Un/knowing & un/doing sexuality & gender diversity: The global anti-gender movement against SOGIE rights and academic freedom

Abstract

This report interrogates anti-gender attacks on Gender and Sexuality Studies scholars and programmes in Brazil, Poland, Hungary, and South Africa.

Full text

Un/knowing &
un/doing sexuality
& gender diversity:
The global anti-gender movement against
SOGIE rights and academic freedom
A report written for SAIH
Dr. Haley McEwen

2
GLOSSARY
Glossary of Terms1
1 The definitions of gender and sexuality related terms for this glossary were sourced from an existing glossary
developed by the GALA Queer Archives.
2 Guttmacher Institute (n.d), p.1
3 Santos, B. (2016), p. 18
Bisexual
Bisexual: An umbrella term used to describe a
romantic and/or sexual orientation towards more
than one gender. Bisexual people may describe
themselves using one or more of a variety of terms,
including (but not limited to) pansexual and queer.
Cis/Cisgender
A term used to describe someone whose gender
identity matches the sex and gender they were
assigned at birth.
Comprehensive Sex Education (CSE)
A rights-based approach to sexuality education
that seeks to equip young people with the
knowledge, skills, attitudes and values they need
to determine and enjoy their sexuality – physically
and emotionally, individually and in relationships.
It views sexuality as a natural part of young
people’s emotional and social development.
Central to CSE is the recognition that young
people need to be given the opportunity to acquire
essential life skills and develop positive attitudes
and values.2
Epistemicide
This concept comes from decolonial theorisation of
the epistemic dimensions of colonial occupation.
According to Boaventura de Sousa Santos,3
epistemicide accompanied genocide, and refers to
the destruction of the knowledge and cultures of
indigenous populations, including their memories,
ancestral links, their ways of relating to others and
to nature, legal and political forms.
Epistemology
The theory of knowledge and how things come to
be known.
Gay
A term used to refer to a man, trans person or
non-binary person who tends to have a romantic
and/or sexual orientation towards men.
Gender Binary
The system of dividing gender into two distinct
categories – man and woman.
Gender non-conforming/non-conformity
A person or practice that does not conform to the
binary gender categories that society prescribes
(man and woman) through their gender identity/
expression.
Heteronormativity
A sociopolitical system that, predicated on the
gender binary, upholds heterosexuality as the norm
or default sexual orientation. Heteronormativity
encompasses a belief that people fall into distinct
and ‘complimentary’ genders [men and women]
with natural roles in life. It assumes that sexual,
romantic and marital relations are most fitting
between a cisgender man and a cisgender
woman, positioning all other sexual orientations
as ‘deviations’.
Heteropatriarchy
A sociopolitical system that privileges and
prioritises cisgender men and heterosexuals,
and where those groups dominate cisgender
females and those with other sexual orientations
and gender identities. The term highlights how
discrimination exerted both upon women and the
LGBTIQ+ community is rooted in the same systems
and social principles of sexism, heteronormativity,
and gender discrimination.

3
GLOSSARY
Heterosexism
Discrimination or prejudice against LGBTIQ+
people on the assumption that heterosexuality is
the normal sexual orientation and all others are
‘deviant’.
Intersex
A term used to describe a person who may have
biological attributes that do not fit with societal
assumptions about what constitutes ‘male’ or
‘female’. These biological variations may manifest
in different ways and at different stages throughout
an individual’s life. Being intersex relates to
biological sex characteristics and is distinct from a
person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
Lesbian
A term used to refer to a woman, trans person or
non-binary person who tends to have a romantic
and/or sexual orientation towards women.
LGBTIQ+
An acronym standing for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual,
Transgender, Intersex and Queer. This is not an
exhaustive list, as denoted by the inclusive of the
“+” symbol, which nods to the varying sexual
orientations and gender identities that exist
around the world.
Patriarchy
A social hierarchy that privileges and prioritizes
men over women and other gender identities.
Pro-natalism
The policy or practice of encouraging biological
reproduction, especially in terms of government
efforts to increase national birthrates.
Queer
An umbrella term used by those who reject
heteronormativity. Although some people view
the word as a slur, it was reclaimed by the
queer community who have embraced it as an
empowering and subversive identity.
SOGIE
An acronym that stands for Sexual Orientation
and Gender Identity Expression. Increasingly, the
letters “S” and “C” have been added to the end of
this acronym to include sexual characteristics and
therefore be inclusive of intersex persons.
Transgender
An umbrella term used to describe people whose
gender is not the same as, or does not sit comfortably
with, the sex they were assigned at birth. Some
transgender people are binary-identified and
others are non-binary.
Transphobia
The fear or dislike of someone based on the fact
that they are transgender, including the denial/
refusal to accept their gender identity.

D
r
. H
aley
M
c
e
wen
About the author
Dr. Haley McEwen is a
nationallyrated researcher
in South Africa (National
Research Foundation). She holds a
PhD in Sociology (University of the
Witwatersrand, Johannesburg), an
MPhil in Diversity Studies (University
of Cape Town), and a BA in Social
Relations (Michigan State University).
Haley is currently a researcher at the
Wits Centre for Diversity Studies and
an Associate Researcher at the GALA
Queer Archives in Johannesburg, South
Africa. She is also Associate Editor of
the International Journal for Critical
Diversity Studies. She has published
articles in numerous scholarly journals,
including Agenda, Ethnic and Racial
Studies, Critical Philosophy of Race,
and Critical African Studies.
Dr. McEwen’s research takes critical
historical and geopolitical approaches
to analysis of epistemologies of
difference, particularly in relation to
constructions of gender, sexuality,
race and disability. Following her
relocation to South Africa, and her
growing awareness of U.S. Christian
Right anti-gay rhetoric within African
debates about homosexuality, Haley’s
doctoral research investigated ways
in which the U.S. Christian Right is
working to influence sexual politics
and policies in African countries.
As a donor-conceived child born
4

to same-sex parents in the United
States in the 1980s, and now as a
queer identifying adult, Haley has
experienced the effects of ‘pro-family’
and ‘anti-gender’ discourses and their
‘othering’ effects. Beyond shifting her
physical location, Haley’s relocation
to South Africa in 2005 shifted her
epistemic location, especially in relation
to her understanding that the U.S.
Christian Right ‘family values’ agenda
is not only a product of heteropatriarchy,
but also of white supremacy and
coloniality. For these reasons, Haley
has made it her intellectual pursuit to
name and challenge the discourses
and agendas of the U.S. Christian
Right. She has published a number of
scholarly and popular articles aimed at
raising awareness of these dynamics.
She has also worked with artists and
activists to coordinate interventions
aimed at shifting imaginaries of gender
and sexuality in South Africa.
These aspects of Dr. McEwen’s
biography locate her as someone who
should not exist within the logic of
‘pro-family’ and ‘anti-gender’ ideology;
a spectre of heterosexist imaginaries
that condemn queer sexualities and
reproduction. While conservative
anti-gay and anti-feminist advocacy
has been a persisting existential
threat in Dr. McEwen’s life, she has
worked to challenge the direction of
this haunting through her scholarly
work, establishing herself as an
ever-worsening nightmare of the U.S.
Christian Right.
Funded by Norad (Norwegian Agency for
Development Cooperation) and NSO
(The National Union of Students in Norway)
Acknowledgements
I
am grateful to SAIH for the
opportunity to write this report.
The process of conducting
this research has expanded my
understanding of the anti-gender
movement and heightened my sense
of urgency in challenging its effects in
society, and in higher education more
specifically. I would like to acknowledge
the organizations that made it possible
for me to pursue this project – the
GALA Queer Archives and the Wits
Centre for Diversity Studies. I would
like to also thank Genevieve Louw for
assisting with the reading of various
versions of this report and for moral
support throughout. Finally, I would
like to extend thanks to Stian Amadeus
Antonsen, Rebekka Ringholm, Hege
Ottesen, Lauren Berntsen, as well as
Nora Hagesæther for their insightful
and supportive feedback throughout
the process of preparing this report.
5
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Preface
by
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P
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SaiH
There is a grave backlash against
women’s rights and LGBTIQ+ rights,
in international fora and at grassroots
level. It has been ten years since SAIH last had a
campaign concerning LGBTIQ+ rights, and since
then many important rights have been won, and
our partner organisations have achieved a lot.
Therefore, it is especially worrying that when
SAIH again campaigns against discrimination
based on sexual orientation and gender identity
and expression, it is not with the backdrop of this
progress, but rather with a fright of what might
be lost. This report explores the origin of the
anti-gender movement, its rhetoric and concrete
examples of its consequences in Poland, Brazil,
Hungary and South Africa. This movement is not
small, and it affects many layers of society, from
civil society to parliaments to academia. The
ambition of this report is to create an awareness
of the linkages between the backlash against
LGBTIQ+ rights and the threat to academic
freedom.
Higher education and research are important
tools in the struggle against discrimination
and for equal rights. SAIH is inspired by Paulo
Freire and his pedagogy of the oppressed. One
central idea of this pedagogy is that students
through critical education understand the unjust
structures around them, and in turn can work to
change them. Higher education and research
contribute to critical thinking, and to challenge
established norms and attitudes. It is no wonder
that higher education and research have become
targets of the anti-gender movement. There is
power in knowledge, and the critical perspectives
on gender and sexuality explored by gender
scholars, among others, pave the way for a more
inclusive society where patriarchal norms no
longer constrain people. Research on gender and
sexuality is an important contribution to changing
narratives, norms and practices that limit people
today and that foster discrimination. It is therefore
vital that scholars and students have the academic
freedom to study, research and teach about
sexual orientation, gender identity and expression
without fear of sanctions from the state, university
sector or colleagues and co-students.
The current backlash against women’s and
LGBTIQ+ rights violates the academic freedom of
many researchers and students. Gender research
is a critical field of study that among other things
explore power relations in society. Those power
relations become clear when politicians and state
powers meddle in knowledge production, making
decisions as to what research a country “needs”
or does not need. Rather than just withdrawing
funding, they actively shut down a field of study,
like you can read about in the case from Hungary in
this report. It is not a fair fight, and it is a worrying
sign of the degree to which governments feel
6

entitled to regulate higher education and research.
Therefore, SAIH hopes that this report will create
awareness in academia and among Norwegian
politicians and decision-makers about the key role
that education and research plays in the work for
LGBTIQ+ rights, and the current threats against
this work.
The attacks on the academic freedom of gender
researchers is an attack on the academic freedom
of all. It is exactly to protect those who research
important but unpopular questions that we need
academic freedom. This report is not a manifesto
to make all agree with gender researchers. A
scholarly debate in academia and society is needed
and encouraged across all disciplines. However,
when a field of study is targeted specifically and
restricted on a political basis by government
actors, religious actors and international bodies, all
those who champion academic freedom should be
concerned. This report aims to inspire its readers
to take action for academic freedom.
When illiberal powers organize, unite and
advocate against the academic freedom of gender
researchers, we must respond. This report is one
effort to do that.
South Africa was the first country in the world to safeguard sexual orientation as a human right in its Constitution.
Here from the Durban Pride in 2017. Credit: AFP, photo by Rajesh Jantilal
7
PREFACE

p.2 Glossary of Terms
p.4 About the author
p.5 Acknowledgements
p.6 Preface
p.9 Introduction
p.10 Method
Un/knowing and un/doing sexuality and gender
diversity: The global anti-gender movement against
SOGIE rights and academic freedom
p.12 Section 1: Understanding anti-gender ideology,
language, and history. What is the anti-gender
movement?
p.15 Making sense of the anti-gender movement
p.16 Historically locating the anti-gender movement
p.17 The colonial history of anti-gender ideology
p.19 Anti-gender ideology and concepts
p.22 Section 2: Anti-gender knowledge and attacks on
Gender Studies
p.24 Anti-gender knowledge production
p.27 Section 3: Case studies of anti-gender movements
p.28 Poland
p.31 Hungary
p.34 Brazil
p.39 South Africa
p.44 Concluding Remarks
p.46 Recommendations
p.48 References
Cover photo: Credit:EPA, photo by Divyakant Solanki
Publikasjonen: Un/knowing and un/doing sexuality and gender
diversity: The global anti-gender movement against SOGIE
rights and academic freedom / Haley McEwen.
ISBN 978-82-90897-22-7 (PDF)
8
Content

Over the course of the past thirty
years, the visibility and rights of
LGBTIQ+ people have increased
substantially. In many countries, lesbian, gay,
bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer people
and other non-heterosexual and/or cisgender
identities are legally protected from discrimination
on the basis of their sexual orientation, gender
identity, or family structure. In addition to the
decriminalization of homosexuality, the legalisation
of same-sex marriage and the right of these
couples to adopt children, the creation of equal
rights in education and employment, and the right
to join the military, there is growing institutional
awareness and recognition of transgender and
non-binary gender identities in several countries.
International LGBTIQ+ advocacy has also been on
the rise in an effort to affirm gender, sexuality and
family diversity within international policy, the
private sector, and education. This advocacy has
been shaped in significant ways by critical gender
and sexuality studies scholarship.
These developments have not been easily gained,
nor have they come without resistance – local
and global movements working to counter SOGIE
rights have been on the rise. These movements,
which are often referred to as “anti-gender”,
have argued that advocacy for LGBTIQ+ rights
is dangerous and damaging for individuals, the
society, the nation, and the economy. Anti-gender
movements have proliferated internationally,
fueling moral panic about growing LGBTIQ+ rights
and visibility, comprehensive sex education in
schools, and declining marriage and fertility rates,
especially in countries with declining population
rates. There are a number of organizations working
to advance anti-gender ideology internationally,
most of which are based in the United States.
Some of these organizations are highlighted in this
report, such as the World Congress of Families/
International Organization for the Family, Family
Watch International, and the Family Research
Council. However, numerous other organizations
exist that are advancing anti-gender agendas
locally, regionally, and internationally.
While the anti-gender movement has emerged
to counter the advances of SOGIE rights, it is
important to recognize that their activities do
not merely constitute a ‘backlash’ against SOGIE
rights, but a global imperative to entrench
sex- and gender-based oppression as ‘natural’
and ‘biological’. Anti-gender movements have
consequences not only for SOGIE rights, but for
liberal democracy and the paradigm of equal rights
and social justice that have emerged over the past
half century.
Fields of knowledge that are intertwined with
LGBTIQ+ advocacy work such as Gender Studies,
feminist and Queer Theory, and Sexuality Studies,
have also become targets of anti-gender activism
for having developed what the movement refers to
as “gender theory”. Gender research institutions
are coming under increasing pressure in countries
where democracy and freedom of speech
are under attack by broader neoconservative
populist movements. In Hungary, for instance,
the government has effectively banned Gender
Studies through the removal of its national
accreditation and funding. The same tendencies
are curbing academic freedom in other countries
such as Russia, Peru, Tanzania, Armenia, Poland,
Brazil, Sweden, Spain, and Italy.
This report was commissioned in order to provide
an insight into the ideological backdrop of “anti-
gender” movements, and their efforts to discredit
gender researchers, students and academics
raising and/or researching SOGIE-related issues,
thus presenting a threat to academic freedom.
Here, academic freedom is understood as the
right of students, academics and institutions to
Introduction
9

pursue knowledge without fear of discrimination,
harassment, or sanctions. For students, this
means the “right to discuss, be critical, research,
and oppose religious, political or historical
presentations in academia and in society without
fear of own or others’ safety by doing so” (SAIH
2016, p. 1). For scholars, academic freedom is
understood as the responsibility and right “to
freedom to teach and discuss, carry out research,
disseminating and publishing research results, to
express their opinion in institutional matters, and
to participate in academic bodies (ibid). Academic
freedom is therefore closely related to, and in
many ways depends upon, the freedom of speech,
right of peaceful assembly and the right to freely
associate (3). SAIH and its stakeholders felt that it
was important to gain insight into the global scope
of the situation and underline these movements’
particular profile in the wider landscape of
opposition to feminism and LGBTIQ+ rights. The
ways in which students, academics and civil society
groups are fighting for their rights to freedom of
speech and assembly, and what tactics they are
using in the era of shrinking space, were also set
out as an important area of focus within the report.
While primary and secondary education are
beyond the scope of academic freedom policies
per se, attacks on Comprehensive Sex Education
(CSE) are also considered in this report. Here,
anti-gender efforts to thwart the introduction of
CSE in schools is read in relation to their similar
attacks on Gender Studies as an academic field -
both working to close down the production and
dissemination of knowledge about gender and
sexuality diversity.
Although anti-gender movements are active in
many parts of Eastern and Central Europe, Africa,
North and South America, and Southeast Asia,
this report takes a case study approach in order
to provide insight into anti-gender efforts to curb
SOGIE rights and Gender Studies scholarship,
specifically, in four countries: Poland, Hungary,
Brazil and South Africa. Lastly, the report provides
concrete recommendations for policy makers,
higher education institutions and international
actors in relation to the protection of LGBTIQ+
academics, scholarship, and rights amidst shifting
political agendas and discourses around gender
and sexuality diversity. The findings presented
in this report indicate an overwhelming need for
interventions that can achieve three epistemic and
political objectives: Preventing the reinstatement
of the gender binary and hierarchy as a biological
and social norm; expanding social imaginaries of
gender and sexuality diversity beyond the gender
binary, and; decentring morality politics within
conversations and understandings of sexuality
and gender.
Method
Scholars have taken a range of approaches
in defining and describing the anti-gender
movement’s agendas, and academic
discussions of the movement have been notably
shaped by politics of location, providing helpful
insights into the local and regional shape of anti-
gender activism. This report, too, is written by a
scholar working in Gender and Sexuality Studies
who has also been a target of anti-gender politics
as a donor child conceived to same-sex parents and
as a queer identifying adult. In my research, I have
examined the ways in which, and the reasons why,
the U.S. ‘pro-family’ movement has been working
to influence sexual politics and polices in African
countries. Having been born and raised in the 1980s
American Midwest, I became aware of the family
values politics and discourses being promoted by
the U.S. Christian Right and their othering effects
from a relatively young age. When I began to detect
echoes of U.S. Christian Right discourses in South
Africa a few years after moving here in 2005, I was
immediately concerned and very curious about how
anti-gay and anti-feminist rhetoric was travelling
internationally. In these ways, my own location in
relation to the anti-gender movement has provided
10
INTRODUCTION

me with privileged insights into both the logic and
effects of their advocacy. Intellectual and embodied
engagement with the discourses of the anti-
gender movement is therefore an uncomfortable
and often terrifying, yet necessary, way in which I
work to identify, name, and challenge their violent
ideologies in my academic work.
This report aims to contribute to understandings of
the anti-gender movement through a focus on the
implications of anti-gender activism for academic
freedom, specifically. The data that informs
this report was collected from various sources:
scholarly publications such as peer-reviewed
journal articles and books, YouTube videos,
articles (many of them written by Gender and
Sexuality Studies scholars) written for popular
media, published interviews, organizational
blogs, reports, websites, and photographs. These
different materials provide contextual insights into
the anti-gender movement and its implications for
SOGIE rights and academic freedom. The sourcing
and selection of these materials was guided by
an effort to understand both the anti-gender
movement and the experiences and perspectives
of academics who are enduring its effects. Many
of the references used throughout this report
are openly accessible and available online - a
deliberate effort to invite and encourage further
reading. These scholars provide an understanding
of how the anti-gender movement is eroding
academic freedom and SOGIE rights and the
available strategies for resisting and countering
these conservative forces. The lived experiences
of these scholars collectively paint a worrying
picture of SOGIE rights and academic freedom in
their specific contexts and globally. While there
have been some who have claimed that the fight
for LGBTIQ+ rights is over (see Kirchick, 2019), the
lived experiences of Gender Studies scholars and
LGBTIQ+ people in many other countries around
the world tell a different story.
The process of investigating the anti-gender
movement for this project and its specific strategy
of attacking Gender Studies revealed that a
multifocal analytical approach can expose the local
and global dimensions of contemporary anti-gay
and anti-feminist activism. One must engage
in an ongoing process of ‘zooming in’ to local
issues and debates that provide specific insights
into anti-gender activism, and ‘zooming out’ to
the ways in which these debates connect with
those taking place elsewhere in order to gain a
wider perspective on the discourses, agendas and
ideologies that are at work. Through this method of
‘reading’ the anti-gender movement, the historical
and geo-political dimensions of the movement and
its underlying interests can be pulled into focus.
The process of investigating anti-gender activities
around the world proved to be an overwhelming
task. Having deepened my own understandings of
how the anti-gender movement has undertaken a
political and epistemic campaign against LGBTIQ+
people and Gender Studies, it became clear that
this report needed to adequately reflect the
urgency of understanding and organizing against
assaults on SOGIE rights, especially in relation
to academic freedom. The report therefore takes
an unwavering stance against the anti-gender
movement.
11
METHOD

What is the anti-gender
movement?
The anti-gender movement is a
transnational coalition of conservative
activists and organizations working
to counter political and social gains made by
local and international feminist and SOGIE rights
advocacy. Anti-gender activists and organizations
work to prevent and/or undo equal rights for
LGBTIQ+ people, women’s reproductive rights,
Comprehensive Sex Education (CSE) in schools
and Gender Studies programmes at a tertiary
level. Their campaigns claim that feminist and
queer efforts to deconstruct the gender binary
and redefine marriage and family are social,
economic, and national threats. The movement
has found great currency in presenting itself as
a victim of western progressives, but also as a
defender of the nation against these international
powers embodied by SOGIE rights. For these
reasons, anti-gender advocacy can be most
accurately understood as a ‘countermovement’
(Corredor, 2019) in that its central objective is to
defeat feminist and queer social movements that
have advanced the equal rights, recognition, and
representation of women and LGBTIQ+ people,
particularly in national and international policy.
Ultimately, anti-gender opposition to feminist
and SOGIE rights has taken the shape of a “battle
over moral epistemics, especially over who can
define the meanings of gender, sexuality, human
development, and the family” (Geva 2019, p. 398).
The concepts of ‘gender’, ‘family’, and ‘marriage’,
and who gets to define them have become critical
faultlines within SOGIE advocacy.
While here the movement is referred to as
‘anti-gender’, activists and organizations who
oppose SOGIE rights and Gender Studies
typically refer to themselves in positive terms
– as ‘pro-family’ or ‘pro-life’, or as protectors of
‘family values’. Their so-called ‘defence’ of the
family involves resistance to efforts to re-define
notions of ‘gender’, ‘marriage’ and ‘family’ in more
inclusive terms that acknowledge gender and
sexuality diversity. Pro-family activists interpret
the redefinition of these concepts as dangerous
to the so-called "natural family", which they argue
is the universal basis of all “civilizations". As this
report will later discuss, the movement’s reference
to “civilization” and its appeal to a universal notion
of what constitutes “family” are breadcrumb
trails to the colonial ideology embedded within
the anti-gender discourse and advocacy work,
despite the movement’s overt appeals to being an
anti-colonial force working against the “ideological
colonization” of ‘gender theory’.
Anti-gender activists and campaigns employ a
variety of strategies to gain support and political
power in order to prove that Gender Studies is
“bogus science” and discredit SOGIE rights.
Their protests have been described as “colorful,
youthful and festive”, departing from stereotypical
12
Section 1:
Understanding anti-gender ideology,
language and history

People are seen taking part in the March for Life and Family in Warsaw, Poland on June 9, 2019. Several thousand
people took part in the march that was meant to counter the gay pride march of the previous day.
Photo credit: Zuma Press
images of conservative groups and action being
led by older generations who use religious-based
forms of condemnation as a central rhetorical
device (Paternotte & Kuhar, 2018, p. 10). Rather,
contemporary anti-gender political messages are
presented as secular, rational, commonsense, and
moderate responses to SOGIE rights that have
“gone too far” (ibid). As Kuhar and Zobec (2017,
p. 36) write: “The anti-gender movement presents
itself as modern, young and hip. In most cases, the
movement tries to hide its religious connections
and create a secularising selfimage that cannot
be reduced to previous forms of conservative
resistance against gender equality and sexual
rights.” Anti-gender campaigns are active online
and offline. Their internet advocacy often takes
the form of online petitions, websites and
newsletters that aim to raise awareness of the
threat to the ‘family’ and children posed by SOGIE
rights and activism. Offline, the anti-gender
movement organizes demonstrations, lectures,
press conferences, statements, and lobbying
of national and international governments.
Importantly, the movement has made a great
effort to grow the next generation of activists who
will not only modernize, but advance, anti-gender
activism.
While anti-gender campaigns may often appear as
local and “grassroots”, they are integrated into a
transnational network of organizations promoting
what they call ‘traditional’ notions of gender,
13
SECTION 1: UNDERSTANDING ANTI-GENDER IDEOLOGY, LANGUAGE AND HISTORY

marriage, and family. As David Paternotte and
Roman Kuhar (2018, p. 8) write, “although the
triggers vary across borders, a common pattern
may be identified: these mobilisations are a
critique of gender, labeled as “gender ideology”,
“gender theory” or “(anti)genderism”. They all
claim to combat “gender”, which is seen as the
root of their worries and the matrix of the reforms
they want to oppose”.
There are also important transnational coalitions
that give shape and coherence to the anti-gender
movement. The World Congress of Families (now
known as the International Organization for the
Family), has become a key organization that has
facilitated anti-gender international cooperation
and alliance building. Co-founded by Dr. Allan
Carlson (founder of the Howard Center for Family
Religion and Society), and Anatoly Antonov (a
professor of demography in the Department of
Sociology at Lomonosov Moscow State University),
the World Congress of Families was created to
foster International pro-family movement building.
In his retirement ceremony at the ninth World
Congress, which took place in Salt Lake City Utah
in 2015, Carlson recounted:
The idea for a World Congress of Families
actually emerged…in early 1995 in a modest
apartment in Moscow, Russia…Professors
Antonov and Medkov who had secured a copy
of and read my early book, Family Questions:
Reflections on the American Social Crisis…
invited me over to discuss the implications
of my arguments for Russia…we agreed on
the value of…convening an international
meeting that would examine the family crises
to be found alike among the western peoples
of western Europe and North America and a
similar crisis found among the people of former
communist lands in East Europe and Russia.
In both spheres the same developments were
emerging…falling marriage rates, declining
marital fertility, growing levels of cohabitation,
and children born outside of marriage, mounting
signs of…failure of youth to thrive and grow…
The result two years later…was the inaugural
Congress of Families, held in Prague.
4
Since the first World Congress of Families in 1997,
a number of other Congresses have taken place
in cities across the world. Only one Congress
has taken place in the United States. The World
Congress of Families, which features ‘pro-family’
activists, researchers, and organizations, has
played an important role in creating a shared
anti-gender ideology and vocabulary that is shared
by anti-gay and anti-feminist activists around the
world.
As several scholars have discussed, the
anti-gender movement has many points of
intersection with rising right-wing populism
and new right-wing activism, having serious
implications for SOGIE rights, national politics
and elections, and international policy. As existing
research has shown, right wing political positions
in Europe and the United States have been deeply
heteronormative, and often heterosexist, in
their defence of the traditional nuclear family as
the location from which national identity is (re)
produced (Rohde-Abuba, Vennmann & Zimenkova
2019, p. 720). While it is important to locate
anti-gender activism in relation to other ‘Global
Right’ agendas, opposition to LGBTIQ+ and
women’s rights form a “specific type of conservative
opposition to gender and sexual equality, which
needs to be distinguished” from other new
right actors (Paternotte & Kuhar, 2018, p. 7). For
anti-gender campaigners, in particular, the issues
of ‘gender’ and ‘gender ideology’ are at the heart
of various economic, social, and population crises
afflicting the globe, with the ‘natural family’ and
the restoration of the gender binary and hierarchy
providing their remedies. Through their emphasis
on SOGIE rights as an “ideology”, anti-gender
activists seek to accomplish two goals: First, to
4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CtV6Vf6v7U&list
=PLei2Xk4DlLIzt-2524mJWQpcrl9tuUZ3h&index=3
14
WHAT IS THE ANTI-GENDER MOVEMENT?

frame Gender Studies as subjective and therefore
unscientific as a means of discrediting SOGIE
rights and, second, to construct their perspectives,
which are deeply violent at physical and epistemic
levels, as well-intentioned ‘commonsense’ that is
value-free and unideological.
Anti-gender advocacy and knowledge production
has targeted queer and feminist epistemologies
or ways of knowing, that have provided the
intellectual and empirical foundations of queer
and feminist advocacy work. The movement
has established a number of think tanks, which
generate research to support their claims regarding
the dangers of ‘genderism’ to individuals, societies
and economies. The knowledge generated in
these research entities provide ‘evidence’ that can
be referred to by pro-family activists in their efforts
to prove that non-normative family formations,
gender identities and sexual orientations have
social and economic consequences.
Making sense of the
anti-gender movement
In order to understand anti-gender
activism
and its opposition to Gender
Studies as a legitimate field of research
and education, it is necessary to understand
the historical and geopolitical contexts from
which this countermovement emerged. It is
also important to understand the anti-gender
vocabulary that has been so vital to its ability to
bring together multiple stakeholders, political,
economic and social issues into a transnational
movement in opposition to equality politics,
which the movement has dubbed “cultural
Marxism”. Before proceeding to discuss the
movement’s activities in relation to academic
freedom in specific contexts, it is therefore
necessary to locate the anti-gender movement
historically and geopolitically, and to introduce
the key phrases that give coherence to its very
complex structure and diverse transnational
membership: ‘gender’, ‘gender ideology’ or
‘genderism’, ‘gender theory’, and the ‘natural
family’. These terms, which are often used
interchangeably in anti-gender activism, have
come to be used as “‘empty signifiers’, flexible
synonyms for demoralization, abortion, non-
normative sexuality, and sex confusion” (Mayer
& Sauer, 2017 in Korolczuk & Graff, 2018a, p. 799).
These terms, as scholars have pointed out, function
as “symbolic glue” that can tap into different fears
and anxieties in specific contexts and facilitate
cooperation between actors despite their political,
economic, and religious differences (Corrêa,
Paternotte & Kuhar 2018, para 18). The cohesive
power of this terminology exists in its ability to
create unity about the meaning of heterosexual
marriage, the nuclear family and heterosexuality
for a functioning society, particularly amongst
groups who have been opponents in relation to
other social, economic, religious, and political
matters.
15
MAKING SENSE OF THE ANTI-GENDER MOVEMENT

Many researchers and commentators
have said that the anti-gender
movement was born in the mid-
1990s during two international UN Conferences:
The 1994 International Conference on Population
and Development in Cairo and the 1995 World
Conference on Women in Beijing. It was during these
two conferences that feminist activists put issues
of reproductive rights, gender mainstreaming,
and sexual orientation on the policy agenda for
international debate for the first time. Cairo marked
the first time the United Nations recognized sexual
and reproductive rights, and it was in Beijing that
the critical use of the term “gender” was first
introduced at the United Nations. Both of these
world conferences signified major gains for the
women’s rights movement and raised alarm in the
Vatican about increased access to abortion and the
mainstreaming of LGBTIQ+ rights (Kane, 2018). As
Corredor writes, the emergence of anti-genderism
and its gender ideology rhetoric are unmistakable
as countermovements to “the epistemological
turn within feminist and queer discourse and to
attempts among feminists to reconceptualize and
operationalize gender into international policy”
(Corredor, 2019, p. 619).
Transnational feminist and queer advocacy
networks expanded internationally in the 1990s,
and these groups were successful in making gains
for women’s rights and incorporating progressive
ideas about sexuality and reproductive justice in
proposed policy documents (623). As LGBTIQ+
activists increased their mobilisation within
UN conferences, their efforts were met with
growing coordination and resistance amongst
their opponents. As Doris Buss (1998) discusses,
prior to the 1994 International Conference on
Population and Development, various members
of what has become the ‘anti-gender’ movement
were present, but they were not yet working
together as a collective, and they were not
directly targeting feminist and LGBTIQ+ activists.
However, as many scholars have argued, it was
in Cairo that the anti-gender movement “began
to show its muscle” in defeating attempts to
include specific gender protections including
women’s reproductive rights and to recognise
that various forms of family exist across different
cultural, political and social systems (Corredor,
2019, pp. 622-623). This movement, as many have
argued, “emerged in direct response to feminist
and queer attempts to insert new understandings
of gender, sex, and sexuality into international
policy” (619).
As Corredor (2019) writes, “Although the
term ‘gender’ had appeared in earlier UN
world conference documents, it was generally
understood to refer to dichotomous biological
sex or to women” (624). In contrast, proposed
changes to the way in which gender was used
and understood aimed to reorient discussions and
policy around gender power structures shaping
social life, political institutions, and economic
development policies which conflate “gender
with women or ‘natural’ sex differences" (624).
The Vatican led the opposition against proposed
changes in policy language, joined by Catholic
and Muslim countries who issued a Statement
of Interpretation of the Term ‘Gender’, which
articulated an uncompromising position that the
term ‘gender’ must be understood to be “grounded
in biological-sexual identity, male or female” and
rejects the notion that “sexual identity can adapt
indefinitely” (625). The Vatican-led coalition made
its power felt, ultimately blocking any of the
proposed changes to the definition or use of the
Historically locating the
anti-gender movement
16

term ‘gender’ in the contested Beijing Declaration
and Platform for Action.
While the UN provided an international stage for
anti-gender activism, anti-feminist and anti-gay
advocacy had already been gaining political
influence in North America since the 1970s. Over
the course of three decades, the ‘family values’
movement had been fomenting and growing
opposition to women’s rights, gender and sexuality
diversity. In the United States, the increase in
women’s demands for reproductive freedom
and intensifying pressures of the gay rights
movement subsequent to the Stonewall rebellion
caused conservative Christians to “wake up and
put sexuality issues on their political agenda”
(Herman, 1997, p. 28), a narrative which Christian
Right activists themselves tell as the origin of
the Family Values movement (ibid). Thus, by the
1990s UN Conferences, the rhetoric of ‘family
values’ had already become a persisting feature
within American political discourse, largely as a
reaction to the perceived values of the ‘permissive
sixties’ and the sexual revolution (ibid). Much
of the anti-gender discourse that we are seeing
globally today is textured by the logic and rhetoric
that emerged in North America in opposition
to changing norms about sexuality, gender and
family.
The colonial history of
anti-gender ideology
While the recent history of the anti-
gender movement in the United
States and the United Nations is
important to understand in efforts to make sense
of its ideology, it is equally important to recognize
that the movement’s ideological underpinnings
are more deeply anchored in colonial ideologies
of gender, sexuality, race and nation. While the
‘pro-family’ movement claims that the ideas of
‘gender’, ‘marriage’ and ’family’ are universal
and timeless, these ideas have a location and
history within colonial knowledge production that
served the purposes of conquest, domination, and
slavery. As this section briefly discusses, the anti-
gender notion that the ‘natural family’ is timeless
and universal is a form of epistemicide that denies
and erases diverse kinship structures, gender and
sexuality identities that existed in precolonial
indigenous societies, and which continue to exist
around the world. These heteronormative forms
of denial and erasure also obscure the role of
the notion of the nuclear family within colonial
conquest and domination. Ultimately, anti-gender
claims that the nuclear family is ‘natural’ constructs
the heterosexual nuclear family as something to
which all should subscribe and aspire to, rendering
all other alternatives unthinkable.
While the nuclear family has become an important
site of analysis within western feminist analyses
of patriarchy and women’s subornation in
North America and Europe, anti-imperialist and
decolonial scholars have also located the nuclear
family as a mechanism of colonial domination. As
anti-imperialist feminist scholars have shown,
the notion of the nuclear family became used as
a pillar, and measure, of civilization during the
colonial period. Colonial science claimed that
heterosexual nuclear family, and the gender binary
and hierarchy constituting it, was superior to the
kinships systems practiced by indigenous people.
This idea was used to establish scientific basis for
notions of racial difference and hierarchy. Sally
Kitch (2009) provides archival research showing
the ways in which the gender binary and hierarchy
became constitutive of racist colonial ideologies
17
THE COLONIAL HISTORY OF ANTI-GENDER IDEOLOGY

of white, European superiority and supremacy.
She shows that white, Christian, European men,
who were already fully invested in their spiritual,
physical, and intellectual superiority over
European women, sought to construct white men
as superior to all men in order to legitimize the
geopolitical dominance and authority of Europe
in relation to the rest of the world. She writes:
“In these ways and others, sexual difference and
the gender binary became basic tenets of the
ideology of racial hierarchy and white supremacy
during processes of nation formation in the West”
(169). Gender, she writes, became “a colonial
concept and mode of organization of relations of
production, property relations, of cosmologies and
ways of knowing” (ibid).
The imposition of the nuclear family model upon
indigenous societies involved the creation of penal
codes that criminalized ‘sodomy’ and ‘indecency’
in the colonies (Human Rights Watch, 2013).
Contemporary anti-gay laws in many countries
originated with nineteenth century anti-sodomy
laws introduced by the British, Portuguese and
French. After independence, anti-sodomy laws
remained the rule of law, and have even been
expanded to include harsher penalties and
additional restrictions. Through these laws,
colonial governments imposed European notions
of sexual morality onto colonized societies in an
attempt to ‘re-educate’ indigenous people into
heterosexuality and the nuclear family structure.
As numerous scholars have shown, forms and
expressions of gender and sexuality diversity were
common in pre-colonial societies around the world,
and it was only through colonial occupation that
taboos, stigmas, and restrictions on homosexuality
came to be entrenched in these societies. For
instance, Marc Epprecht (2013) has written
extensively about homosexuality in pre-colonial
Zimbabwe, showing evidence of same-sex
practices represented in indigenous artefacts; the
existence of a ‘third gender’ has been documented
amongst first nations people in North America
(Smith, 2010; Mirandé, 2017), and Vanita (2013)
has conducted research on same-sex intimacy and
partnership in precolonial India. In documenting
the forms of gender and sexuality diversity that
existed in indigenous societies, this work reveals
the mythology of compulsory heterosexuality
and the nuclear family as ‘natural’ or ‘universal’.
Importantly, these works have also shown that the
ideology informing colonialism was not only racist,
but heterosexist and patriarchal.
The significance of the nuclear family model in
the project of modernity/colonialism has also been
elaborated upon by decolonial theorists Aníbal
Quijano and Walter Mignolo in their respective
theorization of the colonial ‘logic’ (Quijano, 2007)
and ‘matrix’ (Mignolo, 2010) of power. Drawing
on Quijano’s work, Mignolo argues that a global
gender/sex hierarchy “privileged males over
females and European patriarchy over other forms
of gender configuration and sexual relations”
through the invention and institutionalization of
sex (heterosexual/homosexual) and gender (male/
female) binaries and hierarchy (Mignolo, 2011, p.
18). This hierarchy, he writes, was established
upon “two pillars of enunciation: the racial and
patriarchal foundations of knowledge without
which the colonial matrix of power would not
have been possible to be established” (Mignolo,
2010, p. 120, emphasis added). The nuclear family
structure was also an important site of analysis
within the efforts of Frankfurt School scholars to
understand the roots of authoritarianism and the
relationship between class and gender in capitalist
societies. According to Max Horkheimer, the
heterosexual and monogamous nuclear family was
essential to the re(production) of capitalism in that
it established a ‘natural’ social hierarchy in which
women and children became the property of men.
In his 1987, Studien über Autorität und Familie
(Studies on Authority and Family), Horkheimer
argued that the heteronormative concept of
the family was a main symbol of authoritarian
behavior within society (Horkheimer, 1987, p. 57
in Rohde-Abuba, Vennmann & Zimenkova, 2019,
p. 723).
18
THE COLONIAL HISTORY OF ANTI-GENDER IDEOLOGY

The colonial roots of anti-gender ideology show the
contradictions of accusations that “gender theory”
is a new form of colonisation. According to Buss
and Herman (2003), the language of colonialism,
inequality, and racism enables conservatives to
lay “claim to a progressive stance that says it is
more authentic, more compassionate, and more
sensitive” than that of feminists and LGBTIQ+
activists (77). This argument disfigures SOGIE
advocacy and rights in a way that also distorts the
history of colonialism and obscures the complicity
of heteropatriarchy within colonial violence
and domination. The accusation that SOGIE
rights activists and Gender Studies scholars are
“colonizers” also draws upon and contributes to
anti-migrant xenophobia, demonizing “gender”
as a ‘foreign’ concept that is contaminating local
cultures, endangering children, and destroying
traditions. The ‘foreignness’ of gender and its
conceptual contents is further marked by its English
origins and lack of translation and translatability
in other non-English speaking contexts where it
has been used in gender research and in relation
to SOGIE activism (Geva, 2019, p. 412).
As Korolczuk and Graff (2018a) write, “‘Genderism’
– a term that sounds ominous and alien in most
cultural contexts – has replaced ‘feminism’
in global right-wing rhetoric, strengthening
the critique of gender equality movements as
powerful and foreign ‘colonizers’” (799) who are
said to be forcing gender ideology upon other
countries through international structures such as
the European Union and the United Nations. The
construction of LGBTIQ+ people as neocolonizers
creates suspicion and doubt about the legitimacy
of LGBTIQ+ people and rights within international
political discourse, claiming that it is opposition
to SOGIE rights that speaks most authentically for
the formerly colonized world (Buss and Herman
2003: 77). Notably, anti-gender activists are not
the only conservative forces repurposing the
history and concept of “colonization”. According
to Korolczuk and Graff, “the notion of colonisation
is infinitely pliable in right-wing discourse and…
can be effectively used in countries with no
obvious colonial history as a powerful signifier for
humiliation that needs to be resisted” (810).
Anti-gender ideology
and concepts
Within claims that gender ideology is
a form of ideological colonization,
gender becomes the ideological
‘glue’ (Corrêa, Paternotte & Kuhar 2018) holding
together conservative interests around the world.
Activists working to advance ‘traditional’ notions
of gender roles and family argue that gender
is not a social construction, but a “common
sense” division of humanity, ordained by God
and nature. The contestation over the meaning
of “gender” (and other related concepts such as
sexuality, marriage, family, and what is considered
‘normal’ human development) points to the
deeper epistemic contestations at work within
anti-gender politics, and efforts to delegitimize
feminist and queer knowledges. Gender Studies
and queer theory have been characterized by
anti-gender activists as “a theory on the loose”
(Geva, 2019, p. 414): A form of “bogus science”
or “indoctrination” that circulates “like a virus
infecting one discipline to another, from one
country to another, and rapidly moving from the
psychiatric clinic, across university disciplines, and
then to law and public education” (Apperly, 2019;
Geva, 2019, p. 414). Anti-gender campaigns, and
their strategic use of the phrases ‘gender ideology’
19
ANTI-GENDER IDEOLOGY AND CONCEPTS

and ‘gender theory’, must therefore be understood
as “an epistemological response to emancipatory
claims about sex, gender, and sexuality” as well
as “a political mechanism used to contain policy
developments associated with feminist and queer
agendas” (Corredor, 2019, p. 614).
Within anti-gender counter campaigns against
SOGIE rights and comprehensive sex education
(CSE), “gender theory” is commonly denounced as
the main ideological base of all of these progressive
policies. “Gender theory” is constructed as a project
of social engineering where men are no longer
masculine and women are no longer feminine and
one is free to choose one’s own gender and sexual
orientation, even “several times a day” (Kuhar &
Zobec, 2017, p. 34). Emphasis on “gender theory”
within anti-gender activism shows that queer
and feminist knowledge production is one of the
important targets of the anti-gender movement.
This involves a struggle over the legitimacy of
academic work and what constitutes “knowledge",
particularly of gender and related studies. The
anti-gender movement therefore has ambitions to
reassert positivist patriarchal forms of rationality
as the authority on what constitutes legitimate
forms of knowledge and knowledge production
(Pető, 2016).
The effort to reclaim the gender binary as ‘natural’
and scientific was mobilized, in the literal sense,
through a bus campaign project called the
#FreeSpeechBus, which was implemented by the
National Organization for Marriage, CitizenGo
and the International Organization for the Family
in cities around the world in 2017. The orange
bus transported the message: “Boys are boys…
and always will be. Girls are girls…and always
will be. You can’t change sex. Respect all”. The
#FreeSpeechBus made its way around the United
States, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Chile,
Mexico, Colombia and Kenya. In its depiction
of ‘male’ and ‘female’ as defined by XX or XY
chromosomes, the bus promoted the message that
gender is assigned at birth and strictly biological.
This campaign ultimately sought to undermine
the legitimacy of LGBTIQ+ existence and “gender
theory” in its international tour. However, it was
not received without resistance on the part of
activists and governments. In Madrid, a judge
banned the bus from traveling through the city
on the grounds that it was discriminatory and
could provoke hate crimes. In the U.S., counter
protestors greeted the bus’s arrival on every stop
of its attempted tour. In Bogota, the LGBTIQ+
activists splashed paint on the vehicle (Parke,
2018). The bus also inspired a Los Angeles based
game developer to create Ignorance Fighter II,
which lets players kick, punch, and demolish the
bus in virtual space (Marusic, 2017).
The rights of transgender and non-binary
individuals to be officially recognized as the gender
they identify as, not which they were assigned at
birth, has been a key issue that anti-genderists
have targeted in their accusations about the
dangers of gender, gender ideology, and Gender
Studies. Transgender rights in the workplace,
education, and public facilities more broadly have
also been used as anti-gender rallying points for
the assertion of gender as biologically determined.
In doing so, they tap into and grow an affective
economy and politics of fear (Ahmed, 2004; Wodak,
2015) by fueling anxiety and suspicion of changing
social norms.
Anti-gender movements in Europe have also
targeted public schools, which are said to be
including “gender theory” in their curricula
through content on family diversity and CSE.
Different types of actions have been organized
to resist teaching on gender equality in schools.
Civil initiatives of so-called “concerned parents”
have tried to put pressure on school authorities
and teachers to not address certain topics, such
as same-sex families, the social construction of
gender roles, sex education and homosexuality.
In France, for example, conservative civil society
organizations created an online petition against
an animated film for primary schools entitled
20
ANTI-GENDER IDEOLOGY AND CONCEPTS

Baiser de la lune (The Kiss of the Moon), which
depicted a romantic relationship between two
male fish (Stambolis-Ruhstorfer and Tricou,
2017). In Italy, conservatives were successful
in withdrawing books that address family
diversity from some public primary schools
(Garbagnoli, 2017). In Peru, a campaign called
ConMisHijosNoTeMetas (Don’t Mess with my
Kids) has mobilized in relation to sex education
in schools. According to the founder, child
protectionism has been a strategic device used
to gain popular support: “We started with sex
education because it was what mobilised people
the most, because it refers to their children, but
what we really want is to eliminate gender, the
word ‘gender’, altogether, in Peru and all over
the world (Cariboni, 2019, para 6).
Supported by conservative Christian organizations,
‘concerned parent groups’ have had the appearance
of being “grassroots” movements, but have
numerous ties to “well-resourced Evangelical and
Catholic conservative campaigns that are promoting
the myth of ‘gender ideology’ internationally” and
which are connected with the U.S. Christian Right
(Greenesmith & Fernandez-Anderson, 2019). Open
Democracy provides a helpful overview of these
movements and their transnational connections
in an article From the US to Peru, these ‘parent
groups’ targeting sex education are all backed by
the Christian right (ibid). The child protectionist
discourse informing these movements challenges
notions of children’s rights, having implications
for children’s self-determination and ability to
access vital information about sexual health and
development.
Promotion and protection of the so-called “natural
family” is a cornerstone of anti-gender discourse
and advocacy. According to conservative activists,
changing notions of gender and SOGIE rights
undermine and threaten the so-called ‘traditional’
or ‘natural’ family, which is itself understood as
foundational to universal notions of “society” and
“civilization” (McEwen, 2017).
Within ‘pro-family’ rhetoric, a universal notion
of ‘family’ is used, which erases all other kinds
of kinship structures that have existed, and
which continue to exist, in societies around the
world. This construction of the natural family as
universal and natural was set out in a document
called The Cape Town Declaration, which was
launched in Cape Town, South Africa in 2017 by
the International Organization for the Family:
A thriving culture will therefore serve
marriage—and all society—by promoting purity
outside it and fidelity within; by discouraging
pornography, adultery and divorce; and by
firmly resisting every push to redefine marriage:
to include same-sex or group bonds, or sexually
open or temporary ones (World Congress of
Families, 2017).
Similar to the colonial deployment of the notion of
the nuclear family as the most “civilised” kinship
structure, contemporary notions that the nuclear
family is universal creates a figure through which
social hierarchies can be portrayed as natural and
familial through the naturalization of male control
over women and children (Stoler, 1995, p. 45;
Hill-Collins, 1998). Through the ‘natural family’,
patriarchy was constructed as natural, providing
a model through which other differences could be
classified, ranked and rationalized according to
‘categories of nature’ (Kitch, 2009).
21
ANTI-GENDER IDEOLOGY AND CONCEPTS

In June 2019, a writer for The Atlantic wrote:
As far-right politicians become entrenched
in Europe, both at the European Parliament
and within national parliaments across the
Continent, they are taking aim at experts and
intellectuals they present as members of an
out-of-touch, corrosive elite. Several academic
disciplines are subject to scrutiny and attack,
but Gender Studies has become a particularly
vilified target (Apperly, 2019, para 4).
The accusation that experts and intellectuals
who critique the gender binary and hierarchy
and normative notions of the family, gender and
sexuality are “out of touch” and “corrosive” is a
familiar narrative within anti-gender activism.
However, there are variations in how Gender
Studies and its eminent scholars are constructed
that relate to geo-political and historical factors. In
former Stalinist countries, for instance, reference
to “ideology” recalls memories of pedagogic
brainwashing (Apperley, 2019). “In Germany,
the new word genderismus…wilfully echoes the
sozialismus, or socialism, of East German memory.
In Estonia, …the far-right website Objektiiv has
published a number of articles comparing “gender
ideology” to Marxism and Leninism” (ibid).
Gender Studies developed as an interdisciplinary
critical field of knowledge in the late 20th century
along with other fields informed by critical theory
and civil rights movements such as Disability
Studies, Subaltern Studies, and Ethnic and
Racial Studies. Gender Studies is historically and
ideologically related to Women’s Studies, Feminist
Studies, Sexuality Studies, Men and Masculinity
Studies, and Queer Theory; all advancing critique of
‘gender’, gender roles, and heteropatriarchal social
formations. Building upon feminist standpoint
theory and Foucauldian understandings of power,
discourse, and sexuality, many critical Gender
Studies scholars have exposed and challenged the
sexed and gendered power relations embedded in
knowledge production.
The interdisciplinary field of Gender Studies
examines a range of contexts in which sex and
gender power relations are at work, often through
intersectional lenses that engage with identities,
racial inequality, popular culture, politics of
citizenship, the environment, and militarization.
Largely guided by an ethos of social justice, Gender
Studies scholars have developed new concepts and
theoretical frameworks that have gained traction
not only across academic disciplines, but also in
civil society activism. There has been important
relationship between theory and practice in
Anti-gender
knowledgeand attacks
on Gender Studies
Section 2:
22
SECTION 2: ANTI-GENDER KNOWLEDGE AND ATTACKS ON GENDER STUDIES

Gender Studies, with scholarly work in the field
making important contributions to feminist and
SOGIE advocacy.
For these reasons, the field of Gender Studies itself
has become a strategic target within anti-gender
efforts to protect heteropatriarchal power and
privilege. As anti-gender campaigns have gained
momentum worldwide, one of their key strategies
has been to portray Gender Studies as “bogus
science” and as knowledge with political, rather
than scientific, motivations. This emphasis within
anti-gender activism reveals the significance
of knowledge, power and authority within
contemporary debates over SOGIE and women’s
rights. While campaigns against ‘Gender Studies’
and its approaches to education about gender and
sexuality take various forms in different social
and cultural contexts, they are all underpinned
by the effort to restore the authoritative status
of knowledge that has historically maintained a
heteropatriarchal social order.
23
SECTION 2: ANTI-GENDER KNOWLEDGE AND ATTACKS ON GENDER STUDIES
Hijras are officially recognized as third gender in countries in the Indian subcontinent, being considered neither
completely male nor female. This picture is from the sixth pink rally in Mumbai, India, 13 January 2020. The rally
is organized to demand shelter home, social visibility, equality, empowerment, end of discrimination and to raise
awareness about different issues of transgender and Hijra community. Credit:EPA, photo by Divyakant Solanki

Anti-gender
knowledge production
The generation and mobilization of the
anti-gender concepts discussed above
– ‘gender’ and ‘gender ideology’, the
‘natural family’ and ‘gender theory’ – have been
the product of conservative efforts to develop
knowledge that can counter the gains by feminist
and queer activists in advancing women’s and
SOGIE rights and shifting social imaginaries about
gender, sexuality and family. As Kuhar and Zobec
(2017) argue “in many ways…the anti-gender
movement is a struggle over the legitimacy of
academic work and – in the populist world of
'alternative facts' – an attempt to create 'alternative
science'” (44). While often overlooked in the
academic literature on the anti-gender movement,
conservative ‘pro-family’ think tanks are largely
responsible for manufacturing the ideological glue
of the anti-gender movement: developing and
deploying discursive devices and knowledge that
seeks to undermine and delegitimize feminist and
queer theory and advocacy.
One of the first and now most prominent
conservative ‘think tanks’ promoting ‘pro-family’
policy and knowledge is the Family Research
Council (FRC). Established in 1983 by James
Dobson in Washington D.C., the FRC has become
the leading organization within the U.S. context
and within international pro-family activism
opposing SOGIE and women’s reproductive rights.
The FRC explicitly understands itself as a site of
pro-family knowledge production, describing the
organization as:
a nonprofit research and educational
organization dedicated to articulating and
advancing a family-centered philosophy…
providing policy research and analysis for the
legislative, executive, and judicial branches
of the federal government…[and] inform[ing]
the news media, the academic community,
business leaders, and the general public about
family issues that affect the nation from a
biblical worldview (www.FRC.org).
Since the establishment of the FRC over thirty
years ago, a number of pro-family research centers
and think tanks have been created, such as Family
Watch International, the Marriage and Religion
Research Institute, the National Organization for
Marriage, the Ruth Institute, and the Institute
for Family Studies. And, while the Heritage
Foundation (the most powerful conservative think
tank and lobby group in the U.S.) addresses a
range of issues from conservative perspectives, a
significant proportion of its work is dedicated to
research that can underwrite the argument that
“Marriage and family are the building blocks of all
human civilization and the primary institutions of
civil society”, as stated on their website (www.
heritage.org).
Following the UN World Conferences in Cairo
and Beijing, an organization called the Centre for
Family and Human Rights (C-Fam) was established
in New York City in order to influence social
policy debate at the UN and other international
institutions. In 2014, C-Fam obtained Special
Consultative Status at the UN, and has been
known to work closely with the Vatican-led UN
delegation. In May 2019, Reuters reported that
emails and memos they had obtained from U.S.
officials at the UN clearly “show the influence
of…C-Fam, a private U.S. research institute formed
to affect policy at the U.N.” particularly in relation
to issues of family, gender and sexuality diversity
(Abutaleb and Tanfani, 2019). C-Fam Director
Austin Ruse has attacked academic programs that
24
ANTI-GENDER KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION

support gender and sexuality diversity, claiming it
is “nonsense that they teach in women’s studies…
The toxic stew of the modern university is Gender
Studies…teaching people how to be sex-positive
and overcome the patriarchy”. He continued,
arguing that “the hard left, human-hating people
that run modern universities…should all be taken
out and shot” (Tashman, 2014).
In universities in the United States, conservative
approaches to marriage and family are becoming
regarded as legitimate areas for academic research.
One example is the National Marriage Project
(NMP) at the University of Virginia (previously at
Rutgers where it was established in 1997). The
mission of the project, according to its website:
is to provide research and analysis on the
health of marriage in America, to analyze the
social and cultural forces shaping contemporary
marriage, and to identify strategies to increase
marital quality and stability…The NMP
conducts research, sponsors conferences, and
public lectures… publishes reports, books
and articles by family scholars, and makes its
findings available to the broader public through
its web site, media outreach, and publications”
(nationalmarriageproject.org, 2020).
The Director of the National Marriage Project is
Brad Wilcox, who is also a professor of Sociology
at the University of Virginia. He has also held
fellowships at pro-family think tanks such as the
Institute for Family Studies and the American
Enterprise Institute. Some of the most prestigious
institutions in the United States house pro-family
scholars. Sociologist Mark Regnerus, at the
University of Texas, Austin (which is widely
recognised as a liberal institution despite its
location in a conservative state) has been widely
discredited for his research’s anti-gay bias,
and World Congress of Families founder Allan
Carlson, was a professor of History at Hillsdale
College. While these academics and research
entities have largely worked to discredit Gender
Studies and related disciplines, their emergence
provides an opportunity to interrogate anti-gender
ideology on the basis of its scholarly merits in
the spirit of exercising one’s academic freedom.
The methodological, theoretical, and analytical
approaches and assumptions within conservative
‘marriage and family studies’ scholarship require
further engagement and scrutiny, and their
intersections with more established disciplines
such as Population studies, Demography, Sociology,
and Political studies beg further analysis.
To be certain, Gender Studies is not the only
field of knowledge under attack by conservative
campaigns. Scholars working in climate change
science have also been targeted by new right
movements, and their research called “bogus” or
“junk” science by new right-wing organizations.
Similar to their attacks on Gender Studies,
right-wing movements have been making efforts
to suppress the dissemination of climate science.
For instance, the late and eminent climatologist
from Stanford University, Stephen Schneider, had
his name listed on a neo-Nazi death list alongside
other climate scientists with apparent Jewish
ancestry. In response to the threat, Schneider drew
important parallels between attacks on climate
science and those on feminist activists. He asked:
“What do I do? Learn to shoot a magnum? Wear a
bullet-proof jacket?…They shoot abortion doctors
here” (Hamilton, 2011).
Attacks on climate science provide a helpful
point of comparison within this report on SOGIE
rights and academic freedom. While Gender
Studies scholars have critiqued these foundational
concepts that have held heteropatriarchal power
and Euro-American hegemony in place, climate
scientists also critique industrial capitalism, which
has also been a critical mechanism used by colonial
powers to exploit and dominate indigenous
people. Similar to how Gender Studies has been
accused as a covert strategy of Western liberals to
reduce populations, climate science is increasingly
coming under attack as a conspiracy to manipulate
25
ANTI-GENDER KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION

and reduce fertility rates – something that the
‘pro-family’ movement vehemently opposes.
In making this comparison, however, it is
important to recognize that Women’s and Gender
Studies have faced longer standing ridicule
more generally within the society and academic
corridors. Prior to and beyond the proliferation of
anti-gender discourses, the field has struggled to
gain legitimacy within institutions. As reported
by Maria Do Mar Pereira, a lecturer in Gender
Studies and Sociology at the University of Leeds,
her research revealed: “claims that Women’s
and Gender Studies is not proper knowledge are
frequently made informally and in humorous tone,
creating what one of my interviewees called a
‘culture of teasing’ around women’s and Gender
Studies” (Pereira, 2013). She quoted one senior
scholar who commented, “Feminism is seen
as something which is ridiculous, something
that is laughable, that does not have academic
quality’ (ibid). Contemporary anti-gender rhetoric
about Gender Studies connects with this longer
struggle of Gender Studies to establish itself as an
academic field within institutions due to deeply
entrenched positivist, male dominated, elite,
white and heteronormative knowledge traditions
and disciplines.
26
ANTI-GENDER KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION

Case studies of
anti-gender movements
Anti-gender movements have taken shape in many different parts
of the world over the course of the past decade. Unfortunately, it
is not within the scope of this report to comprehensively cover
all contexts where anti-gender activism is underway. Here, four
case studies are presented for closer analysis: Poland, Hungary,
Brazil, and South Africa. Through an in-depth focus on anti-gender
activities in these contexts, the intention is to provide the reader
with a textured understanding of the movement in different
contexts, while also showing their shared discursive threads.
Brazil
Hungary
South
Africa
Poland
27
SECTION 3

28
Poland
Eastern Europe has
witnessed the rapid growth
of anti-gender campaigns
over the course of the past decade,
and gender studies departments
and research centres have been a
strategic point of their activism.
Poland, Russia and Hungary have
been key sites where anti-gender
mobilisation has taken shape and
where it has been notably effective in
capturing the imagination and hearts
of large portions of the population
more effectively than progressive
movements have managed to do, write
Korolczuk and Graff (2018a, p. 815).
Partnerships between conservative
politicians and organisations in Eastern
European countries and the United
States have given rise to distinct East-
West networks connecting nations
that are opposed on other political and
economic matters.
Within the Polish anti-gender
movement, Poland has come to signify
not only a ‘victim’ of western “gender
ideology”, but as its potential savior.
“Gender” has been characterized as
“Ebola from Brussels” by right-wing
populist groups as a way of creating
fear about the EU as “a coloniser and
source of contagion, as it spreads the
virus of genderism, aiming to destroy
the healthy body of the Polish nation
(Korolczuk & Graff, 2018, p. 811). As
stated by the leader of the country’s
Law and Justice party, gender and the
LGBTIQ+ movement are a “direct attack
on the family and children” (Apperley,
2019). A prominent anti-gender author
in Poland, Marzena Nykiel, writes
of Poland’s “special mission in the
global gender war” exclaiming, “The
world looks to Poland with hope that
Poland shall save the West once again”
(Nykiel, 2014, p. 305 in Korolczuk &
Graff, 2018a, p. 812).
Korolczuk and Graff (2018a) understand
this rhetoric as a strategic inversion
of the idea amongst many western
observers that post-socialist countries
like Poland have lagged behind in
relation to gender equality and sexual
democracy. Within New Right political
ideology, these countries are seen as
“the world’s avant garde and possibly
a savior” (813). In 2012, the Polish
minister of justice publicly opposed the
Istanbul convention on preventing and
combating violence against women
and domestic violence on the basis that
it was a “carrier of gender ideology”
(Kane, 2018). There have also been
targeted oppositions to abortion, SOGIE
rights, and divorce, with the movement
gradually coalescing against emerging
issues such as sexuality education and
reproductive technologies (ibid).
Conservative think tanks in Poland
such as the Ordo Iuris Institute for
Legal Culture has supported these
campaigns, benefiting from the
partnership of European and global
platforms such as CitizenGo and have
worked with the World Congress of

29
POLAND
Families/International Organization for
the Family, Family Watch International,
and C-Fam. Anti-genderism became
an official part of the right-wing Law
and Justice Party’s platform (which
won a majority of seats in Parliament
in 2015) and policy of “Change for
the Better”. According to Kane
(2018), “The ministries of science and
education committed to strip away the
influence of gender, including pledges
to remove ‘gay and lesbian studies
journals from the official rankings
of academic journals’, and promised
to ensure that school ‘be free from
various ideologies’ and that ‘children
will study normal, class subjects’”
(ibid). As Kane continues, while this
surge in anti-gender politics was first
perceived by those on the left as an
effort to cover up pedophilia scandals
in the Polish Catholic Church, it was
actually a “nationally driven alliance
building project between foreign,
illiberal influences and a gendered
form of nationalism” (Ibid). On the
campaign website (http://www.
stopgender.pl) the word “gender” is
left notably un-translated amongst
exclusively Polish text, signifying and
marking it as an alien import (Snitow
and Detwiler, 2016).
Agnieszka Graff, a well-known
Polish feminist scholar based at
the University of Warsaw, is also a
prominent feminist voice in Polish
media. In her opinion, feminist and
Gender Studies researchers in Poland
have been protected by their lack of
institutionalisation in formal “Gender
Studies” departments. In a 2018 article
appearing on the Norwegian Kilden
Gender Research website, Graff was
quoted as saying:
We have never had a designated
centre or department for gender
research at a Polish university or the
opportunity to get a master’s degree
in Gender Studies…so the argument
that this is the taxpayers’ money
doesn’t hold water. It’s a shame,
because it means that Gender
Studies remain marginalized, but
it’s also good for avoiding attack
(Lilleslåtten, 2018).
However, Graff also tells that
conservative movements have made
deep roads into education in a separate
interview, explaining and predicting
the extent of their impact:
What I find most disturbing is
the effect these conservative
movements have on education.
They are successfully preventing
progressive NGOs (sex educators,
anti-homophobia groups) from
entering schools. They intimidate
teachers who try to talk to kids
about gender equality. They have
managed to create an aura of danger
and suspicion around gender
equality, feminism, LGBT rights.
This might have a lasting effect. We
have a generation of Poles growing
up who think gender is a scary
thing to be avoided (Korolczuk &
Graff, 2018b).
According to Graff, in some places
queer and feminist resistance to the
anti-gender movement has taken
debates that had previously only

30
POLAND
happened in academia “into the
streets”. However, in Poland where
she is based, there is a much narrower
scope for possible repertoires of
political action that queer and feminist
activists can take. She explains:
You see the violence of this
movement, you see that it is
really a movement against liberal
democracy, and you know what
happens when people who support
them and whom they support are
now in power. And they’re not
debating anyone; they are closing
down institutions, censoring
intellectual and artistic work. Our
freedom to think, speak and organize
is contingent on liberal democracy,
which is disappearing. So, no, I am
not optimistic. I don’t think we
have reason to be hopeful in Poland.
We should see this as a real political
struggle and not an intellectual
debate about essentialism and
constructivism. We may be winning
intellectual debates, but they are
taking over the country (ibid).
Several dozen people are seen rallying in front of city hall in Warsaw, Poland on January 21, 2018
against gender education in schools. Credit:Zuma, photo by Jaap Arriens

HUNGARY
31
Hungary
In 2018, the Hungarian
government officially removed
Gender Studies from the list of
accredited Masters programmes in
Hungary – a first in the European Union.
Two universities were affected: Eötvös
Loránd University (ELTE) and Central
European University (CEU). The official
position of the government with regards
to its removal drew explicitly on anti-
gender political rhetoric about ‘gender’
and ‘gender ideology’. As stated by
a spokesman for the prime minister,
“The government’s standpoint is that
people are born either male or female,
and we do not consider it acceptable
for us to talk about socially constructed
genders rather than biological sexes”
(Redden, 2018). It was further stated
by the Presidential Chief of Staff,
Gergely Gulyas, “the Hungarian state
does not wish to spend public funds
on education in this area” (ibid). The
Deputy Prime Minister, Zsolt Semjen,
made the political logic behind
the decision explicit, denouncing
Gender Studies as a legitimate site of
scholarship. He was quoted as saying
that Gender Studies “has no business in
universities” because it is “an ideology,
not a science” (Oppenheim, 2018).
In an interview with The Independent, a
student who was planning on enrolling
in the Gender Studies MA programme
at Central European University named
the gender power relations at work
in the government’s decision to take
funding and accreditation away from
the field. She commented:
We live in a world that privileges
the research of white men – as
historically it is them who have done
the research – and we need other
voices to understand the power
structures of our current society. I
think that studying gender fosters
an understanding of others rather
than a fear (Oppenheim, 2018).
The Hungarian government’s position
on Gender Studies not only articulates
an intolerance for Gender Studies,
but also for LGBTIQ+ people. The
implications for the banning of Gender
Studies could therefore have further
reaching effects through the censorship
of LGBTIQ+ scholars working in other
disciplines, and their abilities to
pursue scholarly projects that pertain
to LGBTIQ+ communities, identities
and rights.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban
is no stranger within global anti-gender
activism. Prior to the announcement
to remove Gender Studies from the
list of accredited MA programmes,
Orban welcomed the World Congress
of Families to Hungary, and delivered
a speech at its opening ceremony.
After telling of the successes of his
government to reduce the numbers
of immigrants entering Hungary, he
ironically turned to the perceived threat
of population decline in the country. In
doing so, he shows the ways in which

Students from The Central European University rally for academic freedom on 24th November
2018. Credit: Reuters, photo by Bernadett Szabo
32
HUNGARY
‘family’ and ‘reproduction’ figure into
his anti-gender social policy. He stated:
The family is at the centre of the
Hungarian government’s vision
of the future…strong families
will create a strong, competitive
society and economy, a strong and
competitive Hungary and Europe…
Our goal…is to have as many
children in Hungary as possible;
because if there are children, there
is a future (Profam.org, 2017).
Population decline has been a talking
point in much anti-gender activism,
with declining fertility rates attributed
to SOGIE and women rights and the
fields of knowledge that advance
social justice for LGBTIQ+ people and
women. Through the argument that
reproduction will spur economic growth
and development, control over women’s
reproduction becomes a crucial site for
bio-political control and intervention.
Gender Studies scholarship subverts
these claims, presenting a direct threat
to pro-natalist political agendas that
encourage women to see themselves
as birthers of the nation.
Moreover, the closing down of
Gender Studies is indicative of a
greater systemic threat to academic
freedom. As the secretary general of
the European University Association

33
HUNGARY
commented, “The move confirms an
unsettling and thinly-veiled trend
towards increased state control
over civil society in Hungary – and
higher education and research are no
exception” (Wilson, 2018). The threat
to academic freedom in Hungary
resounded globally amongst academics
from all disciplines. The American
Association of University Professors
responded with this statement in
which they warned academics across
disciplines:
Restrictions like those imposed in
Hungary directly interfere with the
academic freedom of researchers
and teachers. Biologists,
anthropologists, historians, and
psychologists have repeatedly
shown that definitions of sex and
sexuality have varied over time and
across cultures and political regimes
(American Association of University
Professors, 2018).
Pointing to the multidisciplinary
implications of assaults on Gender
Studies in Hungary and other parts of
the world, the statement addresses the
deeper interests and power relations
at stake within efforts to impinge on
the academic freedom of LGBTIQ+
scholars:
Authoritarian efforts such as these
can justify racial, class, and sexual
policing that disciplines forms of
kinship and homemaking—including
same-sex, multi-generational, or
other nonnormative households—
that deviate from established
nuclear family norms (ibid).
Queer organising in Hungary has
continued despite the growing anti-
gender sentiments and the banning
of Gender Studies. As told by one
scholar who had been registered for
the Gender Studies MA programme at
Central European University before it
was banned:
activists on the ground are setting
up underground education lectures
and organizing queer theory readings
and poetry nights in people’s living
rooms and basement bars. We hold
drag shows in anarchist spaces and
screen Paris Is Burning and films
about gay Hungarian stonemasons.
Regardless of what the government
throws our way, and how exhausted
we are—we still resist. We find
ways to thrive in our own particular
queer, nerdy way (Schwartzburg,
2019).
Across many countries in Eastern
and Central Europe, anti-gender
movements have created multiple
professional and personal challenges
and risks for those who were and are
still working in the fields of gender
equality, women’s rights, SOGIE,
Gender Studies, and/or anyone who
does not conform to the expectations
of ‘traditional’ sex and gender norms.

34
Over the past 10 years,
Brazil’s LGBTIQ+ popu-
lation secured several civil
rights victories in the courts, including
same-sex marriage in 2013 and legal
transgender name and gender changes
in 2018. But as the LGBTIQ+ community
gained new rights, Brazilian politics
have been growing more conservative.
Gender and sexuality have become a
primary target for evangelical groups
over the past decade. A question
about trans culture on a high school
standardized test, for example, drew
widespread criticism from Brazil’s
growing religious right, which argued
that gender education had gone too
far. In 2017, the government decided
to withdraw mention of gender
identity from national curricula. Some
conservative politicians in state and city
governments are now pushing for a ban
on any discussion of gender diversity
and sexual orientation in the classroom
(Faiola & Lopes, 2019). According to
Cleber Cabral Siedschlag, coordinator
of Front for the Defense of the Christian
Family, a conservative group against the
teaching of liberal ideology in schools,
“Gender ideology is a field of study
with no scientific backing that causes
confusion for children in development
because it negates the biological
identity of the child and destroys
distinctions between masculine and
feminine. It is an extremely grave social
experiment” (ibid).
The late Brazilian educationalist, Paulo
Freire, who has become internationally
renowned for the transformative
paradigm for teaching and learning he
articulated in his 1970 text, Pedagogy
of the Oppressed, became figured as
an embodiment of “cultural Marxism”
within Bolsonaro’s efforts to eliminate
leftist views from the classroom.
Pedagogy of the Oppressed argues
against a model of education structured
by hierarchy between teacher and
learner in which learners are passive
and empty vessels and teachers are
depositors of knowledge. Through
the dismantling of this hierarchy,
Freire famously figured the classroom
as a space in which broader social
hierarchies can be addressed. He
argued:
Teachers and students (leadership
and people), co-intent on reality,
are both Subjects, not only in the
task of unveiling that reality, and
thereby coming to know it critically,
but in the task of re-creating that
knowledge. As they attain this
knowledge of reality through
common reflection and action,
they discover themselves as its
permanent re-creators (Freire, 1970,
p. 44).
For Freire, disrupting normative orders
of power in the classroom translates
and transfers into the disruption of
other naturalized systems of dominance
and oppression. The text drew upon
an explicitly Marxist analysis of the
reproduction of systems of dominance
Brazil

35
BRAZIL
People protest against the visit of US philosopher Judith Butler to Brazil, in Sao Paulo, on
November 7, 2017. Credit:AFP, photo by Nelson Almeida
between the oppressor and the
oppressed and the ways in which
traditional pedagogy cultivated a culture
of silence among the dispossessed.
These ideas and their global influence
clearly provoked an authoritarian
response from Bolsonaro, who has
supported a move to strip Freire of
his ceremonial title as the “patron of
Brazilian education” (Uribe, 2019).
During his presidential campaign in
2018, Bolsonaro argued that it would be
necessary to “purge [schools] from Paulo
Freire’s ideology” in order to improve
Brazilian education. In the weeks
following his inauguration, Bolsonaro
promised to "enter the education
ministry with a flamethrower” and
to "tackle the Marxist garbage in our
schools head on…We shall succeed
in forming citizens and not political
militants” (Watson, 2019).

36
BRAZIL
As a number of commentators have
discussed, the rise of conservative
evangelical Protestantism and
Pentecostalism, and their increasing
cooperation with the Catholic Church
in the past half-decade, has turned the
political tide against the humanities in
Brazil. Economic crisis and a period of
“political irresolution” following the 2016
impeachment of Dilma Roussef became
factors that enabled the consolidation
and rise of conservative political powers
in Brazil. There have been calls for
ideologically motivated funding cuts to
fields like sociology, Gender Studies,
and philosophy, which are portrayed as
financially wasteful at best and as leftist
political propaganda at worst. Bolsonaro
wasted no time in making his position
on gender clear after taking office as
President. In his inaugural speech, he
stated: “We will unite people, value
the family, respect religions and our
Judeo-Christian tradition, combat
gender ideology and rescue our values”
(Faiola & Lopes, 2019).
Teachers and professors came under
direct threat immediately following the
election of Bolsonaro when incoming
state deputy of Santa Catarina,
Ana Caroline Campagnolo, asked
students to film their classes to catch
“political-partisan or ideological”
behavior from teachers (Pells, 2018).
Justin Axel-Berg, associate researcher
in higher education policy at the
University of São Paulo, described
Campognolo’s announcement as a
“direct…attempt to create a climate of
fear and persecution” (ibid). Reports
of educators experiencing intimidation
soon followed. For instance, Adriana
Marotti de Mello, a professor of
business, reported that students in
Para State University had already
“denounced teachers…because they
were discussing ‘fake news’ in class…
It was enough for police invasion and
prison. I cannot imagine what is going
to happen [in the future]” (ibid). Well
known Brazilian writer and professor,
Marcia Tiburi, has spoken about her
experience of intimidation, having
been told by her contacts in the police
that paramilitary gangs were “watching
her”. Right-wing activists began
disrupting her book events, and she
received online threats that said she
would be shot during a book signing
(Phillips, 2019). Since Bolsonaro’s
election, left-wing academics have gone
into exile and hiding, fearing the forms
of violent intimidation that they have
been experiencing. For example, Debora
Diniz, a professor of anthropology at the
University of Brasília, received death
threats against herself, her students
and colleagues via WhatsApp message
and email for her pro-choice position
on abortion (ibid). Diniz eventually left
Brazil for a visiting researcher position
at Brown University in the U.S. These
academics and others have confirmed
that the death threats they receive have
come from users of an extreme racist
and misogynist site that called itself
“the biggest alt-right forum in Brazil”
(ibid).
According to a report by The Guardian:
The site’s anonymous users
discuss paedophilia, raping and
killing women, “corrective rape” of
lesbians, suicide tips and even plans

37
BRAZIL
to shoot up schools and universities
to target Marxists and leftists. Over
the years, the forum changed its
name and moved to the dark web
where it cannot be accessed using
a normal browser (ibid).
In addition to creating a climate of
fear, these forms of intimidation have
caused a widespread sense of despair
amongst academics and educators,
especially those who have had to flee
the country to escape persecution.
The Escola sem partidos (School
Without [Political] Party) movement
has been at the forefront of this
campaign, inspiring over one hundred
and fifty bills that were proposed to
Brazil's National Congress and state
legislative houses (Crevelari and
Hobson, 2018). Targeting public and
private schools from preschool through
the university level, the legislation
has “two main goals”: First, it aims to
enforce the American Convention on
Human Rights' Article 12, IV, which
states that "parents or guardians, as the
case may be, have the right to provide
for the religious and moral education
of their children or wards that is in
accord with their own convictions."
Second, it states that "gender ideology"
and "sexual orientation" should not be
included in the school curriculum (ibid).
As Green (2019) writes, Bolsonaro
supporters have recently introduced a
bill in Congress that would establish
a new curriculum under the banner
of “school without [political] party”.
The proposed changes include making
social science and philosophy courses
optional, banning sex education, and
reintroducing the dictatorship-era
courses, “moral and civic education”
and “social and political organisation”.
In April 2019, Bolsonaro and the Brazilian
Minister of Education, Abraham
Weintraub, declared the government’s
plans to “decentralize investments in
philosophy and sociology” in public
universities and to shift financial support
to “areas that give immediate returns to
taxpayers, such as veterinary science,
engineering, and medicine” (Green,
2019). This perspective on Sociology and
Philosophy stands in contrast to that
taken by Bolsonaro’s predecessors, Luiz
Inácio Lula da Silva and Dilma Roussef,
who were both from the Partido dos
Trabalhadores (Worker’s Party). Experts
interpret the proposed cuts as a move to
roll back the “signature achievement”
of his left-wing predecessors expanding
access to higher education and advancing
the humanities in the public schooling
system and the society more broadly.
In response to President Bolsonaro’s
decision to cut funding from sociology
and philosophy, academics in these
and related disciplines from around the
world signed an open letter written by
academics at Harvard University, “In
solidarity with Brazilian Sociologists”,
which stated:
President Bolsonaro’s intent to
defund sociology programs is an
affront to the discipline, to the
academy, and, most broadly, to
the human pursuit of knowledge.
This proposal is ill-conceived, and
violates principles of academic
freedom that ought to be integral

38
BRAZIL
to systems of higher education in
Brazil, in the United States, and
across the globe (In Solidarity with
Brazilian Sociologists, 2019).
This initiative raised international
awareness of the threat to academic
freedom in Brazil and globally, collecting
over ten thousand signatures.
While Bolsonaro’s threatening words
towards Gender Studies and the
humanities came as headline news to
scholars globally, his position reflected
growing hostility towards disciplines
associated with the political Left
amongst conservatives in Brazil. As
Green (2019) tells, the Far Right did
not begin their battle against higher
education with the election of Jair
Bolsonaro. Rather, over the past five
years, conservative groups have been
working to introduce legislation to
stem the alleged “left-wing ideological
influences” in public education and
seek to discredit educators “who
offer critical instruction that examines
the country’s recent authoritarian
history, employs gender as a category
of analysis, and supports affirmative
action programs” (Green, 2019).
Approximately one year prior to
Bolsonaro’s election, eminent American
philosopher and gender theorist, Judith
Butler’s visit to the country was opposed
by protesters. A petition was circulated
via the conservative Spanish platform
Citizen Go by a collective including
the Catholic hierarchy, evangelical
protestants and pentecostalists,
conservative psychologists and the
Escola Sem Partido (School Without
[Political] Party) calling for the
cancellation of her trip. Butler, who has
become figured as the creator of gender
theory and ideology within anti-gender
campaigns was accused of threatening
“the natural order of gender, sexuality
and the family” (Sexuality Policy Watch,
2018).
Butler was aware of the opposition to
her visit, but was not dissuaded by
the petition. Inside Higher Education
reported that Butler commented via
email that the petition “called for
the cancellation of my lecture, and
assumed that I would be speaking
on gender since the allegation is that
I am the founder of 'the ideology of
gender.' That ideology, which is called
'diabolical' by these opponents, is
considered to be a threat to the family”
(Jaschik, 2017). A demonstration
took place outside of the venue of
the International Colloquium on the
Ends of Democracy, an event which
she had helped organize. During the
event's opening, protestors burned an
effigy of Butler, whose figure wore a
black witch's hat and pink bra, while
others carried Bibles and crosses, or
placards of her face with drawn on red
devil horns. Butler acknowledged the
far-reaching intentions and effects of
the anti-gender demonstration as part
of a larger campaign against SOGIE
rights and ultimately, democracy:
My sense is that the group who
engaged this frenzy of effigy
burning, stalking and harassment
want to defend 'Brazil' as a
place where LGBTQ people are
not welcome, where the family

39
A demonstrator attends a protest against Judith Butler in Sao Paulo, Brazil November 7, 2017.
Credit:Reuters, photo by Nacho Doce
remains heterosexual (so no gay
marriage), where abortion is illegal
and reproductive freedom does not
exist. They want boys to be boys,
and girls to be girls, and for there to
be no complexity in questions such
as these. The effort is antifeminist,
antitrans, homophobic and
nationalist, using social media
to stage and disseminate their
events. In this way, they resemble
the forms of neo-fascism that we
see emerging in different parts of
the world. Indeed, they reminded
us at the conference why we were
right to worry about the state of
democracy (Jaschik, 2017).
In addition to mobilizing against the
academic disciplines of philosophy,
sociology, and related fields, anti-gender
campaigning in Brazil has also worked
to remove and block the inclusion
of gender and sexuality diversity in
schools. The President’s attacks on
SOGIE rights and Gender Studies in the
classroom have been paralleled by an
increase in violent attacks on LGBTIQ+
people with reports indicating that the
death toll for the LGBTIQ+ population
in the country has more than tripled in
recent years (Telesur, 2019).

40
SOUTH AFRICA
The role that U.S. conservative
evangelical organizations
and activists have played
in promoting legislation criminalizing
homosexuality in many African countries
has been increasingly documented.
Most notorious, perhaps, is the direct
involvement of ultraconservative right-
wing American pastor, Scott Lively,
in designing the Ugandan ‘Kill the
Gays’ bill. Rev. Dr. Kapya Kaoma, a
Zambian researcher based at Political
Research Associates in Massachusetts
has written prolifically on the ways in
which U.S. Christian Right activists are
working to promote anti-gay and anti-
feminist agendas in Africa. Through his
research, Kaoma has shown the ways
in which pro-family organizations have
“formed relationships and partnerships
with mainstream U.S. evangelical
groups working in Africa and initiated
relationships with African religious
leaders, with offices in various African
countries” (Kaoma, 2012, p. 13). The
impact of these relationships is further
elaborated upon in his 2012 report,
Colonizing African Values: How the
U.S. CR is Transforming Sexual Politics
in Africa, in which he discusses
the forms of direct intervention and
‘mentorship’ of African religious and
political leaders by U.S. conservatives
who have facilitated the transplanting
of current U.S. culture war debates to
many African countries.
In contrast with other countries in
the region, South Africa has largely
been recognised for its progressive
constitutional protections for LGBTIQ+
people. Notably, the legalization of
same-sex marriage in 2006 made South
Africa the first country in Africa and
the fifth country in the world to adopt
such laws. Despite this legislation,
and in many ways because of it,
anti-gender campaigning has been
gaining momentum in the country over
the past decade. Following the adoption
of same-sex marriage legislation,
Cape Town based Pastor Errol Naidoo
traveled to the United States where
he was mentored by the conservative
pro-family think tank Family Research
Council, and later established a South
African based organization called the
Family Policy Institute. In an interview
with the Christian magazine Joy! in
2011, Naidoo openly discussed his
relationship with U.S. ‘pro-family’
organizations which have become
leading voices in the global anti-gender
movement. He explains, “the vision
for FPI was crystallized during my
internship with Family Research Council
in Washington DC” (Naidoo, 2011). After
this “six month training in the U.S., I
returned home in October 2007 and
established Family Policy Institute”.
Akin to his American counterparts,
Naidoo (2012) claims, “Birth rates are
plummeting throughout the world as
a result of a sustained global offensive
against the natural family by radical
feminist groups, homosexual activists
and other anti-family lobbyists”.
Further describing the characteristics
of what he calls a “global offensive” led
by gay and feminist activists, Naidoo
South Africa

41
Same-sex marriage in South Africa has been legal since 2006. This is Tshepo Modisane
and Thobajo be Sithole kissing at a traditional gay wedding in South Africa in 2013.
Credit:Shutterstock editorial, photo by Gallo Images/rex
SOUTH AFRICA
points to the challenges to gender roles
undertaken by these groups as the cause
of declining fertility rates worldwide.
He argues that “Plummeting birth rates
are a direct consequence of the war on
fatherhood, motherhood and children.
Radical feminists regard motherhood
and childbearing an imposition to the
progress of the emancipation of women”
(ibid). Naidoo has since become a
regular participant in World Congress
of Family gatherings and networked
into the U.S. pro-family movement.
A decade later, in 2017, the World
Congress of Families chose Cape Town
as the destination for its relaunching
under the new name International
Organization for the Family, under the
new directorship of Brian Brown. At
the event, the organization launched
the previously discussed Cape Town
Declaration, which states a commitment
to resisting “the ideological colonization
of the family” (World Congress of
Families, 2017). A number of policy
makers from African countries and
elsewhere endorsed the statement with
their signatures.
In 2019, the Stop Comprehensive Sex
Education project, initiative by the
Arizona-based organization Family
Watch International, led a campaign
against the incorporation of gender and
sexuality diversity and sex positivity
into the South African Life Orientation
curriculum (McEwen 2019). According
to an online letter that was circulated
in opposition of the new content,
“Highly controversial CSE programs…

42
SOUTH AFRICA
indoctrinated youth to embrace radical
sexual and gender ideologies, promote
sexual rights and abortion, and
encourage promiscuity, high-risk sexual
behaviours, and sexual pleasure, even
to the very youngest of children” (Stop
CSE n.d.). Identical letters were also
circulated in Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana
to engender opposition to the inclusion
of sex positivity, gender and sexuality
diversity in the national curricula of these
countries (ibid). Therefore, while the
local campaign had the appearance of
being a grassroots movement led by local
organizations, teachers and parents,
it had clear connections with U.S.
based organizations that are promoting
anti-gender ideologies worldwide.
In the context of South African higher
education, LGBTIQ+ and feminist
academics have not been under the
same kinds of attack by anti-gender
campaigns as they have in many
other parts of the world. However,
the movement has worked to support
the rights of conservative students
and teachers to express homophobic
opinions, claiming that such utterances
are protected by the democratic
freedoms of speech and religion. In
2015, Family Policy Institute along with
Freedom of Religion South Africa, a local
conservative organization with clear
ideological ties to U.S. conservatives,
came to the defence of Zizipho Pae, a
member of the Student Representative
Council (SRC) at the University of Cape
Town (UCT) who was widely criticised
for her comments about the legalisation
of same-sex marriage in the United
States. Following the legalisation of
same-sex marriage in the U.S., Pae
posted a status message on Facebook,
which said, “We are institutionalizing
and normalizing sin! Sin. May God have
mercy on us”. Pae’s comments raised
alarm amongst LGBTIQ+ students
that her statement contributed to the
normalization of homophobia on campus
and in the society more broadly. The
UCT student group Queer Revolution
issued a statement saying, “We fear
that [Pae’s] status may cause further
violence towards the queer community”,
demanding that UCT and the SRC “take
immediate action to remove Ms Pae from
her position of influence as a student
leader” (DeBarros, 2015). Students from
LGBTIQ+ groups on campus also took
action by removing Bible scriptures that
she had on her SRC office door (RDM
News wire, 2015). After Pae refused to
retract her statement, an organization
called Freedom of Religion South Africa
circulated an online petition to gain
support for the student’s right to express
her religious beliefs and also sponsored
her with an attorney to threaten to
press charges. Family Policy Institute
president Errol Naidoo also featured Pae
on his television show, Watchmen on
the Wall to defend her anti-gay views.
While Pae was not removed from the
SRC, the controversy became currency
for conservative groups in the country
to portray themselves as under attack
by progressives promoting SOGIE
rights. According to Matthew Clayton,
from the Cape Town based LGBTIQ+
group Triangle Project, “conservative
religious and political groups are using
the situation to drive a narrative of
persecution of South African people of
faith” (DeBarros, 2015).

43
5 In 2018, for instance, a teacher at a private school in Zimbabwe was forced to resign after
he received death threats and pressure from parents after he came out as gay.
SOUTH AFRICA
Unlike the situation in neighbouring
countries in the region, such as
Zimbabwe where LGBTIQ+ teachers
and learners face intimidation and
exclusion for being open about their
sexualities,5 educators and students
in South Africa have Constitutional
protections. Yet, as Anthony Manion
(former director of the GALA
Queer Archives) commented, these
protections do not translate into
substantive forms of inclusion for
LGBTIQ+ people. Manion said:
In South Africa, we’ve led the
world in reforms around sexual
orientation, and when you look at
education, you see that the basic
rights are there in the policies. But
despite these protections, schools
continue to be unsafe spaces for
LGBT learners, who are victimised,
harassed and bullied. We know
from anecdotal reports that these
students are dropping out in high
numbers, and that there are high
levels of homelessness, drug and
alcohol abuse (Davis, 2015).
In her book, Under Pressure: The
Regulation of Sexualities in South
African Secondary Schools, South
African professor Deevia Bhana (2014)
reports that learners who are not
heterosexual experience high levels of
bullying and harassment. While overt
discrimination against gay learners
might be officially discouraged, her
research demonstrates that a culture
of “compulsory heterosexuality”
prevails in schools, institutionalized
through traditions and contemporary
cultures that continue to privilege
heterosexuality and normative notions
of ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’.
While there have been few quantitative
studies on the experiences of LGBTIQ+
students in schools and universities,
a 2016 national report by OUT LGBT
Well-Being documented a disturbing
scale of the abuse in the South African
basic and tertiary education system
(OUT LGBT Well-Being, 2016). More
than half (56%) of people between
the ages of 16 to 24 years of age said
they had experienced discrimination
based on their gender identity or
sexual orientation at school (ibid).
For roughly one third of students
who participated in the study, verbal
threats escalated into violence and/
or damage of property. Gay and
transgender students reported the
highest levels of physical abuse and
sexual violence (ibid). Experiences of
harassment and violence on the basis
of sexuality have caused a number of
LGBTIQ+ learners to drop out of school
and attempt self-harm and suicide.
Research by Transgender and Intersex
Africa showed that 32% of LGBTI
pupils do not have a matric certificate
because they face “deeply entrenched
homophobia and transphobia” (Kings,
2014), and a study by the GALA Queer
Archives found that 20% of LGBTIQ+
teenagers had attempted suicide and
a third had thought about taking their
lives (Bloch & Martin, 2016).

44
Concluding Remarks
Anti-gender efforts to overturn the
current equal rights framework
through their countermovement
against SOGIE and women’s rights must be
taken seriously by academics and civil society.
In reworking the concept of ‘gender’ to create
the appearance that “gender ideology” is a new
form of colonization, anti-gender activists also
erase real forms of abuse that occurred as a result
of colonialism. This ideological strategy is one
indication that the scope of anti-gender activism
is not limited to SOGIE and women’s rights, but
rather that they are interconnected with issues
of the economy, immigration, the environment,
indigenous rights, land rights, and militarization
that also shape national and geo-political power
relations. As right-wing interests come together
through anti-gender campaigning, they are
consolidating a political base that is eager to
thwart the equal rights of other historically
oppressed minority groups on the basis of
their race, nationality, ethnicity, religion, class,
disability, and age.
As this report has revealed, anti-gender efforts
to erode SOGIE rights has strategically targeted
queer and feminist knowledge production while
simultaneously working to produce conservative
knowledge that attempts to repair and restore
male and heterosexual privilege and superiority.
Feminist and LGBTIQ+ scholars have faced
censorship, harassment, and exclusion from their
institutions as a result of these developments.
In Gender Studies and other fields shaped by
critical social theory, scholars are not only attacked
for the knowledge they produce, but for the
questions they ask (Quinn, 2019). In attempting to
stop scholars from asking questions about sex and
gender power relations, anti-gender activists are
working to regain patriarchal authority to define
what constitutes “legitimate” questions and
questioning about society, ultimately shrinking
the space of academic knowledge production
and reversing the advancements made by critical
social theory.
Scholars currently writing on academic freedom
have emphasized that asking critical questions
is a key purpose of academic work, particularly
in its role of pushing knowledge forward. As
Patrick Blessinger (Chief research scientist for
the International Higher Education Teaching and
Learning Association) and Hans de Wit (director
of the Center for International Higher Education
at Boston College, USA) write, “since higher
education is, by definition, an environment where
new knowledge is produced and consumed, it
follows that the freedom to engage in intellectual
inquiry is essential to the purpose of higher
education, to the mission of higher education
institutions and to the professional duties of those
individuals involved in teaching, learning and
research processes” (Blessinger & de Wit, 2018).
Without academic freedom, therefore, critical
thinking cannot be cultivated, and higher learning
cannot be nurtured. Thus, academic freedom has
been an integral part of higher education since its
inception (ibid).
Challenges waged by populist movements against
“gender theory” and Gender Studies scholars
have been personal, political and professional,
challenging the academic freedom of scholars
who advance SOGIE rights through their research
and teaching. These attacks therefore call into
question not only the role of individual scholars,
but the role of the university itself within the
broader society. Globalization, social movements
and democratization, economic liberalization in
the form of competition and choice, the growth
of national and international regulatory systems
and government interest in higher education as a

45
CONCLUDING REMARKS
means of advancing economic development have
all deconstructed notions of the isolated ivory
tower model of higher education (Brennan, King
& Lebeau, 2004). Critical Theory has also played
an integral role in revealing the porous boundaries
not only between disciplines, but between the
university and the society, widening the scope
for socially engaged research and teaching.
Moreover, as historically excluded groups
(women, people of color and indigenous groups,
LGBTIQ+ people, people with disabilities) have
entered universities, they have levelled important
critiques of the racism, hetero/sexism, ableism,
and classism of higher education institutions
and the oppressive forms of knowledge produced
in these elite ‘ivory towers’. Conservative
challenges to policy-oriented and socially-engaged
scholarship emerging from Gender Studies and
related fields illustrates their wider objections to
the changing role of universities as they become
more socially engaged and relevant as well as
“cosmopolitan”, contributing not only sufficient
numbers of professionals for the economy, but
also having broader social relevance and impact
(de la Rey, 2015).These broader transformations
within higher education bring about the need
for academic freedom policies to be revisited and
revamped so that they are on par with expanding
notions of academic research and its relationship
to the broader society.
Currently, many academic freedom policies
around the world focus largely on the physical
space where ideas were articulated, their content,
and/or audience, while relatively little attention is
paid to the extent to which the work or statement
adheres to the ethical and professional standards
of the discipline (Quinn, 2019). In light of this
shortcoming, Robert Quinn (Executive Director
of the Scholars at Risk programme) proposes that
a shift in focus towards the methods of inquiry
and the discourses that certain knowledge
advance, as well as their regard for professional
and social responsibility, would enable Academic
Freedom policies to address emerging challenges
faced by academics. Such policies, he argues,
would not place as much emphasis on where or
how ideas were communicated, but their social
impact. This view would therefore be more in
tune with the role of modern universities, as well
as related rights such as freedom of expression,
and the right to education that arose out of the
human rights movement as articulated in the
1994 UNESCO Statement on the Status of Higher
Education Teaching Personnel, and others such as
the Magna Carta Universitatum (1986), the Lima
Declaration on Academic Freedom and Autonomy
of Institutions of Higher Education (1988), and the
Kampala Declaration on Intellectual Freedom and
Social Responsibility (1990) (ibid).
In addition to having implications for academic
freedom, anti-gender campaigns to discredit
Gender Studies and related fields have implications
for the ability of LGBTIQ+ people to access
education and to pursue intellectual projects that
are relevant to our lives. These campaigns create
unsafe and toxic environments for LGBTIQ+
teachers and learners where being “out” could
be threatening to one’s life and one’s career.
Advocacy around infrastructure and systems
that are inclusive for non-binary and transgender
individuals is also threatened by campaigns that
are working to discredit so-called “gender theory”.
Much remains to be said about the anti-gender
movement and the global and local dimensions of
its efforts to undermine Gender Studies and SOGIE
and women’s rights. Scholarship on the topic is
burgeoning with rich and insightful analyses of
anti-gender ideology, discourse, policy imperatives,
and implications for LGBTIQ+ people, a great deal
of which, regrettably, could not be included in this
report but which readers are encouraged to seek
out. Moreover, anti-gender activism is underway in
many countries, not all of which could be discussed
in depth here. Developments in these places and
others are occurring daily, making the study of the
anti-gender movement akin to taking a photograph
of a moving object. Stories of LGBTIQ+ activists

46
CONCLUDING REMARKS
being arrested and killed and anti-gay crackdowns
happening around the world can regularly be
found in media. At the time of finishing this report,
a city in Indonesia announced a “crackdown”
on LGBTIQ+ people, threatening police raids of
places like shopping malls, boarding houses and
private residences in search of LGBTIQ+ people
who would be offered “religious counselling” in
order to curb homosexual “contagion” (Souisa &
Walsh, 2020).
Recommendations
The specific issue of academic freedom
requires further attention in research
into anti-gender movements around
the world. As this report has attempted to show,
the struggle over knowledge and authority of
‘gender’, ‘sexuality’, and ‘family’ is foundational
to the heteropatriarchal relations of power that
anti-gender discourse, ideology and strategy are
working to promote: male privilege, power and
control over women’s bodies. Furthermore, it is
important to investigate anti-gender knowledge
production and the kinds of social imaginaries that
the movement is working to foster. As this report
has demonstrated, anti-gender attacks on SOGIE
rights and academic freedom are becoming more
prevalent globally, with far reaching effects and
implications.
Through a focus on the case examples of
anti-gender movements in Poland, Hungary,
Brazil, and South Africa, it becomes clear that
while there are notable differences between
anti-gender campaigns in different parts of the
world, the similarities between them are of great
significance in understanding the ideology and
underlying interests of the movement. Especially
with regards to their attacks on academic freedom,
the similarities between anti-gender movements
taking shape globally are perhaps more remarkable
than their variations. Beyond their shared
language and concepts, there are key discursive
threads and strategies that connect anti-gender
opposition to Gender Studies and Comprehensive
Sex Education.
For academics and activists, it is important to
take note of anti-gender strategy, discourse, and
ideology in order to make sense of, and counter,
anti-gender efforts to erode SOGIE rights and
academic freedom. In conclusion, I provide some
recommendations to connect the findings from the
research informing this report to SOGIE advocacy
work within and beyond the academy:
1. Academic freedom policies need to be
updated to reflect the contemporary role of
the university within civil society, and should
consider including protection for academics
who pursue intellectual projects that address
oppressive social dynamics.
2. Further research and investigation into
the anti-gender movement is needed, as
well research into the argument that the
gender binary and nuclear family relates to
colonial ideology. This requires networks
for scholars to meet and share insights that
can promote the advancement of theory
and policy addressing anti-gender ideology
and campaigns. Such research can provide
information helpful to progressive policy
makers who are encountering anti-gender
advocacy in their contexts.
3. SOGIE activists, organizations and other
civil society groups need to be made aware of
anti-gender political discourse and strategy.

47
Greater awareness of the anti-gender
movement will push forward the development
of new strategies amongst LGBTIQ+
communities about the most effective ways of
responding to attacks on SOGIE rights.
4. Scholars and civil society organizations
should collaborate on campaigns to raise
public awareness of the implications of
anti-gender activism, not only for LGBTIQ+
communities, but for equal rights of women,
racial and ethnic minorities, civil society,
indigenous groups, and migrants.
5. Conversations about the ways in which
academic freedom cannot be taken for granted
need to be reinvigorated, and the higher
education sector needs to take action against
breaches to academic freedom. This could be
achieved through dialogues, campaigns and
through measures to protect scholars and
students who face threats and restrictions to
their work.
6. In order for higher education institutions
to fulfill their potential of contributing to
societal change, they should work actively
against discrimination on the basis of SOGIE
at their own institution. This should also
be reflected in their expectations to higher
education institutions they cooperate with.
The findings presented in this report indicate
an overwhelming need for interventions that are
both epistemic and political to address the need
to foster already expanding social imaginaries of
gender and sexuality diversity in order to achieve
substantive SOGIE rights.
RECOMMENDATIONS

48
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