Christiane Taubira when she was French Justice Minister in 2013. Bernard-Salinier/ Press Association. All rights reserved.The rise, over the last two decades, of the neo-nationalist,
populist right is now a well-established fact across the political landscape.
But the precise permutations taken and modes of organisation and affiliations
on specific issues such as anti-LGBTQ rights, which many of these groups have pursued,
is often less well-known. Two recent books, one by Bruno Perreau titled Queer Theory: The French Response (2016
Stanford) and the other edited by David Paternotte and Roman Kuhar titled Anti-Gender Campaigns in Europe, (Rowman and Littlefield 2017) make significant
inroads in filling this gap, each of them focusing on Europe, and in particular
on questions of sexuality and gender.
‘Natural order’
It transpires that campaigns against civil unions, same-sex
marriage and full parenting rights to LGBTQ people were initiated largely from
within the Roman Catholic church dating back to the late 1990s. There is a good
deal of traffic between lay conservative Catholic campaigners, members of Opus
Dei, as well as clerics, who acted as intermediaries bringing to the attention
of Vatican scholars, developments from feminism and subsequently queer theory,
each of which are perceived as threats to the family and the ‘natural order’.
Over the space of a few years feminism and queer theory has come
to be subsumed by the term ‘gender theory’ which is then demonised as a ‘totalitarian’
force, for its attempts to undermine the differences between men and women and
the sanctity of ‘holy matrimony’ as the only rightful institution for the
bringing up of children.
This invocation of the spectre of Stalinism is clearly a
deliberate ploy to instil fear of the return of communism. Paradoxically, ‘gender
ideology’ is seen as both American in its endorsement of communities of
difference, and state-authoritarian (suggestive of East European socialism) in
its attempts to impose a whole new coercive social order. This activity is most
pronounced in France, as Perreau demonstrates. Here it finds fertile ground
among right wing thinkers and writers, but also from some on the left. Well-known
feminist writers like Sylviane Agacinski (married to the former Prime Minister
Lionel Jospin) join this chorus of denunciation, characterising gender theory
as something ‘monstrous’ emanating from American universities and threatening
the very fabric of French society.
Lionel Jospin and Sylviane Agacinski on holiday in 2001. ABACA/ Press Association. All rights reserved. The attacks on the French Marriage for All Bill of 2013 presented by the then Minister of
Justice Christiane Taubira, came first from Catholic campaigners including
clergy and intellectuals and writers, but soon spread to various far right
groups.
This culminated in the shockingly racist attacks by Manif Pour Tous on Christiane Taubira, a
woman of French Guianaian origin, with posters depicting her ‘as a half-human
half-Godzilla figure, a monstrous emblem of the destruction of the French
family’ (Perreau p 60).
Still, it is the machinations of the Holy See that underscore
these activities. Various lay activists, writing in their Catholic blogs, claimed
to have the ear of the Holy Father and especially that of the theologian and
philosopher Joseph Ratzinger both before and after he became Pope Benedict XVI.
Perreau traces the pathways of such figures as they provide their own take on
queer theory, as the American Opus Dei member and writer Dale O’Leary who
lampoons it in her book The Gender Agenda.
Advocating gender identity, according to O’Leary is comparable to choosing
one’s daily wardrobe and make up, a maliciously profound mis-reading of
Butler’s influential Gender Trouble
of 1990. Perreau says that these tracts by O’Leary and others were purportedly made
available to the Pope, who, along with his Cura, in turn produced a number of philosophical
responses, all published and widely distributed.
The Vatican, from Pope Benedict XVI to the current Pope Francis
goes to great lengths to hold at bay this idea of gender equality which they
see as sweeping Europe and well beyond, undermining ideas of ‘human ecology’
which have preserved the anthropological nuclear family over the centuries. If
feminism, from the late 1960s onwards, disturbs this idyll of happy family life
by supporting divorce, birth control and rights to abortion, these more recent activities
culminate, as the Cura sees it, in LGBTQ people assuming equal rights to those
of the heterosexual majority, and in the dissolution of sexual difference.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger elected as new Pope in 2005. Zabulon Laurent/ Press Association. All rights reserved. Perreau traces activities which connect upper middle-class Opus
Dei Catholics with members of the Front Nationale and various other far right
organisations including the fascistic Bloc
Identitaire. At the heart of these mobilisations is Manif Pour Tous which borrows a good deal of its tactics from the
left, including street demonstrations with silent marches and street pray-ins. These
groups are constantly monitoring changes in French life, for example, lessons
on gender equality in the school system which they see as eating away at the
fabric of French life, in much the same way as they blame feminism for destroying
romance.
A class dimension
Bruno Perreau has done a remarkable job in order to make the
case that the nation itself was perceived as under threat by LGBTQ activists. He
alludes to the fact that single women in France are not permitted access to
IVF, thus showing the entire field of sexuality to be indisputably the
prerogative of the heterosexual nuclear family.
He also argues that a great deal of effort was made within
these political circles in France, from the mainstream to the margins, to ensure
that granting LGBTQ rights of marriage did not fundamentally disturb the
seemingly harmonious and God-given union of family and nation state. Even the
majority of feminists and supporters of the Socialist Party in France seem to
have fallen into line with this deeply conservative stance.
It goes without saying that the hundreds of thousands of
people in France, especially of immigrant background, whose family lives for
various reasons diverge from this pathway must then be envisaged as failed, and
stigmatised as such.
Likewise women without a partner and hoping nevertheless to
be able to become a mother are forced to look outside France for IVF. They too
must experience condemnation and condescension as single mothers.
Inevitably there is a class as well as a racial dimension,
since poverty and unemployment often make the nuclear family an unfulfillable
reality for so many. Overall Perreau shows how antiquated fears of a gay
conspiracy combined with fascination for this still ‘deviant’ sexuality, linger
deep within the psyche of the white French political classes. And where the RC
church heartlessly still disapproves of adoption for the reason that it
‘condones adulterous behaviour’ we can see why Perreau and the activist groups
such as Les Tordues who in the
context of these neo-nationalist upsurges have struggled for the full range of
LGBTQ rights, feel the urgent need for a community of belonging.
French and German
common-sense
In Anti-Genderism
Campaigns in Europe, Paula-Irene Villa provides the most succinct account
of what is now frequently referred to in Germany as anti-genderismus. This has a different lineage, and is less orchestrated
by the Catholic church. Instead it
emerges more directly from the mainstream as well as the populist right, but
also from within the ranks of academia, and finds ample grounds across the
German media, from quality press such as Die
Zeit to feminist magazines such as Emma.
This campaign works by appealing to the common-sense of the nation against what
is claimed to be the extremes of ‘gender ideology’.
What Paula-Irene Villa understands as ‘post-essentialist’ definitions
of gender as ‘not determined by nature’ but rather by ‘complex socially
instituted’ differences, has led to both outrage and ridicule, and within the
university system to claims that gender research is not scientific.
Although well-known German feminists such as the journalist
Alice Schwarzer, founding editor and owner of Emma magazine, have controversially joined this anti-genderismus chorus, there is at the same time a deep
connection between anti-feminism and the anti-LGBTQ campaigns.
TV host with guests including Alice Schwarz, second left, on TV talk show on the topic 'Sexual variety: Man, woman, whatever?', April, 2015. Horst Galuschka/ Press Association. All rights reserved.The informal and deeply conservative settlement reached in
what was then west-Germany from the late 70s in response to feminist demands
for equal access to labour markets, was to make a full professional working
life more or less antipathetic to having children. Lack of quality child care
and the school day finishing at 13.30 required costly and elaborate
arrangements, again a clear disincentive to women to the point that being a
feminist and /or lesbian meant in effect not being a mother.
Post re-unification the right and its allies in the press and
on TV easily invoke the spectre of ‘forced labour’ and of the GDR working women
into the ground, in order to promote the ideal of the stay-at-home mother (as
does incidentally the well-known Marxist sociologist Wolfgang Streeck).
Honest speaking out
There are various other voices who join this cacophony of
outrage including for example many with grievances against the feminist left
such as the journalist Bettina Rohl, daughter of Ulrike Meinhof. Rohl’s right
wing stance leads her to blame the EU as over-interventionist especially in
regard to its ‘gender mainstreaming’ policies.
Villa reports how after decades of feminism still the image
of the working mother is routinely disapproved of. ‘For many Germans, working
mothers do not therefore embody an appropriate social model’. This kind of
public discourse finds wide readerships and audiences by affecting a simultaneously
heroic and purportedly honest stance, one that suggests the author is daring to
speak out, (echoing Trump when he declares that he tweets what others think but
dare not say).
Across many other member states, the EU is blamed for
endorsing this ‘gender agenda’ to the detriment of traditional family life. Indeed
the proclaimed support of the EU for gender equality is seen as one element in
a wider programme of colonization whereby what was once Marxism is now replaced
by gender politics.
This again reflects increasingly evangelical Vatican fears
about losing its grip amongst Catholics across the world, especially the young.
In Italy it is reported that parents are encouraged to phone an anti-gender
helpline to report ‘indoctrination’ of their children at school, in what is
seen as an ‘anthropological emergency’ even by leading figures from the left.
European sexual
politics
Above all, these volumes speak to the dangerous convergences
of interests from the RC church, the far right, the neo-fascistic right, to the
mainstream parties of the right, while also finding some traction within the
left and within strains of liberal feminism.
They converge on a specific vocabulary which envisages new feminisms
and LGBTQ politics as embodying a profound threat to national culture and to social
reproduction. If such alliances and cross-fertilisations have not found the exact
same opportunities in the UK, for example, this should neither blind us to the
distinctive contours which anti-feminist hostility and anti-LGBTQ opposition
take, nor should it permit any basking in some badly-needed respite of temporary
solace. (I am not immune to grasping onto shards of hope. The need for
fantasies of ‘progress’ is sometimes irresistible.)
The UK government is less vindictive in the policy
environment it has put in place for transmen and women, especially youngsters. A
historically more progressive youth and pop culture contribute to a ‘common
culture’ which in turn has a more socially mixed audience and readership than
in many other parts of Europe.
But against this many have pointed out that after the Brexit
vote was reported, hate crimes against non-white people, against white east
Europeans, and against LGBTQ people rose remarkably. This is undeniably the
case. Perhaps one lesson also emerging from these discussions is the added effort
needed on the part of British ‘remainers’ to find ways of maintaining full
participation in European sexual politics.