https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7487-5550
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Abstract
This article argues that the concept of “gender ideology” produces and reproduces reactionary subjectivities using different media (videos, texts, memes, images, etc.), diverse platforms (Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube, TikTok, etc.), and performative actions that form a decentralized propaganda machine that propagates, mobilizes, agitates, and organizes reactionary bases. Using close reading as method of inquiry, I analyze a vast archive of images, videos, and documents from the Spanish organization Hazte Oír/CitizenGo, focusing on the #FreeSpeechBus campaign in which buses with transphobic (2017) and antifeminist (2019) slogans toured different cities across Spain and around the world.
The article unfolds in four parts. In the first part, I describe gender ideology and the bus campaign as the product of a decentralized propaganda machine that produces, agitates, and organizes reactionary subjectivities through media and incarnated discourses. In the second section, I situate my perspective in relation to existing literature about gender ideology. In the third section, I will illustrate how “gender ideology” relies on the appropriation of the vocabulary and mobilization strategies traditionally associated with liberation movements as well as a fascist and right-wing repertoire of performative and media strategies. In the final part, I show the importance of fostering a transfeminist antifascism to fight “gender ideology,” an approach that supports the work of activists who are fighting in the trenches, builds on efforts to decenter white cis women as the subject of feminism, supports sex workers, and reclaims media and performance as indispensable weapons in the political battle.
Acknowledgments
I want to thank Rian Ciela Hammond for their generous and generative comments and feedback, the Gender Institute at University at Buffalo for supporting my research and Paige Sarlin and the department of Media Study at the University at Buffalo for guiding and supporting my work.
Correction Statement
This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
Notes
1 Naizen is an association that brings together families of trans minors from Álava, Bizkaia, Gipuzkoa and Navarra. https://naizen.eus/
2 “Hay niñas con pene y niños con vulva, así de sencillo”, la campaña que arrasa en el País Vasco. https://www.lasexta.com/noticias/sociedad/hay-ninas-pene-ninos-vulva-asi-sencillo-campana-que-arrasa-pais-vasco_20170112587730ee0cf290341ddfebc1.html
3 I am referring to HazteOír /CitizenGo as a single actor. In fact, today the organizations merged.
4 See for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cy2J5aaj.DA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M42_5kY2ByU
5 “As we reflect back on the tour, it is clear that the #FreeSpeechBus highlighted the vicious intolerance shown to anyone who expresses dissent regarding the transgender agenda. Gender ideology advocates made it clear that they will stop at nothing to silence those who support the message of the #FreeSpeechBus” (emphasis in the original). https://citizengo.org/en/ed/42723-freespeechbus
6 For Instance, in this 45 second video, Marcela, the bus campaign leader in Chile affected by teargas, asks: “Is this tolerance? No discrimination? I’ve done nothing. I only wanted to give my opinion. The video description “Some LGTB radicals are approaching us. The carabineros protect us. Instead of dispersing the aggressors, they poured water with tear gas on everyone. Also, to us.” https://youtu.be/Qp7piEUrFBw
7 Min 2:28 https://youtu.be/-OmeDhoEebc?t=148
8 According to Eric Fassin, anti-intellectualism is key to define the anti-gender campaigns, more specifically anti-gender discourse focuses on critiquing the cultural dimension of elitism rather than its economic character Éric Fassin, “Campañas antigénero, populismo y neoliberalismo en Europa y America Latina,” in La reacción patriarcal. Neoliberalismo autoritario, politización religiosa y nuevas derechas, ed. Marta Cabezas Fernández and Cristina Vega Solís (Barcelona: Bellaterra Edicions, 2022).
9 I am using “anti-gender” in quotes, because just as “gender ideology” it is misleading term that connotes that these reactionary and fascist transnational networks are simply against an abstract concept and not denying the existence of trans and gender nonconforming people and actively working to harm them.
10 Mónica Cornejo-Valle and J. Ignacio Pichardo, “La “ideología de género” frente a los derechos sexuales y reproductivos. El escenario español,” Cadernos Pagu, no. 50 (2017), https://doi.org/10.1590/18094449201700500009
11 Judith Butler, Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly. Mary Flexner Lecture Series of Bryn Mawr College (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016).
12 Marta Cabezas Fernández, “Silenciar el feminismo. La emergencia electoral de Vox,” in La reacción patriarcal. Neoliberalismo autoritario, politización religiosa y nuevas derechas, ed. Marta Cabezas Fernández and Cristina Vega Solís (Barcelona: Bellaterra Edicions, 2022).
13 Sonia Corrêa, for example, describes it as a polycephaly hydra whose contours are mutable, its origins multiple and its forms changeable, David Paternotte as Frankenstein-like creature, and Judith Butler claims that reconstructing its arguments is a challenge as they don’t hold to coherence or consistency standards. Judith Butler, “Why Is the Idea of ‘Gender’ Provoking Backlash the World Over?,” The Guardian, October 23, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/commentisfree/2021/oct/23/judith-butler-gender-ideology-backlash. Sonia Corrêa, “”Ideología de género”. Una genealogía de la hidra.,” in La reacción patriarcal. Neoliberalismo autoritario, politización religiosa y nuevas derechas, ed. Marta Cabezas Fernández and Cristina Vega Solís (Barcelona: Bellaterra Edicions, 2022); David Paternotte, “Victor Frankenstein and his creature: the many lives of ‘gender ideology’,” International Review of Sociology (2023), https://doi.org/10.1080/03906701.2023.2187833, https://doi.org/10.1080/03906701.2023.2187833.
14 Corrêa, “”Ideología de género”. Una genealogía de la hidra..” Mary Anne Case, “After Gender the Destruction of Man - The Vatican's Nightmare Vision of the ‘Gender Agenda’ for Law,” Pace Law Review 31, no. 802 (2011); Mary Anne Case, “Trans Formations in the Vatican’s War on ‘Gender Ideology',” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society (2019); Mary Anne Case, “The Role of the Popes in the Invention of Complementarity and the Vatican’s Anathematization of Gender,” Religion & Gender 6, no. 2 (2016), https://doi.org/10.18352/rg.10124. .Sonia Corrêa, David Paternotte, and Roman Kuhar, “The globalisation of anti-gender campaigns,” International Politics and Society, 2018; Sonia Corrêa, “Theologies and contexts in a Latin American perspective,” Religion & Gender 6, no. 2 (2016), https://doi.org/10.18352/rg.10175; Sonia Corrêa, ed., Anti-gender politics in Latin America in the pandemic context (Sexuality Policy Watch (SPW); Associação Brasileira Interdisciplinas de AIDS (ABIA), 2022); Sonia Corrêa, ed., Anti-gender politics in Latin America (Sexuality Policy Watch (SPW); Associação Brasileira Interdisciplinas de AIDS (ABIA), 2020).
15 Cornejo-Valle and Pichardo, “La “ideología de género” frente a los derechos sexuales y reproductivos. El escenario español.”
16 Marta Cabezas Fernández and Cristina Vega Solís, “Neoliberalismo autoritario, politización religiosa y nuevas derechas,” in La reacción patriarcal. Neoliberalismo autoritario, politización religiosa y nuevas derechas, ed. Marta Cabezas Fernández and Cristina Vega Solís (Barcelona: Bellaterra Edicions, 2022).
17 Cornejo-Valle and Pichardo, “La “ideología de género” frente a los derechos sexuales y reproductivos. El escenario español.”
18 Cabezas Fernández and Vega Solís, “Neoliberalismo autoritario, politización religiosa y nuevas derechas.”
19 Walter Benjamin, The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility (second version) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008).
21 Cabezas Fernández and Vega Solís, “Neoliberalismo autoritario, politización religiosa y nuevas derechas.”
22 HazteOir, “Mensajes comunicación campaña el bus de la libertad [Internal Document],” (2017). https://wikileaks.org/intolerancenetwork/files/14237
23 HazteOir, “Mensajes comunicación campaña el bus de la libertad [Internal Document],” (2017).
24 Roman Kuhar and David Paternotte, eds., Anti-Gender Campaigns in Europe: Mobilizing Against Equality, 1st ed. (London: Rowman & Littlefield International, 2017).
25 Kuhar and Paternotte, Anti-Gender Campaigns in Europe: Mobilizing Against Equality.
26 The infamous remarks of Michael Knowles are an excellent example this: “If transgenderism is false—as it is—if men really can’t become women—as they cannot—then it’s false for everybody too. And if it’s false, then we should not indulge it, especially when that indulgence requires taking away the rights and customs of many people. It if is false, then for the good of society—and especially for the good of the poor people who have fallen prey to this confusion—then transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely—the whole preposterous ideology, at every level.” Cited in Peter Wade and Patrick Reis, “Cpac Speaker Calls for Eradication of ‘Transgenderism’—and Somehow Claims He’s Not Calling for Elimination of Transgender People,” Rolling Stone, March 6, 2023.
27 Andrew Boyd and Dave Oswald Mitchell, Beautiful Trouble: A Toolbox For Revolution (OR Books, LLC, 2013). https://beautifultrouble.org/
28 Butler, Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly.
29 Verónica Gago and Gabriela Giorgi, “Las subjetividades en disputa. Notas sobre las formas expresivas de las nuevas derechas,” in La reacción patriarcal. Neoliberalismo autoritario, politización religiosa y nuevas derechas, ed. Marta Cabezas Fernández and Cristina Vega Solís (Barcelona: Bellaterra Edicions, 2022).
30 Maya Oppenheim, “Spanish bus campaign against ‘feminazis’ features image of Hitler in makeup,” The Independent 2019, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/spain-feminazi-hitler-hazte-oir-gender-violence-a8806516.html
31 Note that the bus plea is directed only to male lawmakers of different Spanish parties.
32 Cabezas Fernández, “Silenciar el feminismo. La emergencia electoral de Vox.”
33 An undercover investigation from Open Democracy found out that HazteOír /CitizenGo illegally financed the far-right party VOX. See: Naureen Shameem, Rights at Risk: Time for Action. Observatory on the Universality of Rights Trends Report, Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) (2021). Adam Ramsay and Claire Provost, “Revealed: the Trump-linked ‘Super PAC’ working behind the scenes to drive Europe’s voters to the far Right,” (2019).
34 Kuhar and Paternotte, Anti-Gender Campaigns in Europe: Mobilizing Against Equality.
35 Cited in Oppenheim, “Spanish bus campaign against ‘feminazis’ features image of Hitler in makeup.”
36 VIVOZ, The Danger of Gender Ideology and the education (2016).
37 Andrea Slane, A Not So Foreign Affair: Fascism, Sexuality, and the Cultural Rhetoric of American Democracy (Duke University Press, 2001).
38 Sarah Posner, “QAnon and the Assault on Planned Parenthood,” Rolling Stone, 2021, https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/qanon-planned-parenthood-1144575/
39 Peggy Phelan, “White Men and Pregnancy: Discovering the Body to be Rescued,” in Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (London: Routledge, 1993).
40 Jennifer L. Holland, Tiny You: A Western History of the Anti-Abortion Movement (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2020).
41 Holland, Tiny You : A Western History of the Anti-Abortion Movement.
42 Gago and Giorgi, “Las subjetividades en disputa. Notas sobre las formas expresivas de las nuevas derechas.”
43 At the center of both, the “anti-gender” and antiabortion movement is the political use of lies that is characteristic of fascism: a significant part of their power derives from “the cooptation of truth and the widespread promulgation of lies” Federico Finchelstein, A Brief History of Fascist Lies (University of California Press, 2020).
44 Z. Jack Bratich, On Microfascism: Gender, War, and Death (Common Notions, 2022).
45 Eszter Kováts and Maari Põim, eds., Gender as Symbolic Glue. The Position and Role of Conservative and Far Right Parties in The Anti-Gender Mobilizations in Europe (FEPS – Foundation for European Progressive Studies, 2015).
46 Paolo Gusmeroli, “Is Gender-Critical Feminism Feeding the Neo-Conservative Anti-Gender Rhetoric? Snapshots from the Italian Public Debate,” Journal of Lesbian Studies (2023), https://doi.org/10.1080/10894160.2023.2184908, https://doi.org/10.1080/10894160.2023.2184908
47 See the special issue of Transgender Studies Quarterly Edited by Serena Bassi and Greta LaFleur, “Trans-Exclusionary Feminisms and the Global New Right,” TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly 9, no. 3 (Citation2022).
48 Cabezas Fernández and Vega Solís, “Neoliberalismo autoritario, politización religiosa y nuevas derechas.”
49 Shameem, Rights at Risk: Time for Action. Observatory on the Universality of Rights Trends Report.
50 Carlos Enrique Bayo, “Grandes fortunas y altos ejecutivos españoles financiaron el nacimiento de Vox a partir del grupo ultracatólico Hazte Oír,” Público 2021; Carlos Enrique Bayo, “Hazte Oír encargó un “plan de gestión de crisis” para negar la sentencia que vincula a sus líderes con la sociedad secreta El Yunque,” Público 2021.
51 Cabezas Fernández, “Silenciar el feminismo. La emergencia electoral de Vox.”
52 Ramsay and Provost, “Revealed: The Trump-Linked ‘Super Pac’ Working Behind the Scenes to Drive Europe’s Voters to the Far Right”.
53 WikiLeaks, “The Intolerance Network,” news release, August 5, 2021, https://wikileaks.org/intolerancenetwork/press-release
54 Juan José Tamayo, La Internacional del odio ¿Cómo se construye? ¿Cómo se deconstruye?, Antrazyt (Icaria, 2020).
55 The conceptualization of trans*feminisms I am using is inspired by a Spanish and Latin American intellectual tradition of militant scholarship, among others authors such as Sayak Valencia, Verónica Gago and Lucas Platero have written about it. Transfeminism in this perspective is epistemological tool that goes beyond the mere inclusion of trans perspectives, it “considers the stages of transit, migration, miscegenation, vulnerability of race, class and gender and articulates them with the historical memory of insurrectional social movements, to open spaces and discursive fields to all those practices and subjects of contemporaneity, and of minority becomings that are not directly considered by institutional hetero-white-biologist feminism” Sayak Valencia and Sonia Herrera Sánchez, Trans-feminismos y políticas postmortem, ed. Fernanda Bustamante Escalona and Herrera Asciutti, Señales (Icaria, 2021).
56 Stephen Duncombe, Dream: Re-imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy (New Press, 2007).
57 Verónica Gago, Feminist International: How to Change Everything, trans. Liz Mason-Deese (Verso, 2020).
58 See in this volume: Hannah Awcock and Rae Rosenberg, “Palimpsests of Trans Rights: Trans-Positive Stickers and the Contestations of Transphobia in Public Space,” Journal of Lesbian Studies (2023), https://doi.org/10.1080/10894160.2023.2229216
59 Barbara Sutton, “Abortion Rights in the Crosshairs: A Transnational Perspective on Resistance Strategies,” Journal of Lesbian Studies (2023), https://doi.org/10.1080/10894160.2023.2174682
60 Daffne Andrea; Cáceres Díaz Colectivo LASTESIS; Valdés Vargas, Lea Nicolás; Stange Varas, Paula; Sotomayor Van Rysseghem, Sibila Quemar el miedo, Kindle ed., Ensayo y sociedad (Ciudad de México: Planeta México, 2021); Paula Serafini, “‘A Rapist in Your Path’: Transnational Feminist Protest and Why (and How) Performance Matters,” European journal of cultural studies 23, no. 2 (2020), https://doi.org/10.1177/1367549420912748
61 Agnieszka Graff, “Angry Women: Poland's Black Protest as ‘Populist Feminism',” in Right-Wing Populism and Gender: European Perspectives and Beyond, ed. Gabriele Dietze and Julia Roth (Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2020).
62 Just to name a few works: Marsha Meskimmon, Transnational Feminisms, Transversal Politics and Art: Entanglements and Intersections (Taylor & Francis, 2020). Jennifer Ponce de León, Another Aesthetics Is Possible Arts of Rebellion in the Fourth World War / Jennifer Ponce de León, Dissident acts (Durham: Duke University Press, 2021). Colectivo LASTESIS; Valdés Vargas, Quemar el miedo.
63 Fred Moten, in Propositions for Non-Fascist Living: Tentative and Urgent, ed. Maria Hlavajova and Wietske Maas (BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, 2019). Goldstein and Trujillo, “Fascism Now? Inquiries for an Expanded Frame.”
64 Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, “Ch'ixinakax Utxiwa: A Reflection on the Practices and Discourses of Decolonization,” South Atlantic Quarterly 111, no. 1 (2012).
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Gabriela Córdoba Vivas
Gabriela Córdoba Vivas is an artist-scholar who works in the intersection between art, media, and social justice. Her research has revolved around epistemological justice, art and activism, feminisms, urban struggles, and cultural representations. She is a Ph.D. candidate in Media Study at University at Buffalo (SUNY), funded by Fulbright. She is the co-founder of CaldodeCultivo, an art collective that produces socially engaged projects to amplify the struggles of communities in resistance.