Anti-gender campaigns in Europe: Mobilizing against equality

Anti-gender campaigns in Europe: Mobilizing against equality, edited by Roman Kuhar and David Patternote, consists of various subchapters with a common theme – the analysis of anti-gender movements that are appearing and consolidating across Europe. According to the authors, the movements’ common background is an opposition to the so called ‘gender ideology’ or ‘gender theory’. In these anti-gender movements and campaigns, ‘gender ideology’ is perceived as an ideology that aims to destabilize and even destroy social values that are seen as cornerstones of Western civilization, namely, the notion of ‘biological sex’, heterosexuality, family, and freedom. To formulate it differently, ‘gender ideology’ is perceived to be socially dangerous because of the effect sexual and reproductive rights, women’s rights, and LGBTIQ+ rights have on the taken-for-granted and privileged status of heterosexuality and of a specific family form, that is, family with a ‘male’ and ‘female’ parent (‘heterosexual family’). Namely, with feminist and LGBTIQ+ movements (where LGBTIQ+ stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer people) and their accomplishments throughout history, heteronormativity cannot simply be taken for granted anymore; moreover, it is destabilized to such a degree that its explicit and direct defence is made necessary: its common sense status needs to be rebuilt and stabilized by ‘unmasking’ what ‘gender ideology’ supposedly stands for and by revealing its ‘threatening’ consequences.