This is an Accepted Manuscript for Politics & Gender as part of the Cambridge Coronavirus Collection. Subject to change during the editing and production process. DOI: 10.1017/S1743923X2000046X Anti-democratic and Exclusionary Practices: COVID-19 and the Continuum of Violence Summer Forester and Cheryl O'Brien Abstract: The global coronavirus pandemic has reified divisions, inequity, and injustices rooted in systems of domination like racism, sexism, neoliberal capitalism, ableism, and more. Feminist scholars have theorized these interlocking systems of domination as ‘the continuum of violence.’ Building on this scholarship, we conceptualize the US response to and the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic as reflective of the continuum of violence. We argue that crises like pandemics expose the anti-democratic and exclusionary practices inherent to this continuum, which is especially racialized and gendered. To support our argument, we provide empirical evidence of the continuum of violence in relation to COVID-19 vis-à-vis the interrelated issues of militarization and what feminists call “everyday security,” such as public health and gender- based violence. The continuum of violence contributes theoretically and practically to our understanding of how violence that the pandemic illuminates is embedded in broader systems of domination and exclusion. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1743923X2000046X Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 54.162.69.248, on 31 Aug 2020 at 05:00:21, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.