History and development
Anti-gender movements in their current form emerged through Vatican opposition to feminist and queer visibility and recognition during UN world conferences in the 1990s. The Vatican and its conservative allies described this as ‘gender ideology’ – in reference to how contemporary queer and feminist gender theory used gender as a category of critical analysis – which threatened the heterosexual family as the basic unit of society.[1] However, the reactionary moral panics that form the basis of anti-gender mobilisations have much deeper roots.
For instance, anti-gender fears around how sex education and LGBTQI+ rights supposedly endanger children echo homophobic campaigns in the 1970s in the US;[2] anti-feminists in 1910s and 1920s Europe believed women’s participation in public and political life led to promiscuity and social decay,[3] and required the restoration of true masculinity and femininity for men and women.[4] At the end of the Nineteenth Century fears of moral and social decline were particularly common, often understood through sexist and transphobic norms of gendered and sexual morality, a fear of effeminate men and women becoming masculinised.[5] This also manifested as exterminatory projects against gender diverse populations, such as Hijra in colonial India, as colonial powers enforced a system of gender as binary and immutable.[6]
Such reactionary panics around gender and sexual norms are currently organised around opposition to ‘gender ideology’, which has especially since the 2010s succeeded in spreading anxieties about the loss of patriarchal power in the family and state, as well as white supremacy.[7] Since the end of the Cold War, and with growing global financial insecurity after decades of neoliberal policy-making, opposition to ‘gender’ has provided a new platform for reactionary mobilisation.
Anti-gender movements frequently use superficially progressive language, for example referencing freedom, anti-colonialism, and the welfare of (cisgender) women and children.
Function of the term ‘gender’
The term gender itself, including related terms such as ‘gender ideology’, ‘gender theory’ or ‘genderism’, has both a strategic and symbolic function.[8] These terms identify a common, yet vague, enemy image. This allows for coalition-building between various actors who do not share any historical ties or ideology, but nevertheless mobilise against policies and groups who are framed as a common ‘gender’ threat. [9]
Anti-gender mobilisation often opposes scholarship in the social sciences and humanities, and gender studies in particular.[10] It attacks gender studies as a relativistic and unscientific discipline, which contradicts the supposed ‘common sense’ of ‘biological reality’, particularly binary gender difference.[11] Such attacks on gender studies therefore regularly use language borrowed from the natural sciences, rather than religious arguments.[12]
Anti-gender movements frequently use superficially progressive language, for example referencing freedom, anti-colonialism, and the welfare of (cisgender) women and children. Notably, anti-gender actors frame ‘gender’ as a Western, elitist, and neo-colonial project that is being imposed on e.g., ‘the common people’, or populations in Eastern Europe, Russia, and the global South.[13]
Ideology and targets
Anti-gender mobilisation has a broad variety of targets, including the protection of women and queer people from gender-based violence, the expansion and recognition of LGBTQI+ rights such as the legalisation of same-sex marriage, reproductive rights and gender-affirming healthcare, or sex education and gender-neutral teaching at schools.[14]
While some anti-gender groups can in some cases include liberals and self-identified leftists, they are ideologically reactionary, as they oppose, entirely or in part, feminist achievements, minority rights gains (particularly for transgender, intersex, and non-binary people), and other progressive social changes that challenge the traditional heteronormative nuclear family and denaturalise gender as binary and immutable.[15] For instance, even where actors do not necessarily hold extreme-right views, anti-gender positions such as organised transphobia in the UK promote narratives that ‘the people’ can be defined on the basis of crudely biological norms, and that ‘others’ can be oppressed or excluded and stripped of their rights on that basis.[16]
The authoritarianism of anti-gender movements is especially clear in the US, where Evangelical Churches and the Christian Right are particularly influential, and started in recent years with legal attacks on trans people, closely connected to attacks on reproductive rights, especially abortion.[17] The hundreds of bills curtailing access to abortion and contraception, sex education, and in the case of trans and intersex people, basic access to public life and health care, greatly expand state power over citizens’ bodies.[18]
Anti-gender mobilisation includes many strategies, ranging from institutional and legal actions to street protests, and various intimidation tactics.
Range of actors and strategies
Anti-gender movements stand out for their capacity for coalition-building, as they bring together an unusually broad range of actors. These include the Vatican as well as Protestant and Orthodox Churches, conservative Muslim groups, established politicians (usually, but not always, right-wing), concerned parents, neo-fascists, and self-described ‘gender critical’ feminists (also known as TERFs), also in academia.[19]
Anti-gender mobilisation includes many strategies, ranging from institutional and legal actions to street protests, and various intimidation tactics. Examples are the French Manif pour Tous and the German Demo für Alle demonstrations, protests against drag queen story hours, parental petitioning against the teaching of ‘gender ideology’ in schools, and lobbying against legislation that expands or guarantees the rights of queer and trans communities.[20] The far right has in recent years increasingly participated in anti-gender actions.[21] In doing so, the institutional far right in particular may expand the reach and appeal of anti-gender initiatives, and give them political support, which has in some contexts (e.g. Hungary, Poland, Turkey, Brazil and the USA) resulted in institutional crackdown on gender education programmes, LGBTQI+ rights, and reproductive rights.[22]
In recent years, anti-gender positions have increasingly been pushed into the mainstream by right-wing media outlets. In doing so, the concept of ’gender’ is regularly linked to other issues, such as decolonial, anti-racist and feminist perspectives, which are framed by the right as examples of dangerous ’identity politics’, ‘woke’, ‘Cultural Marxism’, ’social justice’, or ’political correctness’.[23] Accordingly anti-gender mobilisations serve a reactionary agenda much broader than only ‘gender’ issues.
[1] Elizabeth S. Corredor, ‘Unpacking “Gender Ideology” and the Global Right’s Antigender Countermovement’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 44.3 (2019), 613–38 (pp. 623–24).
[2] David Paternotte and Roman Kuhar, ‘Disentangling and Locating the “Global Right”: Anti-Gender Campaigns in Europe’, Politics and Governance, 6.3 (2018), 6–19 (p. 11).
[3] Kevin Passmore, ‘Europe’, in Women, Gender and Fascism in Europe, 1919-45, ed. by Kevin Passmore (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), pp. 235–68 (p. 236).
[4] Elizabeth Harvey, ‘Visions of the Volk: German Women and the Far Right from Kaiserreich to Third Reich’, Journal of Women’s History, 16.3 (2004), 152–67 (p. 155).
[5] Bram Dijkstra, Evil Sisters: The Threat of Female Sexuality and the Cult of Manhood (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), p. 54.
[6] Jessica Hinchy, Governing Gender and Sexuality in Colonial India: The Hijra, c. 1850-1900 (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2021); Jamey Jesperson, ‘Trans Misogyny in the Colonial Archive: Re-Membering Trans Feminine Life and Death in New Spain, 1604-1821’, Gender & History, 2023, 1–21; Jules Gill-Peterson, A Short History of Trans Misogyny (London: Verso, 2024).
[7] Judith Butler, Who’s Afraid of Gender? (London: Allen Lane, 2024), p. 13.
[8] Stefanie Mayer and Birgit Sauer, ‘”Gender ideology” in Austria: Coalitions around an empty signifier. In Roman Kuhar and David Paternotte, eds. 2017. Anti-gender campaigns in Europe: Mobilizing against equality, 23-40. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield; David Paternotte and Roman Kuhar, ‘Disentangling and Locating the “Global Right”: Anti-gender Campaigns in Europe. Politics and Governance 6(3), 6-19.
[9] David Paternotte and Roman Kuhar, “’Gender ideology’ in movement: Introduction.” In Roman Kuhar and David Paternotte (eds.), Anti-gender campaigns in Europe: mobilizing against equality (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017). p. 15.
[10] David Paternotte and Roman Kuhar, “Disentangling and Locating the ‘Global Right’: Anti-Gender Campaigns in Europe,” Politics and Governance 6, no. 3 (September 14, 2018): 6–19, https://doi.org/10.17645/pag.v6i3.1557. p. 10
[11] Lena Martinsson, ‘When Gender Studies Becomes a Threatening Religion’, European Journal of Women’s Studies, 27.3 (2020), pp. 293–300; Mayer and Sauer, p. 30
[12] Roman Kuhar, “Playing with Science: Sexual Citizenship and the Roman Catholic Church Counter-Narratives in Slovenia and Croatia,” Women’s Studies International Forum 49 (March 2015): 84–92, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2014.07.005.
[13] Sarah Bracke and David Paternotte, ‘Unpacking the Sin of Gender’, Religion and Gender, 6.2 (2016), pp. 143–54, doi:10.18352/rg.10167; Elżbieta Korolczuk and Agnieszka Graff, ‘Gender as “Ebola from Brussels”: The Anticolonial Frame and the Rise of Illiberal Populism’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 43.4 (2018), pp. 797–821.
[14] David Paternotte and Roman Kuhar, “’Gender ideology’ in movement: Introduction.” In Roman Kuhar and David Paternotte (eds.), Anti-gender campaigns in Europe: mobilizing against equality (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017). p. 5.
[15] Stefanie Mayer and Judith Goetz, ‘Introduction. Global Perspectives on Anti-Feminism’, in Global Perspectives on Anti-Feminism: Far-Right and Religious Attacks on Equality and Diversity, ed. by Judith Goetz (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2023), p. 10.
[16] Fran Amery and Aurelien Mondon, ‘Othering, Peaking, Populism and Moral Panics: The Reactionary Strategies of Organised Transphobia’, The Sociological Review, 2024, p. 11, https://doi.org/10.1177/00380261241242283.
[17] Butler, pp. 104–5
[18] Jules Gill-Peterson, ‘The Cis State II’, Sad Brown Girl, 2022 <https://sadbrowngirl.substack.com/p/the-cis-state-ii> [accessed 26 January 2024].
[19] Flávia Biroli and Mariana Caminotti, ‘The Conservative Backlash against Gender in Latin America’, Politics & Gender, 16 (2020), 1–38; Serena Bassi and Greta LaFleur, ‘TERFs, Gender-Critical Movements, and Postfascist Feminisms’, Transgender Studies Quarterly, 9.3 (2022), 311–33; Mauro Cabral Grinspan and others, ‘Exploring TERFnesses’, DiGeSt: Journal of Diversity and Gender Studies, 10.2 (2023), 2–13; Fran Amery, ‘“Gender Critical” Feminsm as Biopolitical Project’, Sexualities, 2024, pp. 1–15, doi:10.1177/13634607241257397.
[20] Justin R. Ellis, “A Fairy Tale Gone Wrong: Social Media, Recursive Hate and the Politicisation of Drag Queen Storytime,” The Journal of Criminal Law 86, no. 2 (April 2022): 94–108, https://doi.org/10.1177/00220183221086455; Roman Kuhar and Aleš Zobec, “The Anti-Gender Movement in Europe and the Educational Process in Public Schools,” Center for Educational Policy Studies Journal 7, no. 2 (June 30, 2017): 29–46, https://doi.org/10.26529/cepsj.168; Ov Cristian Norocel and Ionela Băluță, “Retrogressive Mobilization in the 2018 ‘Referendum for Family’ in Romania,” Problems of Post-Communism, October 13, 2021, 1–10, https://doi.org/10.1080/10758216.2021.1987270.
[21] Mieke Verloo, “Dynamics of Opposition to Gender+ Equality in Europe” In Mieke Verloo (ed.), Varieties of Opposition to Gender Equality in Europe. (London: Routledge, 2018), p. 3.
[22] Yasmine Ergas and others, ‘Disputing “Gender” in Academia: Illiberalism and the Politics of Knowledge’, Politics and Governance, 10.4 (2022), pp. 121–31,
[23] Bart Cammaerts, “The Abnormalisation of Social Justice: The ‘Anti-Woke Culture War’ Discourse in the UK,” Discourse & Society33, no. 6 (November 2022): 730–43, https://doi.org/10.1177/09579265221095407; David Paternotte and Mieke Verloo. ‘De-Democratization and the Politics of Knowledge: Unpacking the Cultural Marxism Narrative.’ Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society, 28.3 (2021), pp. 556–78. https://doi.org/10.1093/sp/jxab025.