Forward: “Feminist and Queer resistance to Neo-Fascism’s anti-‘Gender Ideology’ movements”

It may be difficult to make the connections between banning drag queen story hour, making laws against trans women and girls playing sports, and preventing pregnant people from safe and legal abortions, yet they are all connected by a global, often fascistic political movement against “gender ideology.” The anti-“gender ideology” movement is spreading like wildfire around the world from the Republican Party in the US to Law and Justice in Poland. For anti-“gender ideology” activists, the enemy is always gender and queer theory as well as LGBTQ and feminist persons. In other words, the enemy is us. These movements are in every part of the world now and resistance to them can seem futile. But it is not. Queer and feminist resistance to the anti-gender movement is creative, brilliant, clever, and also spreading, as you’ll see in this special issue. But before we discuss this issue’s articles, it is worth considering how the anti-gender ideology movement began and why “anti-gender” has become the rallying cry of far-right politicians and activists around the world.

Anti-gender ideology and its origins

Gender, feminist, and queer theory used to be rather academic subjects. Not anymore. Ever since Judith Butler, in their 1990 book Gender Trouble, considered whether sex is in fact gender, all hell has been breaking loose. This seismic shift in understanding sex as not stable and knowable but rather historically and culturally contingent has become somewhat canonical in feminist/queer theory of the past 30 years and has impacted a variety of fields, from history to biology (Butler, 1990; Fausto-Sterling, 2012; Jordan-Young, 2011; Laqueur, 1992). This shift in theorizing the body signaled an end to a belief in a firm and clear distinction between men and women as well as sex and gender (Ben Hagai & Zurbriggen, 2022). Alongside this academic paradigm shift in how we understand the body came political movements for trans and intersex rights that shook the foundation of the sex binary as well as feminist and LGB activism (Ben Hagai & House-Peters, 2024).

The forces that rely on a binary and hierarchical gender and sex to make sense of the world, forces like the Catholic and Evangelical Churches, understood that feminist/queer/gender theory and movements are a threat to the order of things (Viefhues-Bailey, 2010). So much of modernity relies on a clear and binary sex (McClintock, 2013). Racial science used binary sex as a way to mark non-white and non- bourgeois groups as “degenerate.” Black women and white working-class women were masculinized; Asian men and upper-class white men were feminized (Somerville, 1994). Sexology marked the homosexual as a gender invert: the swishy gay man or the mannish lesbian. And of course, the entire colonial project turned on the belief that “natives” lacked sufficient sexual differentiation and had to be civilized into proper sex roles (Lugones, 2013). It turns out that believing in a natural and binary sex is central to more than patriarchy. White supremacy, national supremacy, colonialism, and heteronormativity all rely on the clear distinction between male and female.

This is why when gender theorists began to question whether sex was in fact a natural and universal fact, religious forces and then very quickly political movements began to fight back against “gender ideology” (Butler, 2024). After attending the 1995 Beijing Conference on Women, a conference that united feminist activists around the world with the radical idea that “women’s rights are human rights,” (Stories from the UN Archive, 2024). Catholic activist Dale O’Leary returned home not feeling liberated, but threatened. In her book The Gender Agenda, O’Leary warned that “gender ideology,” that is, not believing in the innate difference between men and women, would lead to the collapse of society (O’Leary, 1997). Soon after, Pope Benedict XVI, a fan of O’Leary’s work, also warned that “gender ideology” would destroy the sex binary, “an essential aspect of what being human is all about”(Caldwell, 2023). Just this year, the more progressive Pope Francis said “gender theory… cancels humanity” (Crux, 2024) and a new document from the Catholic Church, Infinite Dignity, lists gender theory, as well as war and poverty, as a grave threat to our future. Gender theory can no longer be “academic” but rather must understand itself as engaged in an epic struggle that is not merely epistemic, but existential (Declaration of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith “Dignitas Infinita” on Human Dignity, n.d.).

How the anti-gender movement got political

Although the anti-gender movement began in Christian contexts, it has now spread to every part of the world, as the articles in this issue illustrate. The reasons for the remarkable success of the anti-gender movement are many. Partly, the anti-gender movement is a backlash against the success of feminist and LGBTQ movements. Elizabeth Corredor describes the anti-gender movement as a “countermovement.” According to Corredor, early anti-gender movements were often “salient counterstrategies to feminist and LGBTQ+ social movements.” (Corredor, 2019, p. 614) This may explain the anti-gender movements in North America and much of Europe, but anti-gender movements are gaining ground around the world, including places without successful feminist and LGBTQ movements. That’s because “gender ideology” can become a stand in for all the pain caused by globalization and neoliberal policies, which have increased economic and social precarity for most of the world’s people even as less money has been spent on a social safety net. The expansion of neoliberal policies in different parts of the globe have privatized public services like education, health care, and welfare (Brown, 2015) and restructured global relations to allow for the free flow of labor and commodities (Harvey, 2007). Workers no longer have to compete for jobs with their neighbors, but with workers from all over the world. Global competition led to the loss of well-paying unionized jobs especially in rural areas (Sassen, 2014). Finally, the neoliberal imperative to brand the self and become entrepreneurial requires individuals to become competitive and take financial risks (Bay-Cheng et al., 2015). As Butler concludes, “the radical changes in economic life, including the loss of basic structures of social welfare produce a heightened sense of precarity and fear among populations (who) are then told that it is ‘gender ideology’ that is breaking apart the family, destroying heterosexuality as a natural law, threatening both God’s creative powers and civilization itself.” (Butler, 2019, p. 9).

The economic insecurity brought on by neoliberal policies of privatization contributed to the rise of populist leaders who construct narratives of us vs them, the people vs. the elites, the nation versus the globe, and majority vs. minority (Esen & Gumuscu, 2016). Within these populist binaries gender ideology is positioned as an internal enemy or an outside influence working against the nation. Vladimir Putin in Russia, Victor Orban in Hungary, Ron DeSantis in Florida, and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil have all successfully mobilized “gender ideology” as the enemy, a necessary trope within fascistic thinking. This enemy is coming for our children and our futures if we don’t fall in line with their undemocratic visions of the state. Donald Trump has pledged to end “left-wing gender insanity” on day one of his administration indicating that “gender ideology” is dangerous enough to be his top priority (Mangold-Lenett, 2023) and both Orban and DeSantis have attacked gender studies and other critical forms of knowledge (Herndl, 2024). The same leaders who target gender studies have also transformed gay people, trans people and feminists into enemies of the nation. In Russia today, LGBT people are being sentenced to up to 12 years in prison for extremism (Holt, 2024). In the US, there are 547 proposed laws against trans people as of 2024. And, as you’ll see in this issue, feminists, from China to Brazil, are being blamed for the supposed collapse of civilization.

The interplay between fears of globalization and anti-gender ideology

Several contributions to this special issue provide a close analysis of the interplay between neoliberalism, populist rhetoric, and anti-gender ideology. For instance, writing from South Korea, Chen (2023) argues that the economic recession and unemployment of many men led to the rise of conservative leaders who attacked the “Anti-Discrimination Law” that offered protection for religious, sexual, gender and other minority groups. When a bill against racial, religious, and gender discrimination was introduced to the South Korean parliament, it was framed by local conservative leaders as an attack by communists from North Korea and Islamic groups (Chen, 2023). Analyzing neofascism’s gender ideology in Italy, Gusmeroli (2023) writes about the discourses that frame gender as a threat to Italian way of life. In Italian discourses, the “theory of gender” is understood “as part of a hellish machine arranged by global élites engaged in supporting a “rainbow” market-driven revolution to oppress “common sense” and “non-politicized” people” (p. 13). Using a populist binary framing of common people verses foreign elites, Italian politicians blame the “theory of gender” on international elites who attack Italian traditions and weaken the family and Italian social mores. Similarly, the populist binary of us and them, is used to rationalize targeting feminists in China. The attacks on Chinese feminist activists online are legitimized because they are seen as “foreign influences” (Dian, 2023, p. 8). In The Refugee Chronicles, a fictionalized autobiographical account of seeking asylum as a gay man from Russia who flees to Ireland writer and activist Evgeny Shtorm considers the impossibility of being from Russia, a country that makes queer existence nearly unimaginable with a variety of repressive laws and policies, but also the impossibility of being a refugee, especially a gay one. In these different contexts, there is a pattern of how feminist, lesbian, queer and transgender lives are delineated as suspicious subjects of “foreign influences” and thus the enemies of the state. This strategy plays into the fascistic nationalist sentiments that have turned people’s frustration and dissatisfaction with domestic and global reality into a singular focus on fighting “gender ideology.”

New social media town squares and virtual spaces offer individuals new ground for coalescing and developing a shared understanding of gender threats (Nagle, 2017). Several researchers who are part of this special issue examine interactions on social media where gender activists, feminists and lesbians become a threat. Vallerga (2024) contributes an analysis of the ways in which virtual platforms create spaces for toxic masculinity in which lesbians and feminists come to signal a threat to the order of things. Vallerga studies online platforms like Red Pill and Incel that are part of the manosphere. In these platforms men discuss what they see as the degrading treatment they received from women and trade hostile sexist tropes in which women are devious, seductive, and treacherous. According to Vallerga’s analysis of these platforms, lesbians are equated with feminism and the de-masculinization of men (Vallerga, 2024). Discourses of victimhood and men’s vulnerability on the manosphere produces a desire for the restoration of patriarchy and normalize violence against feminist and queer women.

In her article, Gabriela Córdoba Vivas (2023) helps theorize the relationship between virtual spaces and street protests. Córdoba Vivas examines the far-right Catholic organization, Citizen Go, and their “freedom bus.” The freedom bus, painted in vivid colors with icons of boys and girls, traveled in different cities in Europe, the US, and South America. On the side of the bus were provocative slogans such as “Boys have penises. Girls have vulvas. Do not let them fool you. If you were born a man, you are a man. If you are a woman, you will continue to be one” (p.2, 2023). When the “freedom bus” arrived in different cities feminist, trans, and queer activists counter-protested its message. Aggressive clashes between demonstrators were filmed, and videos circulated online. As these online videos were widely shared, they produced a spectacle of threat and danger. They depicted feminist and trans activists as violent and dangerous people attacking peaceful Christian activists. Córdoba Vivas’ work in this special issue highlights new strategies by the anti-gender movement that depict feminists and transgender activists as dangerous radicals.

The anti-gender ideology movement gains much of its power through constructing a binary between traditional culture and western/colonial influences, and effectively utilizing online platforms to sustain and spread these arguments. This movement has also been successful because of their ability to construct new forms of alliance. In certain spaces the anti-gender coalitions also include parts of the new left movements such as feminists and LGBTQ+ movement. Beatriz Junqueira Lage Carbone studies the making of a broad anti-gender coalition in the religious and political leaders’ speeches in Brazil. Carbone argues that in these speeches gender functions as an “empty signifier” that signals a threat to the unity of the family, masculinity, and the upper mobility of poor Brazilians. By functioning as a threat not only to children, but to the family and to economic mobility, the movement against gender garners support from Catholics and Pentecostal Protestants, as well as poor Black and upper-class White Brazilians (Lage Carbone, 2024). In Italy, the anti-gender coalition expanded to segments of the left including Marxists and feminists. These Marxist and feminist organizations aligned themselves with the anti-gender ideology movement because they opposed the idea of an internal gender identity. They see the current LGBTQ+ movement as focusing on personal choice rather than the material reality of gender. The anti-“gender ideology” movement was able to exploit this ideological schism on the left and within feminist and LGBTQ+ organizations through the re-articulation of anti-commodification, anti-neoliberal, and anti-globalization language to create solidarity between some feminist and LGBTQ+ organizations and the Catholic Church (Gusmeroli, 2023).

Although some gender- critical feminists are allying themselves with far-right groups, many are not and continue to hold liberal and even progressive opinions. These feminists do not mimic the anti-abortion, anti-gay, and anti-migrant stances of the anti-gender movement, but instead hold onto a firm belief in the innate differences between men and women. Whereas this often leads them to anti-trans positions and a coding of trans women as threats to the rights and well-being of cis-women, Lamble (2024) argues that we must avoid painting all gender-critical feminists as allied with neo-fascism since to do so is not only factually untrue, but limits the ability for political alliances and resistance to neo-fascists gender ideology in the future (Lamble, 2024).

New waves of resistance

Even as right-wing anti-”gender ideology” is spreading globally, we are also witnessing a new wave of feminist and queer resistance (Mackay & Hayfield, 2024). The new resistance cannot be put into the familiar narrative of Western feminist waves. In fact, the new queer/feminist movements often position themselves against more elitist liberal feminist movements. Some of the new feminist and queer mobilizations are, like the anti-gender movement they are resisting, explicitly populist. These movements claim to represent the “people” rather than groups of specific marginalized identities. Argentina’s abortion rights movement is a striking example, in which the activists are unified by the symbol of a green kerchief, demanding rights to bodily autonomy beyond abortion and beyond the category of cisgender women (Sutton, 2023). In South Korea, due to the right-wing stigmatizing of feminist and LGBTQ groups as “communists” who “threaten national security,” the feminist and queer resistance also come together as a coalition and as a community of “troublers” against the state (Chen, 2023). Observing from the Polish context, Graff and Korolczuk (2021) argue that while the anti-gender movements are populist in their form, the new feminist and queer movements also appear to have left-wing populist elements, in which their activism “responds not only to specific legal changes in the realm of gender proposed by right-wing populists but to the broader patterns of cultural change, including the re-masculinization of the public sphere, the gendering of fear and femonationalist discourses” (p. 143)

The authors who take part in this special issue map strategies of effective resistance to anti-gender ideology. For instance, Awcock and Rosenberg (2023) show how solidarity is lived in through the reclaiming of public spaces around Edinburgh Scotland through trans-positive stickers. In a time in which transgender rights are under attack, trans-positive stickers are visible in different parts of the city and reenact solidarity between different members of the LGBTQ+ community. The stickers expand notions of community across different identities, through slogans such as “LGBWithTheT,” “Trans and cis women deserve each other’s solidarity and love,” “Butch trans women know the truth” and “#butchabundance.” These stickers blur the lines between the transgender community and lesbian and queer community by highlighting the multitude of gender and sexual identities that tie the trans community to lesbian and queer communities.

Successful resistance through the expansion of networks of solidarity across identities and political goals occurs in different parts of the world. For instance, Dorottya Rédai writes about attacks on a children’s book that contains 17 fairy tales with LGBTQ+ and gender nonconforming protagonists. A Fairytale for Everyone (Meseország mindenkié) was attacked by Hungarian far-right politicians as LGBT + propaganda endangering the well-being of children. Rédai explains that to combat the gender panic that the book produced, a new coalition emerged. This coalition included parents and citizen activists, psychologists, celebrities, and international media outlets who came together to support the book. These different actors used their financial power and visibility to make the book a bestseller, translated into thirteen different languages. Writing on successful resistance in Argentina, Barbara Sutton further highlights the importance of coalitional politics. In Argentina, the successful “green tide” was able to pass a law legalizing abortions. This success was grounded by solidarity between feminists, LGBTQ+, human rights organizations, labor unions, and student groups. The campaign framed its message not as grounded in the more neoliberal notion of choice over one’s own body, but rather in terms of women’s and other people’s reproductive health. Using protests, social media advocacy, lobbying, and by enlisting health practitioners, the movement was able to gain the critical mass of people to pass the “Access to Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy” bill in 2020.

Friendship also emerges as a critical tool to sustain a strong and persistent activist movement (Bhardwaj, 2024; Dynda, 2024). Authors writing in this special issue about resistance to anti-gender ideology in Argentina, Hungary, and China emphasize the importance of friendship and practices of care in sustaining resistance to the rise of anti-gender ideology. Dian (2023) argues that the persistence of Lala activists in China was due to the formation of friendships. Whereas Lala activists are bullied by nationalistic cyberbullies online, they were able to create offline friendships to support one another. As such, some of the causes they worked together on were based on daily problems, such as a successful campaign around secondhand smoke in restaurants.

Whereas friendship and relationships of care are critical in sustaining activist movements, some solidarity emerges from small acts of care and kindness across cultural and political differences. For instance, Evgeny Shtorm writes about the complex relationships and friendships forged in a refugee camp in Ireland. These bonds are not necessarily based on recognition of identity or shared values, but on the daily life in which people from different cultures, religions, and worldviews share food, shelter and information and protect one another. Shtorm’s contribution rejects the framing of the gay refugee as a respectable neoliberal subject that is multicultural and embraces differences. He shows us that our survival sometimes depends on connections with those who do not necessarily understand or value queer identities but respect our humanity (Shtorn & Kondakov, 2023). Together with Lamble (2024) these articles on resistance remind us that rather than attack and cancel one another over disagreements and identity misrecognitions, resisting the forces that aim to restructure patriarchy necessitate solidarity across differences. We conclude this special issue with three poems by a trans poet, Shane Carreon (2023) writing from the Philippines. In his three poems Carreon reminds us of the power of art to undo rigid and stable understandings of the self and to open ourselves to connections and an ethic of empathic opacity (Carreon, 2023).

Sometimes this religious, political, and popular wave against gender/feminist/queer theory and LGBTQ and feminist activism feels like a tsunami. It is coming to get us and there is nothing we can do. The fascist and populist passions of the anti-gender movement leverage people’s fear about the future for their political gains. But their actions also prove again that gender is never merely cultural. It creates real effects on people’s lives. The feminist and queer resistance demonstrated in this issue show the will of those who refuse to live in fear and are actively creating a different vision of the future. Even if the anti-gender movement is global and popular, it also has all sorts of cracks and fissures in it that can be exploited to create a more feminist and queer future.

Wen Liu
Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan
Laurie Essig
Middlebury College, VT
Ella Ben Hagai
California State University, Fullerton, CA
[email protected]
Munia Bhaumik
University of California, Los Angeles

Disclosure of interest statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.

Acknowledgements

The special issue editors would like to thank the contributors’ part of this special issue and the outstanding reviewers who agreed to help improve and elevate different articles. A special thanks goes to Yariv Rabinovitch and Raúl Coronado for their help in early conceptualization of this project and to Anka Dabrowska for her art.

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Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.