Anti-gender movement

It views advances in gender inclusion and LGBT rights as threats to traditional family structures, religious values, and established social norms.

The movement has been criticized for promoting discrimination and undermining human rights protections, particularly those concerning individuals with diverse gender identities and sexual orientations.

Critics argue that it employs misinformation to delegitimize efforts toward gender inclusion and has been described as a form of moral panic or conspiracy theory.

Operating on a transnational scale, the anti-gender movement employs strategies such as public protests, and legislative initiatives to resist policies promoting gender equality and LGBT inclusion.

[1] The term gender ideology, central to the anti-gender movement, lacks a consistent or coherent definition[2] and encompasses a wide range of issues.

[3] Scholars such as Stefanie Mayer and Birgit Sauer describe it as an "empty signifier,"[2] while Agnieszka Graff characterizes it as a catch-all term for ideas opposed by conservative Catholics.

[10][11][12] The Holy See expressed concern that such recognition could lead to the classification of abortion as a human right, the erosion of traditional motherhood, and the normalization of homosexuality.

[citation needed] Researcher Mary Anne Case contends that claims for transgender rights, alongside feminist advocacy, were foundational concerns for the Vatican regarding gender.

[8] Emerson Hodges, a research analyst at the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), states that the history of the concept ranges back further to the 1970s U.S., where it evolved from the term "gay agenda".

[18] Research by Pearce, Erikainen, and Vincent notes that the term gender ideology, historically central to the anti-gender movement, began to gain traction within trans-exclusionary radical feminist discourse around 2016.

[25] The report highlighted that the Russian government’s geopolitical strategy includes fostering alliances with like-minded groups and deliberately destabilizing the European Union (EU).

[24] Key proponents of the anti-gender movement include Dale O'Leary, Michel Schooyans, Tony Anatrella, Gabriele Kuby, and Marguerite Peeters.

[citation needed] Most of these MEPs belong to the right-wing populist and nationalist Identity and Democracy (ID) or the European Conservatives and Reformers (ECR) parliamentary groups.

[38][7][39] The term has been adopted by Donald Trump and was used in an executed order titled "Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government," which seeks to erase official recognition of transgender people and roll back their protections.

[35] According to Corredor, the Holy See's perspective deeply depends on a stable and predictably correlated relationship between biological sex, gender identity, and heterosexual orientation, which is expressed in the Catholic Church's terms as the one and only natural unity of mind, body, and soul.

[29] Hande Eslen-Ziya argues that the anti-gender movement relies on what she calls "troll science", that she describes as "(distorted) scientific arguments moulded into populist discourse, creating an alternative narrative on the conceptions of gender equality".

[50][51] According to Marta Rawłuszko, the anti-gender movement is, in part, a backlash against the devolution of power from democratically elected national governments to unelected equality bodies and international organizations, such as the European Union, which demand changes.

[35] An Ipsos survey in October 2019 found that a plurality of Polish men under 40 believe that "the LGBT movement and gender ideology" is the "biggest threat facing them in the 21st century".

[58] Similarly, political scientist Birgit Sauer refers to these movements as, among other things, a reaction to deregulation, precarization of labor, the erosion of the welfare state and the widening of the gap between the rich and poor.

[64] In 2023, Elżbieta Korolczuk argued that "while the activities of the anti-gender movement are generally non-violent, its discursive strategies and campaigns should be further analysed as possible conveyor belt to engagement in violent extremism".

"[66] In August 2021 the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Dunja Mijatović said the anti-gender movement was "instrumentalising existing societal prejudices and verbally attacking LGBTI people to achieve political objectives for their own benefit" and said the targeting of "LGBTI people for political gain is a costly strategy which harms the lives and well-being of those affected and undermines social cohesion in general."

[84] Signing the convention has been a major factor in the rise of political parties on the further right-wing in Croatia in 2020s, such as The Bridge (Most) and Homeland Movement (Domovinski pokret), who took the most conservative voters away from HDZ.

[92] The far-right German political party, AfD (Alternative für Deutschland), displays its alignment with the anti-gender movement in its "Key Points for Germany" brochure.

Meloni has frequently emphasized the importance of upholding the gender binary and traditionalist values surrounding family, tying such issues to the protection of the Italian state and religious apparati.

"[101] Meloni employs her position as a mother situate herself as the "harbinger of a conservative, yet modern, nation"[102] while playing up the need to shelter the "natural family" from the threat of "gender ideology.

[108] Gender studies scholar Elisabeth L. Engebretsen has identified groups such as the Norwegian branch of Women's Declaration International and LLH2019, a self-declared sister organization of LGB Alliance, as key anti-gender actors in Norway.

[109] Gender studies scholar Janne Bromseth wrote that the 2022 Oslo shooting "happened in a context" and that "the anti-gender movement has also shifted boundaries in the public debate in Norway in recent years," resulting in "a harsher climate of debate where primarily organized TERFs have been given space to set the agenda for the 'debate on gender' and the alleged threat of 'gender ideology' to the natural order.

[115] A 2020 survey of a representative sample of 1,000 Poles found that 30% believed in the existence of a gender conspiracy, "defined as a secret plan to destroy Christian tradition partly by taking control over public media".

[118][119] Russia Vladimir Putin views gender as an "ideological construction" created by the Western Europe, playing into the complex meanings of the Russian derogatory term, Gayropa.

[69] The term invokes the idea that Western European civilization is facing decadence and decay, symbolized in the dissolution of traditional gender binaries triumphed by contemporary LGBTQ+ movements and queer mainstreaming.