difficultés sont fragmentées, ou renvoyées à des causes psychologiques individuelles, sans analyse globale. Cette fragmentation empêche les accompagnements adaptés, et favorise une psychiatrisation des vécus. Elle alimente une violence dans laquelle la personne doit s’adapter encore, sans que l’environnement ne soit interrogé.
Cette intersection d’oppressions se traduit par une invisibilisation statistique et politique. Les femmes autistes âgées sont peu représentées dans les études, rarement ciblées par les dispositifs d’accompagnement et quasi absentes des discours publics sur l’autisme ou le vieillissement.
Une problématique handicapante (ou handicapée ?)
Le manque de formation et de sensibilisation au corps, aux cycles menstruels et à la sexualité des femmes handicapées constitue une défaillance des politiques de santé, d’éducation et d’accompagnement. Cette carence vient d’une logique durable d’infantilisation, de contrôle et de désexualisation du handicap.
Les personnes repérées comme handies ont souvent un accès limité à l’éducation à la santé sexuelle et reproductive. Les informations relatives aux règles, aux variations hormonales, à la douleur, au consentement ou au plaisir sont absentes ou transmises de manière partielle, normative et infantilisante. Cette transmission déficiente empêche la construction d’un rapport sécurisé au corps. Elle installe une méconnaissance durable des signaux physiologiques, des variations normales et des situations nécessitant une prise en charge médicale.
Cette lacune est renforcée par des représentations sociales qui considèrent les femmes handies comme asexuées, éternellement mineures ou inaptes à comprendre leur propre corps. Ces représentations influencent les pratiques des milieux éducatifs, médico-sociaux ou de santé. Ces questions sont souvent minimisées ou traitées sous un angle gestionnaire, centré sur la prévention des risques plutôt que sur l’autonomie, le plaisir et le consentement.
La (péri)ménopause est elle aussi révélatrice de ces inégalités. L’absence de préparation et de repères favorise l’anxiété, la confusion et l’auto-disqualification, lorsque les symptômes sont interprétés comme une dégradation personnelle, une instabilité psychique ou une perte de capacités, plutôt que comme une étape identifiable de la vie.
Quelques outils
Une check list, pour soi, ou pour préparer une consultation
Voici une fiche pratique qui permet de cocher les symptômes qui interrogent concernant une possible périmenopause. On peut l’utiliser pour soi-même, ou la présenter en consultation auprès d’un·e médecin généraliste, d’un·e sage femme ou d’un·e gynécologue.
Attention : les créations présentes sur ce site sont soumises au droit d’auteur. L’utilisation pour votre usage personnel est autorisé, mais aucune modification sans autorisation préalable de l’auteure n’est permise. Pour toute autre utilisation que personnelle, me contacter. Merci, en règle générale, de respecter le travail d’autrui.
TéléchargerLe menstruomètre, pour communiquer sur son état et ses besoins
Le menstruomètre est un outil facilitant la communication avec les proches au quotidien, durant les périodes menstruelles. Son utilisation est détaillée dans un article spécifique. Il propose un complément spécifique aux personnes autistes et TDAH.
Attention : les créations présentes sur ce site sont soumises au droit d’auteur. L’utilisation pour votre usage personnel est autorisé, mais aucune modification sans autorisation préalable de l’auteure n’est permise. Pour toute autre utilisation que personnelle, me contacter. Merci, en règle générale, de respecter le travail d’autrui.
En savoir plus TéléchargerLe site Parlons Règles intègre un chatbot qui peut répondre aux questions courantes.
Ces vécus complexes, illustrées dans le cadre de l’autisme et de la (péri)ménopause, ne relèvent pas d’une fragilité individuelle, mais d’un système qui exige une adaptation constante aux normes dominantes, tout en invisibilisant celleux qui y parviennent au prix d’un épuisement profond.
Nous sommes, une fois de plus, au croisement du validisme et du patriarcat.
La difficulté à comprendre et anticiper le vécu difficile de la (péri)ménopause dans nos sociétés est le symptôme collectif d’un système de savoirs, de soins et de représentations qui échoue à penser la diversité humaine, à reconnaître l’impact du temps, du corps et des rapports de pouvoir, et à offrir des ressources accessibles à toustes.
Sources
- A la croisée du genre et de l’autisme
- Autisme et Ménopause aide Canada
- Les femmes autistes plus susceptibles de souffrir de la ménopause AFFA
- National Autistic Society: menopause
- Pourquoi tant de femmes neurodivergentes découvrent leur autisme ou leur TDAH au moment de la périménopause
Aller plus loin
- Pour les femmes de couleur, la ménopause est différente
- Tout est politique – La ménopause en marge
- Queer menopause (vidéo en anglais)
- Expériences de la ménopause chez les personnes non binaires et trans
- La ménopause et moi – quand on est non-binaire
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The Face on the Building: America’s Palazzo Braschi Moment
In 1934, the Fascist Party Federation draped the facade of Rome’s Palazzo Braschi with an enormous sculpted face of Benito Mussolini, surrounded by the word “SI” repeated in cascading rows. The building sat between Piazza Navona and the Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, in the heart of a city that had been shaping political identity through architecture for two thousand years. That face functioned as an instruction. Citizens who walked beneath it understood, whether they could articulate it or not, that the state had claimed the visual field, and that to exist in public space was to exist under observation and under obligation, holding the urban semiotic.
Ninety-two years later, giant banners bearing the face of a sitting American president hang from the Department of Justice, the Department of Labor, and the Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C. Each banner is photographed from slightly below, a classic technique in authoritarian portraiture that elongates the jaw and narrows the eyes, producing an expression of surveillance rather than service. Meanwhile, his name has been affixed to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and to the United States Institute of Peace. His signature will appear on American currency. A presidential portrait replaces nature photography on the America the Beautiful national parks pass. And his birthday has been twinned with Flag Day by the Department of the Interior, granting free admission to national parks on April 14 as a celebration of the man rather than the land.
These are facts, and they require no editorial seasoning to alarm anyone who has spent time with the visual history of the twentieth century.
Before sharpening the comparison, though, honesty demands an accounting of the American tradition it descends from. The United States has never been modest about presidential memorialization. Gutzon Borglum carved four presidential faces into a mountain in the Black Hills of South Dakota that the Lakota Sioux called Six Grandfathers, a monument to democratic leadership built on stolen land with the enthusiastic participation of a sculptor who attended Ku Klux Klan rallies. Lyndon Johnson named the Kennedy Center for Kennedy partly as a political maneuver to move arts funding legislation through Congress. Franklin Roosevelt’s WPA projects stamped federal iconography onto every post office and courthouse in the country, building a visual vocabulary of state presence that Americans still inhabit without noticing. The impulse to brand public space with presidential identity has a long and bipartisan genealogy.
What Trump is doing, then, sits on a spectrum rather than outside it. The question is whether it occupies an extreme position on a familiar American continuum or whether it has crossed into categorically different territory. Borglum’s mountain honored dead presidents. LBJ’s naming honored an assassinated predecessor. Roosevelt’s WPA murals depicted collective labor, not the president’s own face. In each case, the memorialization was filtered through institutional processes, legislative authorization, or the basic decorum of waiting until the honoree was no longer in office. What distinguishes the current campaign is the erasure of those filters. A sitting president chairing the board that renames a performing arts center after him, then claiming surprise at the vote he orchestrated, is operating by a different set of rules than the ones that governed even the most vainglorious of his predecessors.
Consider the Kennedy Center board that voted unanimously to add Trump’s name: it was composed entirely of his own appointees. At the Institute of Peace, the board was similarly reconstituted before the renaming. Federal agencies under executive authority commissioned the banners on government buildings, and when the USDA initially described one as temporary, the pattern expanded rather than retreated. Add the currency signature, the national parks pass, the birthday celebration, the proposed renaming of Penn Station, Dulles Airport, and the Washington Commanders stadium, the Trump-class battleships, the Trump Accounts, TrumpRx, the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity connecting Armenia and Azerbaijan: each item, in isolation, might be dismissed as a peculiar excess. Assembled together, they constitute a program. And the speed of the assembly matters, because personality cults do not arrive fully formed. They accrete.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, the NYU historian and author of Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present, has described the current pattern as the construction of a personality cult. Trump himself, when asked about the namings, has repeatedly denied agency. He claimed surprise at the Kennedy Center vote, said during the State of the Union that nobody believed him but he did not name the Trump Accounts, and repeated the denial for TrumpRx. Senator Adam Schiff published a formal report in September 2025 identifying the banners as violations of federal law and drawing explicit parallels to Mussolini’s facade and to the Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il portraits that adorn government buildings across North Korea. Dr. Emma Briant, a visiting associate professor at the University of Notre Dame who researches propaganda and information warfare, has identified the banners as consistent with the visual grammar of dictatorship. Max Stier, who leads the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service, has stated that while political protest is an old tradition in Washington, the use of government resources to promote a single individual has no precedent in American life. Stier’s formulation cuts to the structural question: political leaders, in a democracy, are hired help.
Here, however, a distinction requires careful handling. Mussolini did not deny the face was his. He staged it. Stalin did not feign surprise at the naming of Stalingrad. The open dictatorial claim and the coy denial are different postures, and conflating them sacrifices diagnostic precision. Trump’s repeated insistence that others, acting independently, have chosen to honor him could be read as evidence that the democratic norm of appearing modest still exerts gravitational pull on him, that he still needs to perform the fiction of humility because the audience still expects it. A dictator who no longer needs to perform that fiction is operating from a different position of power. The denial, in other words, may mark a transitional phase rather than an accomplished fact: the leader who still pretends to be embarrassed by the adulation is further along the path than the leader who has never sought it, but he has not yet arrived at the place where the pretense becomes unnecessary. The direction of travel matters more than the current coordinates.
Against this visual program, something unexpected has been happening on the National Mall. An anonymous collective called the Secret Handshake has been installing guerrilla sculptures and banners within sight of the government portraits. In February, they erected a gold-painted statue depicting Trump and Jeffrey Epstein posed as Jack and Rose on the prow of the Titanic, titled “King of the World.” The National Park Service issued a four-day permit for the installation. Crowds gathered. People laughed. They took photographs. Some were offended. On March 31, the collective installed a gold-painted faux-marble toilet near the Lincoln Memorial, titled “A Throne Fit For a King,” mocking the renovation of the White House bathroom attached to the Lincoln Bedroom during a government shutdown.
A separate organization, the Save America Movement, has plastered Washington with posters targeting cabinet members. One shows a photograph of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller with the caption “Fascism Ain’t Pretty.” Another shows Attorney General Pam Bondi with the words “Epstein Queen.”
Mary Corcoran, who runs the Save America Movement, has framed the asymmetry plainly: the administration funds its propaganda with taxpayer dollars, while the opposition funds its counter-imagery with donations.
Now: a reasonable person could look at this guerrilla campaign and argue that its existence disproves the alarm. Mussolini’s Rome never saw an anonymous collective erect a satirical statue of Il Duce outside the Palazzo Braschi and receive a government permit for the trouble. In Stalin’s Moscow, the Save America Movement equivalent would have been shot. Pyongyang renders the entire exercise unimaginable. The four-day permit is, in one reading, proof that American democracy is functioning exactly as designed: the state displays its iconography, citizens mock it, courts adjudicate the disputes, and the carnival continues. Beatty v. Trump is proceeding through federal court. Philip Glass withdrew from Kennedy Center programming and suffered no state reprisal. Every counter-example that can be celebrated as resistance is simultaneously evidence that the system under indictment has not yet collapsed.
This is a fair objection, and the article cannot survive without absorbing it. So let it be absorbed.
Whether the American system has already become a dictatorship has always been the wrong question. What matters is whether the distance between the current trajectory and that destination is shrinking, and how citizens would know the difference between a contested public sphere that reflects democratic health and a contested public sphere that reflects a transitional phase between open society and closed one. Every authoritarian state passed through a period in which satirical statues could still be erected, in which permits were still granted, in which courts still heard challenges to executive overreach. The Weimar Republic had the most ferocious satirical press in Europe. It had George Grosz and John Heartfield and Kurt Tucholsky and a judiciary that, for a time, still functioned. Permits were issued. Magazines were published. And then they were not.
The permit is not the answer to the diagnostic question. The permit is the diagnostic question. Is the four-day window for a satirical statue evidence that the system is working, or evidence that the system is still in the phase where opposition is tolerated because it has not yet become threatening enough to suppress? We will not know the answer in real time. We will know it only in retrospect, and by then the knowing will be useless.
And here is where theatrical instinct becomes relevant to political analysis. What is happening on the National Mall is a stage contest. One side has seized the proscenium. It controls the permanent architecture, the lighting, the scale, the vantage points. Guerrilla artists are working from the wings, placing temporary objects designed to be photographed and circulated rather than to endure. State portraiture and monumental sculpture anchor the government’s visual strategy. Carnival, political caricature, and the traditions of Daumier, Gillray, and the Italian commedia dell’arte anchor the opposition’s.
Whether ridicule can defeat monumentalism is the open question. Historical evidence offers mixed answers. Daumier was imprisoned for his caricatures of King Louis-Philippe. Weimar Germany’s satirical press produced some of the most brilliant political art of the twentieth century and failed to prevent the rise of the Third Reich. Vaclav Havel, however, argued that humor and absurdity were essential tools of resistance under totalitarianism, that refusing to take the regime’s self-image seriously was itself a political act eroding the regime’s authority. Czech dissidents, from Havel’s essays to the work of the Plastic People of the Universe, demonstrated that a state’s control of the visual field could be undermined by the persistence of an alternative aesthetic. But Havel also spent years in prison before his persistence paid off, and Czechoslovakia’s liberation owed as much to the structural collapse of the Soviet Union as to the courage of its artists.
What makes Washington different is that the contest is happening in real time, in the same physical space, and it is mediated by the technology that makes the personality cult possible in the first place. A two-story banner goes up. A satirical statue appears within the banner’s sightline. Visitors photograph the juxtaposition and post it to social media, where the image circulates to millions of people who will never visit the Mall. Statues vanish after four days; photographs persist on millions of screens without expiration dates. Official banners carry the weight of authority, while the crowd’s editorial framing, captured in a single snapshot posted from a phone, carries the weight of witness. In the economy of attention, the guerrilla image may travel farther and lodge more durably in memory than the state image, precisely because it is funnier, stranger, and more human.
None of this means the guerrilla artists are winning. Banners still hang. The name still sits on the Kennedy Center, despite active litigation (Beatty v. Trump, as of March 2026, remains ongoing) and despite a federal statute designating the Center as the sole national memorial to John F. Kennedy in the capital and prohibiting renaming without an act of Congress. Performers who withdrew from Kennedy Center programming after the renaming, including the composer Philip Glass, understood that the building itself had been conscripted into a narrative they could not endorse through participation.
Architecture has always carried political meaning, and the National Mall was designed to embody democratic ideals through spatial openness, axial symmetry, and the subordination of individual identity to collective memory. Monuments there honor presidents who are dead. Memorials mark wars that are concluded. Museums house the patrimony of a nation, curated by institutions that are, at least in theory, independent of the sitting executive. Hanging a living president’s face from government buildings along the Mall ruptures the design logic of the space, superimposing the living ruler onto a landscape conceived for the contemplation of shared sacrifice and historical distance.
When the White House responded to criticism by stating that the president is focused on saving the country rather than garnering recognition, the statement performed its own negation. A president focused on the country rather than recognition does not hang his face on the Department of Justice, does not chair the board that renames a national performing arts center after him, and does not then express surprise at the outcome.
We have been here before, and we have not been here before. The Palazzo Braschi face came down. Mussolini’s SI ballots were counted and discarded. Il Duce ended hanging by his ankles at a gas station in Milan. History does not replay mechanically, though certain patterns of self-display are diagnostic. When a leader begins claiming public architecture for private glorification, the leader is telling you what he believes about the relationship between the state and himself. That face on the building is a declaration. And in a functioning democracy, citizens who see it are obligated to name what it means, clearly and without apology, while the permit to erect the satirical statue in its shadow still exists, because the day the permit is denied will be the day the argument is settled, and by then, the argument will no longer matter.
#americanTradition #architecture #economy #governmentAdvertising #guerrillaArtists #gutzonBorglum #mussolini #nation #nationalMall #palazzoBraschi #PhilipGlass #politics #promotion #wpa -
The Face on the Building: America’s Palazzo Braschi Moment
In 1934, the Fascist Party Federation draped the facade of Rome’s Palazzo Braschi with an enormous sculpted face of Benito Mussolini, surrounded by the word “SI” repeated in cascading rows. The building sat between Piazza Navona and the Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, in the heart of a city that had been shaping political identity through architecture for two thousand years. That face functioned as an instruction. Citizens who walked beneath it understood, whether they could articulate it or not, that the state had claimed the visual field, and that to exist in public space was to exist under observation and under obligation, holding the urban semiotic.
Ninety-two years later, giant banners bearing the face of a sitting American president hang from the Department of Justice, the Department of Labor, and the Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C. Each banner is photographed from slightly below, a classic technique in authoritarian portraiture that elongates the jaw and narrows the eyes, producing an expression of surveillance rather than service. Meanwhile, his name has been affixed to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and to the United States Institute of Peace. His signature will appear on American currency. A presidential portrait replaces nature photography on the America the Beautiful national parks pass. And his birthday has been twinned with Flag Day by the Department of the Interior, granting free admission to national parks on April 14 as a celebration of the man rather than the land.
These are facts, and they require no editorial seasoning to alarm anyone who has spent time with the visual history of the twentieth century.
Before sharpening the comparison, though, honesty demands an accounting of the American tradition it descends from. The United States has never been modest about presidential memorialization. Gutzon Borglum carved four presidential faces into a mountain in the Black Hills of South Dakota that the Lakota Sioux called Six Grandfathers, a monument to democratic leadership built on stolen land with the enthusiastic participation of a sculptor who attended Ku Klux Klan rallies. Lyndon Johnson named the Kennedy Center for Kennedy partly as a political maneuver to move arts funding legislation through Congress. Franklin Roosevelt’s WPA projects stamped federal iconography onto every post office and courthouse in the country, building a visual vocabulary of state presence that Americans still inhabit without noticing. The impulse to brand public space with presidential identity has a long and bipartisan genealogy.
What Trump is doing, then, sits on a spectrum rather than outside it. The question is whether it occupies an extreme position on a familiar American continuum or whether it has crossed into categorically different territory. Borglum’s mountain honored dead presidents. LBJ’s naming honored an assassinated predecessor. Roosevelt’s WPA murals depicted collective labor, not the president’s own face. In each case, the memorialization was filtered through institutional processes, legislative authorization, or the basic decorum of waiting until the honoree was no longer in office. What distinguishes the current campaign is the erasure of those filters. A sitting president chairing the board that renames a performing arts center after him, then claiming surprise at the vote he orchestrated, is operating by a different set of rules than the ones that governed even the most vainglorious of his predecessors.
Consider the Kennedy Center board that voted unanimously to add Trump’s name: it was composed entirely of his own appointees. At the Institute of Peace, the board was similarly reconstituted before the renaming. Federal agencies under executive authority commissioned the banners on government buildings, and when the USDA initially described one as temporary, the pattern expanded rather than retreated. Add the currency signature, the national parks pass, the birthday celebration, the proposed renaming of Penn Station, Dulles Airport, and the Washington Commanders stadium, the Trump-class battleships, the Trump Accounts, TrumpRx, the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity connecting Armenia and Azerbaijan: each item, in isolation, might be dismissed as a peculiar excess. Assembled together, they constitute a program. And the speed of the assembly matters, because personality cults do not arrive fully formed. They accrete.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, the NYU historian and author of Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present, has described the current pattern as the construction of a personality cult. Trump himself, when asked about the namings, has repeatedly denied agency. He claimed surprise at the Kennedy Center vote, said during the State of the Union that nobody believed him but he did not name the Trump Accounts, and repeated the denial for TrumpRx. Senator Adam Schiff published a formal report in September 2025 identifying the banners as violations of federal law and drawing explicit parallels to Mussolini’s facade and to the Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il portraits that adorn government buildings across North Korea. Dr. Emma Briant, a visiting associate professor at the University of Notre Dame who researches propaganda and information warfare, has identified the banners as consistent with the visual grammar of dictatorship. Max Stier, who leads the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service, has stated that while political protest is an old tradition in Washington, the use of government resources to promote a single individual has no precedent in American life. Stier’s formulation cuts to the structural question: political leaders, in a democracy, are hired help.
Here, however, a distinction requires careful handling. Mussolini did not deny the face was his. He staged it. Stalin did not feign surprise at the naming of Stalingrad. The open dictatorial claim and the coy denial are different postures, and conflating them sacrifices diagnostic precision. Trump’s repeated insistence that others, acting independently, have chosen to honor him could be read as evidence that the democratic norm of appearing modest still exerts gravitational pull on him, that he still needs to perform the fiction of humility because the audience still expects it. A dictator who no longer needs to perform that fiction is operating from a different position of power. The denial, in other words, may mark a transitional phase rather than an accomplished fact: the leader who still pretends to be embarrassed by the adulation is further along the path than the leader who has never sought it, but he has not yet arrived at the place where the pretense becomes unnecessary. The direction of travel matters more than the current coordinates.
Against this visual program, something unexpected has been happening on the National Mall. An anonymous collective called the Secret Handshake has been installing guerrilla sculptures and banners within sight of the government portraits. In February, they erected a gold-painted statue depicting Trump and Jeffrey Epstein posed as Jack and Rose on the prow of the Titanic, titled “King of the World.” The National Park Service issued a four-day permit for the installation. Crowds gathered. People laughed. They took photographs. Some were offended. On March 31, the collective installed a gold-painted faux-marble toilet near the Lincoln Memorial, titled “A Throne Fit For a King,” mocking the renovation of the White House bathroom attached to the Lincoln Bedroom during a government shutdown.
A separate organization, the Save America Movement, has plastered Washington with posters targeting cabinet members. One shows a photograph of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller with the caption “Fascism Ain’t Pretty.” Another shows Attorney General Pam Bondi with the words “Epstein Queen.”
Mary Corcoran, who runs the Save America Movement, has framed the asymmetry plainly: the administration funds its propaganda with taxpayer dollars, while the opposition funds its counter-imagery with donations.
Now: a reasonable person could look at this guerrilla campaign and argue that its existence disproves the alarm. Mussolini’s Rome never saw an anonymous collective erect a satirical statue of Il Duce outside the Palazzo Braschi and receive a government permit for the trouble. In Stalin’s Moscow, the Save America Movement equivalent would have been shot. Pyongyang renders the entire exercise unimaginable. The four-day permit is, in one reading, proof that American democracy is functioning exactly as designed: the state displays its iconography, citizens mock it, courts adjudicate the disputes, and the carnival continues. Beatty v. Trump is proceeding through federal court. Philip Glass withdrew from Kennedy Center programming and suffered no state reprisal. Every counter-example that can be celebrated as resistance is simultaneously evidence that the system under indictment has not yet collapsed.
This is a fair objection, and the article cannot survive without absorbing it. So let it be absorbed.
Whether the American system has already become a dictatorship has always been the wrong question. What matters is whether the distance between the current trajectory and that destination is shrinking, and how citizens would know the difference between a contested public sphere that reflects democratic health and a contested public sphere that reflects a transitional phase between open society and closed one. Every authoritarian state passed through a period in which satirical statues could still be erected, in which permits were still granted, in which courts still heard challenges to executive overreach. The Weimar Republic had the most ferocious satirical press in Europe. It had George Grosz and John Heartfield and Kurt Tucholsky and a judiciary that, for a time, still functioned. Permits were issued. Magazines were published. And then they were not.
The permit is not the answer to the diagnostic question. The permit is the diagnostic question. Is the four-day window for a satirical statue evidence that the system is working, or evidence that the system is still in the phase where opposition is tolerated because it has not yet become threatening enough to suppress? We will not know the answer in real time. We will know it only in retrospect, and by then the knowing will be useless.
And here is where theatrical instinct becomes relevant to political analysis. What is happening on the National Mall is a stage contest. One side has seized the proscenium. It controls the permanent architecture, the lighting, the scale, the vantage points. Guerrilla artists are working from the wings, placing temporary objects designed to be photographed and circulated rather than to endure. State portraiture and monumental sculpture anchor the government’s visual strategy. Carnival, political caricature, and the traditions of Daumier, Gillray, and the Italian commedia dell’arte anchor the opposition’s.
Whether ridicule can defeat monumentalism is the open question. Historical evidence offers mixed answers. Daumier was imprisoned for his caricatures of King Louis-Philippe. Weimar Germany’s satirical press produced some of the most brilliant political art of the twentieth century and failed to prevent the rise of the Third Reich. Vaclav Havel, however, argued that humor and absurdity were essential tools of resistance under totalitarianism, that refusing to take the regime’s self-image seriously was itself a political act eroding the regime’s authority. Czech dissidents, from Havel’s essays to the work of the Plastic People of the Universe, demonstrated that a state’s control of the visual field could be undermined by the persistence of an alternative aesthetic. But Havel also spent years in prison before his persistence paid off, and Czechoslovakia’s liberation owed as much to the structural collapse of the Soviet Union as to the courage of its artists.
What makes Washington different is that the contest is happening in real time, in the same physical space, and it is mediated by the technology that makes the personality cult possible in the first place. A two-story banner goes up. A satirical statue appears within the banner’s sightline. Visitors photograph the juxtaposition and post it to social media, where the image circulates to millions of people who will never visit the Mall. Statues vanish after four days; photographs persist on millions of screens without expiration dates. Official banners carry the weight of authority, while the crowd’s editorial framing, captured in a single snapshot posted from a phone, carries the weight of witness. In the economy of attention, the guerrilla image may travel farther and lodge more durably in memory than the state image, precisely because it is funnier, stranger, and more human.
None of this means the guerrilla artists are winning. Banners still hang. The name still sits on the Kennedy Center, despite active litigation (Beatty v. Trump, as of March 2026, remains ongoing) and despite a federal statute designating the Center as the sole national memorial to John F. Kennedy in the capital and prohibiting renaming without an act of Congress. Performers who withdrew from Kennedy Center programming after the renaming, including the composer Philip Glass, understood that the building itself had been conscripted into a narrative they could not endorse through participation.
Architecture has always carried political meaning, and the National Mall was designed to embody democratic ideals through spatial openness, axial symmetry, and the subordination of individual identity to collective memory. Monuments there honor presidents who are dead. Memorials mark wars that are concluded. Museums house the patrimony of a nation, curated by institutions that are, at least in theory, independent of the sitting executive. Hanging a living president’s face from government buildings along the Mall ruptures the design logic of the space, superimposing the living ruler onto a landscape conceived for the contemplation of shared sacrifice and historical distance.
When the White House responded to criticism by stating that the president is focused on saving the country rather than garnering recognition, the statement performed its own negation. A president focused on the country rather than recognition does not hang his face on the Department of Justice, does not chair the board that renames a national performing arts center after him, and does not then express surprise at the outcome.
We have been here before, and we have not been here before. The Palazzo Braschi face came down. Mussolini’s SI ballots were counted and discarded. Il Duce ended hanging by his ankles at a gas station in Milan. History does not replay mechanically, though certain patterns of self-display are diagnostic. When a leader begins claiming public architecture for private glorification, the leader is telling you what he believes about the relationship between the state and himself. That face on the building is a declaration. And in a functioning democracy, citizens who see it are obligated to name what it means, clearly and without apology, while the permit to erect the satirical statue in its shadow still exists, because the day the permit is denied will be the day the argument is settled, and by then, the argument will no longer matter.
#americanTradition #architecture #economy #governmentAdvertising #guerrillaArtists #gutzonBorglum #mussolini #nation #nationalMall #palazzoBraschi #PhilipGlass #politics #promotion #wpa -
The Face on the Building: America’s Palazzo Braschi Moment
In 1934, the Fascist Party Federation draped the facade of Rome’s Palazzo Braschi with an enormous sculpted face of Benito Mussolini, surrounded by the word “SI” repeated in cascading rows. The building sat between Piazza Navona and the Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, in the heart of a city that had been shaping political identity through architecture for two thousand years. That face functioned as an instruction. Citizens who walked beneath it understood, whether they could articulate it or not, that the state had claimed the visual field, and that to exist in public space was to exist under observation and under obligation, holding the urban semiotic.
Ninety-two years later, giant banners bearing the face of a sitting American president hang from the Department of Justice, the Department of Labor, and the Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C. Each banner is photographed from slightly below, a classic technique in authoritarian portraiture that elongates the jaw and narrows the eyes, producing an expression of surveillance rather than service. Meanwhile, his name has been affixed to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and to the United States Institute of Peace. His signature will appear on American currency. A presidential portrait replaces nature photography on the America the Beautiful national parks pass. And his birthday has been twinned with Flag Day by the Department of the Interior, granting free admission to national parks on April 14 as a celebration of the man rather than the land.
These are facts, and they require no editorial seasoning to alarm anyone who has spent time with the visual history of the twentieth century.
Before sharpening the comparison, though, honesty demands an accounting of the American tradition it descends from. The United States has never been modest about presidential memorialization. Gutzon Borglum carved four presidential faces into a mountain in the Black Hills of South Dakota that the Lakota Sioux called Six Grandfathers, a monument to democratic leadership built on stolen land with the enthusiastic participation of a sculptor who attended Ku Klux Klan rallies. Lyndon Johnson named the Kennedy Center for Kennedy partly as a political maneuver to move arts funding legislation through Congress. Franklin Roosevelt’s WPA projects stamped federal iconography onto every post office and courthouse in the country, building a visual vocabulary of state presence that Americans still inhabit without noticing. The impulse to brand public space with presidential identity has a long and bipartisan genealogy.
What Trump is doing, then, sits on a spectrum rather than outside it. The question is whether it occupies an extreme position on a familiar American continuum or whether it has crossed into categorically different territory. Borglum’s mountain honored dead presidents. LBJ’s naming honored an assassinated predecessor. Roosevelt’s WPA murals depicted collective labor, not the president’s own face. In each case, the memorialization was filtered through institutional processes, legislative authorization, or the basic decorum of waiting until the honoree was no longer in office. What distinguishes the current campaign is the erasure of those filters. A sitting president chairing the board that renames a performing arts center after him, then claiming surprise at the vote he orchestrated, is operating by a different set of rules than the ones that governed even the most vainglorious of his predecessors.
Consider the Kennedy Center board that voted unanimously to add Trump’s name: it was composed entirely of his own appointees. At the Institute of Peace, the board was similarly reconstituted before the renaming. Federal agencies under executive authority commissioned the banners on government buildings, and when the USDA initially described one as temporary, the pattern expanded rather than retreated. Add the currency signature, the national parks pass, the birthday celebration, the proposed renaming of Penn Station, Dulles Airport, and the Washington Commanders stadium, the Trump-class battleships, the Trump Accounts, TrumpRx, the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity connecting Armenia and Azerbaijan: each item, in isolation, might be dismissed as a peculiar excess. Assembled together, they constitute a program. And the speed of the assembly matters, because personality cults do not arrive fully formed. They accrete.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, the NYU historian and author of Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present, has described the current pattern as the construction of a personality cult. Trump himself, when asked about the namings, has repeatedly denied agency. He claimed surprise at the Kennedy Center vote, said during the State of the Union that nobody believed him but he did not name the Trump Accounts, and repeated the denial for TrumpRx. Senator Adam Schiff published a formal report in September 2025 identifying the banners as violations of federal law and drawing explicit parallels to Mussolini’s facade and to the Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il portraits that adorn government buildings across North Korea. Dr. Emma Briant, a visiting associate professor at the University of Notre Dame who researches propaganda and information warfare, has identified the banners as consistent with the visual grammar of dictatorship. Max Stier, who leads the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service, has stated that while political protest is an old tradition in Washington, the use of government resources to promote a single individual has no precedent in American life. Stier’s formulation cuts to the structural question: political leaders, in a democracy, are hired help.
Here, however, a distinction requires careful handling. Mussolini did not deny the face was his. He staged it. Stalin did not feign surprise at the naming of Stalingrad. The open dictatorial claim and the coy denial are different postures, and conflating them sacrifices diagnostic precision. Trump’s repeated insistence that others, acting independently, have chosen to honor him could be read as evidence that the democratic norm of appearing modest still exerts gravitational pull on him, that he still needs to perform the fiction of humility because the audience still expects it. A dictator who no longer needs to perform that fiction is operating from a different position of power. The denial, in other words, may mark a transitional phase rather than an accomplished fact: the leader who still pretends to be embarrassed by the adulation is further along the path than the leader who has never sought it, but he has not yet arrived at the place where the pretense becomes unnecessary. The direction of travel matters more than the current coordinates.
Against this visual program, something unexpected has been happening on the National Mall. An anonymous collective called the Secret Handshake has been installing guerrilla sculptures and banners within sight of the government portraits. In February, they erected a gold-painted statue depicting Trump and Jeffrey Epstein posed as Jack and Rose on the prow of the Titanic, titled “King of the World.” The National Park Service issued a four-day permit for the installation. Crowds gathered. People laughed. They took photographs. Some were offended. On March 31, the collective installed a gold-painted faux-marble toilet near the Lincoln Memorial, titled “A Throne Fit For a King,” mocking the renovation of the White House bathroom attached to the Lincoln Bedroom during a government shutdown.
A separate organization, the Save America Movement, has plastered Washington with posters targeting cabinet members. One shows a photograph of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller with the caption “Fascism Ain’t Pretty.” Another shows Attorney General Pam Bondi with the words “Epstein Queen.”
Mary Corcoran, who runs the Save America Movement, has framed the asymmetry plainly: the administration funds its propaganda with taxpayer dollars, while the opposition funds its counter-imagery with donations.
Now: a reasonable person could look at this guerrilla campaign and argue that its existence disproves the alarm. Mussolini’s Rome never saw an anonymous collective erect a satirical statue of Il Duce outside the Palazzo Braschi and receive a government permit for the trouble. In Stalin’s Moscow, the Save America Movement equivalent would have been shot. Pyongyang renders the entire exercise unimaginable. The four-day permit is, in one reading, proof that American democracy is functioning exactly as designed: the state displays its iconography, citizens mock it, courts adjudicate the disputes, and the carnival continues. Beatty v. Trump is proceeding through federal court. Philip Glass withdrew from Kennedy Center programming and suffered no state reprisal. Every counter-example that can be celebrated as resistance is simultaneously evidence that the system under indictment has not yet collapsed.
This is a fair objection, and the article cannot survive without absorbing it. So let it be absorbed.
Whether the American system has already become a dictatorship has always been the wrong question. What matters is whether the distance between the current trajectory and that destination is shrinking, and how citizens would know the difference between a contested public sphere that reflects democratic health and a contested public sphere that reflects a transitional phase between open society and closed one. Every authoritarian state passed through a period in which satirical statues could still be erected, in which permits were still granted, in which courts still heard challenges to executive overreach. The Weimar Republic had the most ferocious satirical press in Europe. It had George Grosz and John Heartfield and Kurt Tucholsky and a judiciary that, for a time, still functioned. Permits were issued. Magazines were published. And then they were not.
The permit is not the answer to the diagnostic question. The permit is the diagnostic question. Is the four-day window for a satirical statue evidence that the system is working, or evidence that the system is still in the phase where opposition is tolerated because it has not yet become threatening enough to suppress? We will not know the answer in real time. We will know it only in retrospect, and by then the knowing will be useless.
And here is where theatrical instinct becomes relevant to political analysis. What is happening on the National Mall is a stage contest. One side has seized the proscenium. It controls the permanent architecture, the lighting, the scale, the vantage points. Guerrilla artists are working from the wings, placing temporary objects designed to be photographed and circulated rather than to endure. State portraiture and monumental sculpture anchor the government’s visual strategy. Carnival, political caricature, and the traditions of Daumier, Gillray, and the Italian commedia dell’arte anchor the opposition’s.
Whether ridicule can defeat monumentalism is the open question. Historical evidence offers mixed answers. Daumier was imprisoned for his caricatures of King Louis-Philippe. Weimar Germany’s satirical press produced some of the most brilliant political art of the twentieth century and failed to prevent the rise of the Third Reich. Vaclav Havel, however, argued that humor and absurdity were essential tools of resistance under totalitarianism, that refusing to take the regime’s self-image seriously was itself a political act eroding the regime’s authority. Czech dissidents, from Havel’s essays to the work of the Plastic People of the Universe, demonstrated that a state’s control of the visual field could be undermined by the persistence of an alternative aesthetic. But Havel also spent years in prison before his persistence paid off, and Czechoslovakia’s liberation owed as much to the structural collapse of the Soviet Union as to the courage of its artists.
What makes Washington different is that the contest is happening in real time, in the same physical space, and it is mediated by the technology that makes the personality cult possible in the first place. A two-story banner goes up. A satirical statue appears within the banner’s sightline. Visitors photograph the juxtaposition and post it to social media, where the image circulates to millions of people who will never visit the Mall. Statues vanish after four days; photographs persist on millions of screens without expiration dates. Official banners carry the weight of authority, while the crowd’s editorial framing, captured in a single snapshot posted from a phone, carries the weight of witness. In the economy of attention, the guerrilla image may travel farther and lodge more durably in memory than the state image, precisely because it is funnier, stranger, and more human.
None of this means the guerrilla artists are winning. Banners still hang. The name still sits on the Kennedy Center, despite active litigation (Beatty v. Trump, as of March 2026, remains ongoing) and despite a federal statute designating the Center as the sole national memorial to John F. Kennedy in the capital and prohibiting renaming without an act of Congress. Performers who withdrew from Kennedy Center programming after the renaming, including the composer Philip Glass, understood that the building itself had been conscripted into a narrative they could not endorse through participation.
Architecture has always carried political meaning, and the National Mall was designed to embody democratic ideals through spatial openness, axial symmetry, and the subordination of individual identity to collective memory. Monuments there honor presidents who are dead. Memorials mark wars that are concluded. Museums house the patrimony of a nation, curated by institutions that are, at least in theory, independent of the sitting executive. Hanging a living president’s face from government buildings along the Mall ruptures the design logic of the space, superimposing the living ruler onto a landscape conceived for the contemplation of shared sacrifice and historical distance.
When the White House responded to criticism by stating that the president is focused on saving the country rather than garnering recognition, the statement performed its own negation. A president focused on the country rather than recognition does not hang his face on the Department of Justice, does not chair the board that renames a national performing arts center after him, and does not then express surprise at the outcome.
We have been here before, and we have not been here before. The Palazzo Braschi face came down. Mussolini’s SI ballots were counted and discarded. Il Duce ended hanging by his ankles at a gas station in Milan. History does not replay mechanically, though certain patterns of self-display are diagnostic. When a leader begins claiming public architecture for private glorification, the leader is telling you what he believes about the relationship between the state and himself. That face on the building is a declaration. And in a functioning democracy, citizens who see it are obligated to name what it means, clearly and without apology, while the permit to erect the satirical statue in its shadow still exists, because the day the permit is denied will be the day the argument is settled, and by then, the argument will no longer matter.
#americanTradition #architecture #economy #governmentAdvertising #guerrillaArtists #gutzonBorglum #mussolini #nation #nationalMall #palazzoBraschi #PhilipGlass #politics #promotion #wpa -
The Face on the Building: America’s Palazzo Braschi Moment
In 1934, the Fascist Party Federation draped the facade of Rome’s Palazzo Braschi with an enormous sculpted face of Benito Mussolini, surrounded by the word “SI” repeated in cascading rows. The building sat between Piazza Navona and the Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, in the heart of a city that had been shaping political identity through architecture for two thousand years. That face functioned as an instruction. Citizens who walked beneath it understood, whether they could articulate it or not, that the state had claimed the visual field, and that to exist in public space was to exist under observation and under obligation, holding the urban semiotic.
Ninety-two years later, giant banners bearing the face of a sitting American president hang from the Department of Justice, the Department of Labor, and the Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C. Each banner is photographed from slightly below, a classic technique in authoritarian portraiture that elongates the jaw and narrows the eyes, producing an expression of surveillance rather than service. Meanwhile, his name has been affixed to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and to the United States Institute of Peace. His signature will appear on American currency. A presidential portrait replaces nature photography on the America the Beautiful national parks pass. And his birthday has been twinned with Flag Day by the Department of the Interior, granting free admission to national parks on April 14 as a celebration of the man rather than the land.
These are facts, and they require no editorial seasoning to alarm anyone who has spent time with the visual history of the twentieth century.
Before sharpening the comparison, though, honesty demands an accounting of the American tradition it descends from. The United States has never been modest about presidential memorialization. Gutzon Borglum carved four presidential faces into a mountain in the Black Hills of South Dakota that the Lakota Sioux called Six Grandfathers, a monument to democratic leadership built on stolen land with the enthusiastic participation of a sculptor who attended Ku Klux Klan rallies. Lyndon Johnson named the Kennedy Center for Kennedy partly as a political maneuver to move arts funding legislation through Congress. Franklin Roosevelt’s WPA projects stamped federal iconography onto every post office and courthouse in the country, building a visual vocabulary of state presence that Americans still inhabit without noticing. The impulse to brand public space with presidential identity has a long and bipartisan genealogy.
What Trump is doing, then, sits on a spectrum rather than outside it. The question is whether it occupies an extreme position on a familiar American continuum or whether it has crossed into categorically different territory. Borglum’s mountain honored dead presidents. LBJ’s naming honored an assassinated predecessor. Roosevelt’s WPA murals depicted collective labor, not the president’s own face. In each case, the memorialization was filtered through institutional processes, legislative authorization, or the basic decorum of waiting until the honoree was no longer in office. What distinguishes the current campaign is the erasure of those filters. A sitting president chairing the board that renames a performing arts center after him, then claiming surprise at the vote he orchestrated, is operating by a different set of rules than the ones that governed even the most vainglorious of his predecessors.
Consider the Kennedy Center board that voted unanimously to add Trump’s name: it was composed entirely of his own appointees. At the Institute of Peace, the board was similarly reconstituted before the renaming. Federal agencies under executive authority commissioned the banners on government buildings, and when the USDA initially described one as temporary, the pattern expanded rather than retreated. Add the currency signature, the national parks pass, the birthday celebration, the proposed renaming of Penn Station, Dulles Airport, and the Washington Commanders stadium, the Trump-class battleships, the Trump Accounts, TrumpRx, the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity connecting Armenia and Azerbaijan: each item, in isolation, might be dismissed as a peculiar excess. Assembled together, they constitute a program. And the speed of the assembly matters, because personality cults do not arrive fully formed. They accrete.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, the NYU historian and author of Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present, has described the current pattern as the construction of a personality cult. Trump himself, when asked about the namings, has repeatedly denied agency. He claimed surprise at the Kennedy Center vote, said during the State of the Union that nobody believed him but he did not name the Trump Accounts, and repeated the denial for TrumpRx. Senator Adam Schiff published a formal report in September 2025 identifying the banners as violations of federal law and drawing explicit parallels to Mussolini’s facade and to the Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il portraits that adorn government buildings across North Korea. Dr. Emma Briant, a visiting associate professor at the University of Notre Dame who researches propaganda and information warfare, has identified the banners as consistent with the visual grammar of dictatorship. Max Stier, who leads the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service, has stated that while political protest is an old tradition in Washington, the use of government resources to promote a single individual has no precedent in American life. Stier’s formulation cuts to the structural question: political leaders, in a democracy, are hired help.
Here, however, a distinction requires careful handling. Mussolini did not deny the face was his. He staged it. Stalin did not feign surprise at the naming of Stalingrad. The open dictatorial claim and the coy denial are different postures, and conflating them sacrifices diagnostic precision. Trump’s repeated insistence that others, acting independently, have chosen to honor him could be read as evidence that the democratic norm of appearing modest still exerts gravitational pull on him, that he still needs to perform the fiction of humility because the audience still expects it. A dictator who no longer needs to perform that fiction is operating from a different position of power. The denial, in other words, may mark a transitional phase rather than an accomplished fact: the leader who still pretends to be embarrassed by the adulation is further along the path than the leader who has never sought it, but he has not yet arrived at the place where the pretense becomes unnecessary. The direction of travel matters more than the current coordinates.
Against this visual program, something unexpected has been happening on the National Mall. An anonymous collective called the Secret Handshake has been installing guerrilla sculptures and banners within sight of the government portraits. In February, they erected a gold-painted statue depicting Trump and Jeffrey Epstein posed as Jack and Rose on the prow of the Titanic, titled “King of the World.” The National Park Service issued a four-day permit for the installation. Crowds gathered. People laughed. They took photographs. Some were offended. On March 31, the collective installed a gold-painted faux-marble toilet near the Lincoln Memorial, titled “A Throne Fit For a King,” mocking the renovation of the White House bathroom attached to the Lincoln Bedroom during a government shutdown.
A separate organization, the Save America Movement, has plastered Washington with posters targeting cabinet members. One shows a photograph of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller with the caption “Fascism Ain’t Pretty.” Another shows Attorney General Pam Bondi with the words “Epstein Queen.”
Mary Corcoran, who runs the Save America Movement, has framed the asymmetry plainly: the administration funds its propaganda with taxpayer dollars, while the opposition funds its counter-imagery with donations.
Now: a reasonable person could look at this guerrilla campaign and argue that its existence disproves the alarm. Mussolini’s Rome never saw an anonymous collective erect a satirical statue of Il Duce outside the Palazzo Braschi and receive a government permit for the trouble. In Stalin’s Moscow, the Save America Movement equivalent would have been shot. Pyongyang renders the entire exercise unimaginable. The four-day permit is, in one reading, proof that American democracy is functioning exactly as designed: the state displays its iconography, citizens mock it, courts adjudicate the disputes, and the carnival continues. Beatty v. Trump is proceeding through federal court. Philip Glass withdrew from Kennedy Center programming and suffered no state reprisal. Every counter-example that can be celebrated as resistance is simultaneously evidence that the system under indictment has not yet collapsed.
This is a fair objection, and the article cannot survive without absorbing it. So let it be absorbed.
Whether the American system has already become a dictatorship has always been the wrong question. What matters is whether the distance between the current trajectory and that destination is shrinking, and how citizens would know the difference between a contested public sphere that reflects democratic health and a contested public sphere that reflects a transitional phase between open society and closed one. Every authoritarian state passed through a period in which satirical statues could still be erected, in which permits were still granted, in which courts still heard challenges to executive overreach. The Weimar Republic had the most ferocious satirical press in Europe. It had George Grosz and John Heartfield and Kurt Tucholsky and a judiciary that, for a time, still functioned. Permits were issued. Magazines were published. And then they were not.
The permit is not the answer to the diagnostic question. The permit is the diagnostic question. Is the four-day window for a satirical statue evidence that the system is working, or evidence that the system is still in the phase where opposition is tolerated because it has not yet become threatening enough to suppress? We will not know the answer in real time. We will know it only in retrospect, and by then the knowing will be useless.
And here is where theatrical instinct becomes relevant to political analysis. What is happening on the National Mall is a stage contest. One side has seized the proscenium. It controls the permanent architecture, the lighting, the scale, the vantage points. Guerrilla artists are working from the wings, placing temporary objects designed to be photographed and circulated rather than to endure. State portraiture and monumental sculpture anchor the government’s visual strategy. Carnival, political caricature, and the traditions of Daumier, Gillray, and the Italian commedia dell’arte anchor the opposition’s.
Whether ridicule can defeat monumentalism is the open question. Historical evidence offers mixed answers. Daumier was imprisoned for his caricatures of King Louis-Philippe. Weimar Germany’s satirical press produced some of the most brilliant political art of the twentieth century and failed to prevent the rise of the Third Reich. Vaclav Havel, however, argued that humor and absurdity were essential tools of resistance under totalitarianism, that refusing to take the regime’s self-image seriously was itself a political act eroding the regime’s authority. Czech dissidents, from Havel’s essays to the work of the Plastic People of the Universe, demonstrated that a state’s control of the visual field could be undermined by the persistence of an alternative aesthetic. But Havel also spent years in prison before his persistence paid off, and Czechoslovakia’s liberation owed as much to the structural collapse of the Soviet Union as to the courage of its artists.
What makes Washington different is that the contest is happening in real time, in the same physical space, and it is mediated by the technology that makes the personality cult possible in the first place. A two-story banner goes up. A satirical statue appears within the banner’s sightline. Visitors photograph the juxtaposition and post it to social media, where the image circulates to millions of people who will never visit the Mall. Statues vanish after four days; photographs persist on millions of screens without expiration dates. Official banners carry the weight of authority, while the crowd’s editorial framing, captured in a single snapshot posted from a phone, carries the weight of witness. In the economy of attention, the guerrilla image may travel farther and lodge more durably in memory than the state image, precisely because it is funnier, stranger, and more human.
None of this means the guerrilla artists are winning. Banners still hang. The name still sits on the Kennedy Center, despite active litigation (Beatty v. Trump, as of March 2026, remains ongoing) and despite a federal statute designating the Center as the sole national memorial to John F. Kennedy in the capital and prohibiting renaming without an act of Congress. Performers who withdrew from Kennedy Center programming after the renaming, including the composer Philip Glass, understood that the building itself had been conscripted into a narrative they could not endorse through participation.
Architecture has always carried political meaning, and the National Mall was designed to embody democratic ideals through spatial openness, axial symmetry, and the subordination of individual identity to collective memory. Monuments there honor presidents who are dead. Memorials mark wars that are concluded. Museums house the patrimony of a nation, curated by institutions that are, at least in theory, independent of the sitting executive. Hanging a living president’s face from government buildings along the Mall ruptures the design logic of the space, superimposing the living ruler onto a landscape conceived for the contemplation of shared sacrifice and historical distance.
When the White House responded to criticism by stating that the president is focused on saving the country rather than garnering recognition, the statement performed its own negation. A president focused on the country rather than recognition does not hang his face on the Department of Justice, does not chair the board that renames a national performing arts center after him, and does not then express surprise at the outcome.
We have been here before, and we have not been here before. The Palazzo Braschi face came down. Mussolini’s SI ballots were counted and discarded. Il Duce ended hanging by his ankles at a gas station in Milan. History does not replay mechanically, though certain patterns of self-display are diagnostic. When a leader begins claiming public architecture for private glorification, the leader is telling you what he believes about the relationship between the state and himself. That face on the building is a declaration. And in a functioning democracy, citizens who see it are obligated to name what it means, clearly and without apology, while the permit to erect the satirical statue in its shadow still exists, because the day the permit is denied will be the day the argument is settled, and by then, the argument will no longer matter.
#americanTradition #architecture #economy #governmentAdvertising #guerrillaArtists #gutzonBorglum #mussolini #nation #nationalMall #palazzoBraschi #PhilipGlass #politics #promotion #wpa -
The Face on the Building: America’s Palazzo Braschi Moment
In 1934, the Fascist Party Federation draped the facade of Rome’s Palazzo Braschi with an enormous sculpted face of Benito Mussolini, surrounded by the word “SI” repeated in cascading rows. The building sat between Piazza Navona and the Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, in the heart of a city that had been shaping political identity through architecture for two thousand years. That face functioned as an instruction. Citizens who walked beneath it understood, whether they could articulate it or not, that the state had claimed the visual field, and that to exist in public space was to exist under observation and under obligation, holding the urban semiotic.
Ninety-two years later, giant banners bearing the face of a sitting American president hang from the Department of Justice, the Department of Labor, and the Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C. Each banner is photographed from slightly below, a classic technique in authoritarian portraiture that elongates the jaw and narrows the eyes, producing an expression of surveillance rather than service. Meanwhile, his name has been affixed to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and to the United States Institute of Peace. His signature will appear on American currency. A presidential portrait replaces nature photography on the America the Beautiful national parks pass. And his birthday has been twinned with Flag Day by the Department of the Interior, granting free admission to national parks on April 14 as a celebration of the man rather than the land.
These are facts, and they require no editorial seasoning to alarm anyone who has spent time with the visual history of the twentieth century.
Before sharpening the comparison, though, honesty demands an accounting of the American tradition it descends from. The United States has never been modest about presidential memorialization. Gutzon Borglum carved four presidential faces into a mountain in the Black Hills of South Dakota that the Lakota Sioux called Six Grandfathers, a monument to democratic leadership built on stolen land with the enthusiastic participation of a sculptor who attended Ku Klux Klan rallies. Lyndon Johnson named the Kennedy Center for Kennedy partly as a political maneuver to move arts funding legislation through Congress. Franklin Roosevelt’s WPA projects stamped federal iconography onto every post office and courthouse in the country, building a visual vocabulary of state presence that Americans still inhabit without noticing. The impulse to brand public space with presidential identity has a long and bipartisan genealogy.
What Trump is doing, then, sits on a spectrum rather than outside it. The question is whether it occupies an extreme position on a familiar American continuum or whether it has crossed into categorically different territory. Borglum’s mountain honored dead presidents. LBJ’s naming honored an assassinated predecessor. Roosevelt’s WPA murals depicted collective labor, not the president’s own face. In each case, the memorialization was filtered through institutional processes, legislative authorization, or the basic decorum of waiting until the honoree was no longer in office. What distinguishes the current campaign is the erasure of those filters. A sitting president chairing the board that renames a performing arts center after him, then claiming surprise at the vote he orchestrated, is operating by a different set of rules than the ones that governed even the most vainglorious of his predecessors.
Consider the Kennedy Center board that voted unanimously to add Trump’s name: it was composed entirely of his own appointees. At the Institute of Peace, the board was similarly reconstituted before the renaming. Federal agencies under executive authority commissioned the banners on government buildings, and when the USDA initially described one as temporary, the pattern expanded rather than retreated. Add the currency signature, the national parks pass, the birthday celebration, the proposed renaming of Penn Station, Dulles Airport, and the Washington Commanders stadium, the Trump-class battleships, the Trump Accounts, TrumpRx, the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity connecting Armenia and Azerbaijan: each item, in isolation, might be dismissed as a peculiar excess. Assembled together, they constitute a program. And the speed of the assembly matters, because personality cults do not arrive fully formed. They accrete.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, the NYU historian and author of Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present, has described the current pattern as the construction of a personality cult. Trump himself, when asked about the namings, has repeatedly denied agency. He claimed surprise at the Kennedy Center vote, said during the State of the Union that nobody believed him but he did not name the Trump Accounts, and repeated the denial for TrumpRx. Senator Adam Schiff published a formal report in September 2025 identifying the banners as violations of federal law and drawing explicit parallels to Mussolini’s facade and to the Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il portraits that adorn government buildings across North Korea. Dr. Emma Briant, a visiting associate professor at the University of Notre Dame who researches propaganda and information warfare, has identified the banners as consistent with the visual grammar of dictatorship. Max Stier, who leads the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service, has stated that while political protest is an old tradition in Washington, the use of government resources to promote a single individual has no precedent in American life. Stier’s formulation cuts to the structural question: political leaders, in a democracy, are hired help.
Here, however, a distinction requires careful handling. Mussolini did not deny the face was his. He staged it. Stalin did not feign surprise at the naming of Stalingrad. The open dictatorial claim and the coy denial are different postures, and conflating them sacrifices diagnostic precision. Trump’s repeated insistence that others, acting independently, have chosen to honor him could be read as evidence that the democratic norm of appearing modest still exerts gravitational pull on him, that he still needs to perform the fiction of humility because the audience still expects it. A dictator who no longer needs to perform that fiction is operating from a different position of power. The denial, in other words, may mark a transitional phase rather than an accomplished fact: the leader who still pretends to be embarrassed by the adulation is further along the path than the leader who has never sought it, but he has not yet arrived at the place where the pretense becomes unnecessary. The direction of travel matters more than the current coordinates.
Against this visual program, something unexpected has been happening on the National Mall. An anonymous collective called the Secret Handshake has been installing guerrilla sculptures and banners within sight of the government portraits. In February, they erected a gold-painted statue depicting Trump and Jeffrey Epstein posed as Jack and Rose on the prow of the Titanic, titled “King of the World.” The National Park Service issued a four-day permit for the installation. Crowds gathered. People laughed. They took photographs. Some were offended. On March 31, the collective installed a gold-painted faux-marble toilet near the Lincoln Memorial, titled “A Throne Fit For a King,” mocking the renovation of the White House bathroom attached to the Lincoln Bedroom during a government shutdown.
A separate organization, the Save America Movement, has plastered Washington with posters targeting cabinet members. One shows a photograph of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller with the caption “Fascism Ain’t Pretty.” Another shows Attorney General Pam Bondi with the words “Epstein Queen.”
Mary Corcoran, who runs the Save America Movement, has framed the asymmetry plainly: the administration funds its propaganda with taxpayer dollars, while the opposition funds its counter-imagery with donations.
Now: a reasonable person could look at this guerrilla campaign and argue that its existence disproves the alarm. Mussolini’s Rome never saw an anonymous collective erect a satirical statue of Il Duce outside the Palazzo Braschi and receive a government permit for the trouble. In Stalin’s Moscow, the Save America Movement equivalent would have been shot. Pyongyang renders the entire exercise unimaginable. The four-day permit is, in one reading, proof that American democracy is functioning exactly as designed: the state displays its iconography, citizens mock it, courts adjudicate the disputes, and the carnival continues. Beatty v. Trump is proceeding through federal court. Philip Glass withdrew from Kennedy Center programming and suffered no state reprisal. Every counter-example that can be celebrated as resistance is simultaneously evidence that the system under indictment has not yet collapsed.
This is a fair objection, and the article cannot survive without absorbing it. So let it be absorbed.
Whether the American system has already become a dictatorship has always been the wrong question. What matters is whether the distance between the current trajectory and that destination is shrinking, and how citizens would know the difference between a contested public sphere that reflects democratic health and a contested public sphere that reflects a transitional phase between open society and closed one. Every authoritarian state passed through a period in which satirical statues could still be erected, in which permits were still granted, in which courts still heard challenges to executive overreach. The Weimar Republic had the most ferocious satirical press in Europe. It had George Grosz and John Heartfield and Kurt Tucholsky and a judiciary that, for a time, still functioned. Permits were issued. Magazines were published. And then they were not.
The permit is not the answer to the diagnostic question. The permit is the diagnostic question. Is the four-day window for a satirical statue evidence that the system is working, or evidence that the system is still in the phase where opposition is tolerated because it has not yet become threatening enough to suppress? We will not know the answer in real time. We will know it only in retrospect, and by then the knowing will be useless.
And here is where theatrical instinct becomes relevant to political analysis. What is happening on the National Mall is a stage contest. One side has seized the proscenium. It controls the permanent architecture, the lighting, the scale, the vantage points. Guerrilla artists are working from the wings, placing temporary objects designed to be photographed and circulated rather than to endure. State portraiture and monumental sculpture anchor the government’s visual strategy. Carnival, political caricature, and the traditions of Daumier, Gillray, and the Italian commedia dell’arte anchor the opposition’s.
Whether ridicule can defeat monumentalism is the open question. Historical evidence offers mixed answers. Daumier was imprisoned for his caricatures of King Louis-Philippe. Weimar Germany’s satirical press produced some of the most brilliant political art of the twentieth century and failed to prevent the rise of the Third Reich. Vaclav Havel, however, argued that humor and absurdity were essential tools of resistance under totalitarianism, that refusing to take the regime’s self-image seriously was itself a political act eroding the regime’s authority. Czech dissidents, from Havel’s essays to the work of the Plastic People of the Universe, demonstrated that a state’s control of the visual field could be undermined by the persistence of an alternative aesthetic. But Havel also spent years in prison before his persistence paid off, and Czechoslovakia’s liberation owed as much to the structural collapse of the Soviet Union as to the courage of its artists.
What makes Washington different is that the contest is happening in real time, in the same physical space, and it is mediated by the technology that makes the personality cult possible in the first place. A two-story banner goes up. A satirical statue appears within the banner’s sightline. Visitors photograph the juxtaposition and post it to social media, where the image circulates to millions of people who will never visit the Mall. Statues vanish after four days; photographs persist on millions of screens without expiration dates. Official banners carry the weight of authority, while the crowd’s editorial framing, captured in a single snapshot posted from a phone, carries the weight of witness. In the economy of attention, the guerrilla image may travel farther and lodge more durably in memory than the state image, precisely because it is funnier, stranger, and more human.
None of this means the guerrilla artists are winning. Banners still hang. The name still sits on the Kennedy Center, despite active litigation (Beatty v. Trump, as of March 2026, remains ongoing) and despite a federal statute designating the Center as the sole national memorial to John F. Kennedy in the capital and prohibiting renaming without an act of Congress. Performers who withdrew from Kennedy Center programming after the renaming, including the composer Philip Glass, understood that the building itself had been conscripted into a narrative they could not endorse through participation.
Architecture has always carried political meaning, and the National Mall was designed to embody democratic ideals through spatial openness, axial symmetry, and the subordination of individual identity to collective memory. Monuments there honor presidents who are dead. Memorials mark wars that are concluded. Museums house the patrimony of a nation, curated by institutions that are, at least in theory, independent of the sitting executive. Hanging a living president’s face from government buildings along the Mall ruptures the design logic of the space, superimposing the living ruler onto a landscape conceived for the contemplation of shared sacrifice and historical distance.
When the White House responded to criticism by stating that the president is focused on saving the country rather than garnering recognition, the statement performed its own negation. A president focused on the country rather than recognition does not hang his face on the Department of Justice, does not chair the board that renames a national performing arts center after him, and does not then express surprise at the outcome.
We have been here before, and we have not been here before. The Palazzo Braschi face came down. Mussolini’s SI ballots were counted and discarded. Il Duce ended hanging by his ankles at a gas station in Milan. History does not replay mechanically, though certain patterns of self-display are diagnostic. When a leader begins claiming public architecture for private glorification, the leader is telling you what he believes about the relationship between the state and himself. That face on the building is a declaration. And in a functioning democracy, citizens who see it are obligated to name what it means, clearly and without apology, while the permit to erect the satirical statue in its shadow still exists, because the day the permit is denied will be the day the argument is settled, and by then, the argument will no longer matter.
#americanTradition #architecture #economy #governmentAdvertising #guerrillaArtists #gutzonBorglum #mussolini #nation #nationalMall #palazzoBraschi #PhilipGlass #politics #promotion #wpa