Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-kw2vx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-22T06:51:36.792Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Gender Ideology, the Far Right, and LGBTQ Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2025

Zein Murib*
Affiliation:
Fordham University, USA.

Abstract

“Gender ideology” rhetoric has diffused globally. Mobilized by a coalition of conservative actors, this discursive innovation helps to fuel the election of far-right politicians who scapegoat LGBTQ people, migrants, racial and ethnic minorities, and women as responsible for economic downturns as well as social and political disorder. This essay outlines the history and current landscape of gender ideology for political scientists and situates it in relation to the rise of far-right and authoritarian regimes globally. It builds on these political trends by concluding with a research agenda for scholars of LGBTQ politics to consider moving forward.

Type
Article
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Alexander, M. Jacki. 1994. “Not Just (Any) Body Can Be a Citizen: The Politics of Law, Sexuality and Postcoloniality in Trinidad and Tobago and the Bahamas.” Feminist Review, 48, 523.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ayoub, Phillip M., and Stoeckl, Kristina. 2024. “The Double-Helix Entanglements of Transnational Advocacy: Moral Conservative Resistance to LGBTI Rights.” Review of International Studies 50 (2): 289311.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beard, L. 2023. If We Were Kin: Race, Identification, and Intimate Political Appeals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, Wendy. 2002. “Suffering the Paradoxes of Rights.” In Left Legalism/Left Critique, ed. Brown, Wendy and Halley, Janet, 420–34. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Butler, Judith. 2024. Who’s Afraid of Gender? New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.Google Scholar
Cohen, Cathy J. 1997. “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics?GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 3 (4): 437–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Corredor, Elizabeth S. 2019. “Unpacking ‘Gender Ideology’ and the Global Right’s Antigender Countermovement.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 44 (3): 613–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Currah, Paisley. 2008. “Expecting Bodies: The Pregnant Man and Transgender Exclusion from the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.” WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly 36 (3–4): 330–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Daum, Courtenay W. 2020. The Politics of Right Sex: Transgressive Bodies, Governmentality, and the Limits of Trans Rights. Albany: State University of New York Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edenborg, Emil. 2022. “Putin’s Anti-Gay War on Ukraine.” Boston Review, March 14, 2022. https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/putins-anti-gay-war-on-ukraine/.Google Scholar
Elster, Mikey. 2022. “Insidious Concern.” TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly 9 (3): 407–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friedersdorf, Conor. 2017. “How Breitbart News Destroyed Andrew Breitbart’s Legacy.” The Atlantic (blog), November 14, 2017. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/11/how-breitbart-destroyed-andrew-breitbarts-legacy/545807/.Google Scholar
Gash, Alison L. 2015. Below the Radar: How Silence Can Save Civil Rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gash, Alison, Tichenor, Daniel, Chavez, Angelita, and Musselman, Malori. 2020. “Framing Kids: Children, Immigration Reform, and Same-Sex Marriage.” Politics, Groups, and Identities 8 (1): 4470.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hancock, Ange-Marie. 2004. The Politics of Disgust: The Public Identity of the Welfare Queen. New York University Press.Google Scholar
Heinemann, Isabel, and Stern, Alexandra Minna. 2022. “Gender and Far-Right Nationalism: Historical and International Dimensions. Introduction.” Journal of Modern European History 20 (3): 311–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herrero-Diz, Paula, Varona-Aramburu, David, and Pérez-Escolar, Marta. 2024. “Debunking News as a Journalistic Genre: From the Inverted Pyramid to a Circular Writing Model.” International Journal of Communication 18:1634–56.Google Scholar
Hummel, Calla, and Velasco-Guachalla, V. Ximena. 2024. “Activists, Parties, and the Expansion of Trans Rights in Bolivia.” Comparative Politics 56 (3): 321–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Todd M. 2020. “Catholicism Worldwide.” Gordon Conwell [blog], April 15, 2020. https://www.gordonconwell.edu/blog/catholicism-worldwide/.Google Scholar
Kamenou, Nayia. 2024. “Queering the Ballot: The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans* and Queer Vote in Troubled Times and Contexts.” European Journal of Politics and Gender, July, 129. https://doi.org/10.1332/25151088Y2024D000000038.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kammerer, Edward F., and Michelson, Melissa R.. 2022. “You Better Vote: Drag Performers and Voter Mobilization in the 2020 Election.” PS: Political Science & Politics 55 (4): 655–60.Google Scholar
Kuhar, Roman, and Paternotte, David. 2017. Anti-Gender Campaigns in Europe: Mobilizing Against Equality. London: Rowman & Littlefield International.Google Scholar
Carbone, Lage, Junqueira, Beatriz. 2024. “An Unlikely Coalition to Defend the Nation and Banish ‘Gender Ideology’ from Brazilian Schools.” Journal of Lesbian Studies 28 (3): 400–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leach, Brittany R. 2022. “At the Borders of the Body Politic: Fetal Citizens, Pregnant Migrants, and Reproductive Injustices in Immigration Detention.” American Political Science Review 116 (1): 116–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mansbridge, Jane, and Shames, Shauna L.. 2008. “Toward a Theory of Backlash: Dynamic Resistance and the Central Role of Power.” Politics & Gender 4 (4): 623–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mayer, Stefanie, and Sauer, Birgit. 2017. “‘Gender Ideology’ in Austria: Coalitions around an Empty Signfier.” Chap. 2 in Anti-Gender Campaigns in Europe: Mobilizing against Equality, ed. Kuhar, Roman and Paternotte, David. London: Rowman & Littlefield International.Google Scholar
Miller-Idriss, Cynthia. 2022. Hate in the Homeland: The New Global Far Right. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Minter, Shannon Price. 2017. “Déjà Vu All Over Again: The Recourse to Biology by Opponents of Transgender Equality.” North Carolina Law Review 95:11611204.Google Scholar
Moreau, Julie, Nuño-Pérez, Stephen, and Sanchez, Lisa M.. 2019. “Intersectionality, Linked Fate, and LGBTQ Latinx Political Participation.” Political Research Quarterly 72 (4): 976–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mudde, Cas. 2019. The Far Right Today. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Murib, Zein. 2020. “Backlash, Intersectionality, and Trumpism.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 45 (2): 295302.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murib, Zein. 2022. “Don’t Read the Comments: Examining Social Media Discourse on Trans Athletes.” Laws 11 (4): article 53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murib, Zein. 2023. Terms of Exclusion: Rightful Citizenship Claims and the Construction of LGBT Political Identity. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pierceson, Jason. 2022. Before Bostock: The Accidental Precedent of Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rondón, Emmanuel Alejandro. 2023. “A Historic Defeat of the Left: What the Triumph of Libertarian Javier Milei Means for Argentina and the Region.” VOZ, November 20, 2023. https://voz.us/en/politics/231120/7317/a-historic-defeat-of-the-left-what-the-triumph-of-libertarian-javier-milei-means-for-argentina-and-the-region.html.Google Scholar
Schotten, C. Heike. 2022. “TERFism, Zionism, and Right-Wing Annihilationism.” TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly 9 (3): 334–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sharma, Mukul. 2023. “Hindu Nationalism and Right-Wing Ecology: RSS, Modi and Motherland Post-2014.” Studies in Indian Politics 11 (1): 102–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strolovitch, Dara Z. 2023. When Bad Things Happen to Privileged People: Race, Gender, and What Makes a Crisis in America . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2023. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/W/bo49761313.html.Google Scholar
Theoharis, Rev Dr Liz, and Shailly, Gupta Barnes. 2024. “Project 2025 Is Coming for Your Rights.” The Nation, August 8, 2024. https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/project-2025-is-coming-for-your-rights/.Google Scholar
Thomas, Jerry. 2017. “Queer Sensibilities: Notes on Method.” Politics, Groups, and Identities 5 (1): 172–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Townsend-Bell, Erica. 2020. “Backlash as the Moment of Revelation.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 45 (2): 287–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar