{"id":1111,"date":"2019-03-27T03:41:29","date_gmt":"2019-03-27T03:41:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sportsnewsforyou.com\/?p=1111"},"modified":"2019-03-27T03:41:29","modified_gmt":"2019-03-27T03:41:29","slug":"anti-feminism-and-anti-gender-far-right-politics-in-europe-and-beyond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/?p=1111","title":{"rendered":"Anti-feminism and anti-gender far right politics in Europe and beyond"},"content":{"rendered":"

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,
\npopulist right is now a well-established fact across the political landscape.
\nBut the precise permutations taken and modes of organisation and affiliations
\non specific issues such as anti-LGBTQ rights, which many of these groups have pursued,
\nis often less well-known. Two recent books, one by Bruno Perreau titled Queer Theory: The French Response (2016
\nStanford) and the other edited by David Paternotte and Roman Kuhar titled Anti-Gender Campaigns in Europe, (Rowman and Littlefield 2017) make significant
\ninroads in filling this gap, each of them focusing on Europe, and in particular
\non questions of sexuality and gender. <\/i><\/p>\n

\u2018Natural order\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n

It transpires that campaigns against civil unions, same-sex
\nmarriage and full parenting rights to LGBTQ people were initiated largely from
\nwithin the Roman Catholic church dating back to the late 1990s. There is a good
\ndeal of traffic between lay conservative Catholic campaigners, members of Opus
\nDei, as well as clerics, who acted as intermediaries bringing to the attention
\nof Vatican scholars, developments from feminism and subsequently queer theory,
\neach of which are perceived as threats to the family and the \u2018natural order\u2019. <\/p>\n

Over the space of a few years feminism and queer theory has come
\nto be subsumed by the term \u2018gender theory\u2019 which is then demonised as a \u2018totalitarian\u2019
\nforce, for its attempts to undermine the differences between men and women and
\nthe sanctity of \u2018holy matrimony\u2019 as the only rightful institution for the
\nbringing up of children. <\/p>\n

This invocation of the spectre of Stalinism is clearly a
\ndeliberate ploy to instil fear of the return of communism. Paradoxically, \u2018gender
\nideology\u2019 is seen as both American in its endorsement of communities of
\ndifference, and state-authoritarian (suggestive of East European socialism) in
\nits attempts to impose a whole new coercive social order. This activity is most
\npronounced in France, as Perreau demonstrates. Here it finds fertile ground
\namong right wing thinkers and writers, but also from some on the left. Well-known
\nfeminist writers like Sylviane Agacinski (married to the former Prime Minister
\nLionel Jospin) join this chorus of denunciation, characterising gender theory
\nas something \u2018monstrous\u2019 emanating from American universities and threatening
\nthe very fabric of French society. <\/p>\n

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
\nJustice Christiane Taubira, came first from Catholic campaigners including
\nclergy and intellectuals and writers, but soon spread to various far right
\ngroups. <\/p>\n

<\/i><\/p>\n

This culminated in the shockingly racist attacks by Manif Pour Tous<\/em> on Christiane Taubira, a
\nwoman of French Guianaian origin, with posters depicting her \u2018as a half-human
\nhalf-Godzilla figure, a monstrous emblem of the destruction of the French
\nfamily\u2019 (Perreau p 60). <\/p>\n

Still, it is the machinations of the Holy See that underscore
\nthese activities. Various lay activists, writing in their Catholic blogs, claimed
\nto have the ear of the Holy Father and especially that of the theologian and
\nphilosopher Joseph Ratzinger both before and after he became Pope Benedict XVI.
\nPerreau traces the pathways of such figures as they provide their own take on
\nqueer theory, as the American Opus Dei member and writer Dale O\u2019Leary who
\nlampoons it in her book The Gender Agenda.<\/em>
\nAdvocating gender identity, according to O\u2019Leary is comparable to choosing
\none\u2019s daily wardrobe and make up, a maliciously profound mis-reading of
\nButler\u2019s influential Gender Trouble<\/em>
\nof 1990. Perreau says that these tracts by O\u2019Leary and others were purportedly made
\navailable to the Pope, who, along with his Cura, in turn produced a number of philosophical
\nresponses, all published and widely distributed. <\/p>\n

The Vatican, from Pope Benedict XVI to the current Pope Francis
\ngoes to great lengths to hold at bay this idea of gender equality which they
\nsee as sweeping Europe and well beyond, undermining ideas of \u2018human ecology\u2019
\nwhich have preserved the anthropological nuclear family over the centuries. If
\nfeminism, from the late 1960s onwards, disturbs this idyll of happy family life
\nby supporting divorce, birth control and rights to abortion, these more recent activities
\nculminate, as the Cura sees it, in LGBTQ people assuming equal rights to those
\nof the heterosexual majority, and in the dissolution of sexual difference. <\/p>\n

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
\nDei Catholics with members of the Front Nationale and various other far right
\norganisations including the fascistic Bloc
\nIdentitaire. At the heart of these mobilisations is Manif Pour Tous which borrows a good deal of its tactics from the
\nleft, including street demonstrations with silent marches and street pray-ins. These
\ngroups are constantly monitoring changes in French life, for example, lessons
\non gender equality in the school system which they see as eating away at the
\nfabric of French life, in much the same way as they blame feminism for destroying
\nromance.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

<\/i><\/p>\n

A class dimension<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Bruno Perreau has done a remarkable job in order to make the
\ncase that the nation itself was perceived as under threat by LGBTQ activists. He
\nalludes to the fact that single women in France are not permitted access to
\nIVF, thus showing the entire field of sexuality to be indisputably the
\nprerogative of the heterosexual nuclear family. <\/p>\n

He also argues that a great deal of effort was made within
\nthese political circles in France, from the mainstream to the margins, to ensure
\nthat granting LGBTQ rights of marriage did not fundamentally disturb the
\nseemingly harmonious and God-given union of family and nation state. Even the
\nmajority of feminists and supporters of the Socialist Party in France seem to
\nhave fallen into line with this deeply conservative stance. <\/p>\n

It goes without saying that the hundreds of thousands of
\npeople in France, especially of immigrant background, whose family lives for
\nvarious reasons diverge from this pathway must then be envisaged as failed, and
\nstigmatised as such. <\/p>\n

Likewise women without a partner and hoping nevertheless to
\nbe able to become a mother are forced to look outside France for IVF. They too
\nmust experience condemnation and condescension as single mothers. <\/p>\n

Inevitably there is a class as well as a racial dimension,
\nsince poverty and unemployment often make the nuclear family an unfulfillable
\nreality for so many. Overall Perreau shows how antiquated fears of a gay
\nconspiracy combined with fascination for this still \u2018deviant\u2019 sexuality, linger
\ndeep within the psyche of the white French political classes. And where the RC
\nchurch heartlessly still disapproves of adoption for the reason that it
\n\u2018condones adulterous behaviour\u2019 we can see why Perreau and the activist groups
\nsuch as Les Tordues<\/em> who in the
\ncontext of these neo-nationalist upsurges have struggled for the full range of
\nLGBTQ rights, feel the urgent need for a community of belonging.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

French and German
\ncommon-sense<\/strong><\/h2>\n

In Anti-Genderism
\nCampaigns in Europe<\/em>, Paula-Irene Villa provides the most succinct account
\nof what is now frequently referred to in Germany as anti-genderismus<\/em>. This has a different lineage, and is less orchestrated
\nby the Catholic church. \u00a0Instead it
\nemerges more directly from the mainstream as well as the populist right, but
\nalso from within the ranks of academia, and finds ample grounds across the
\nGerman media, from quality press such as Die
\nZeit<\/em> to feminist magazines such as Emma.<\/em>
\nThis campaign works by appealing to the common-sense of the nation against what
\nis claimed to be the extremes of \u2018gender ideology\u2019. <\/p>\n

What Paula-Irene Villa understands as \u2018post-essentialist\u2019 definitions
\nof gender as \u2018not determined by nature\u2019 but rather by \u2018complex socially
\ninstituted\u2019 differences, has led to both outrage and ridicule, and within the
\nuniversity system to claims that gender research is not scientific. <\/p>\n

Although well-known German feminists such as the journalist
\nAlice Schwarzer, founding editor and owner of Emma magazine, have controversially joined this anti-genderismus<\/em> chorus, there is at the same time a deep
\nconnection between anti-feminism and the anti-LGBTQ campaigns. <\/p>\n

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
\nwhat was then west-Germany from the late 70s in response to feminist demands
\nfor equal access to labour markets, was to make a full professional working
\nlife more or less antipathetic to having children. Lack of quality child care
\nand the school day finishing at 13.30 required costly and elaborate
\narrangements, again a clear disincentive to women to the point that being a
\nfeminist and \/or lesbian meant in effect not being a mother. <\/p>\n

<\/i><\/p>\n

Post re-unification the right and its allies in the press and
\non TV easily invoke the spectre of \u2018forced labour\u2019 and of the GDR working women
\ninto the ground, in order to promote the ideal of the stay-at-home mother (as
\ndoes incidentally the well-known Marxist sociologist Wolfgang Streeck). <\/p>\n

Honest speaking out<\/strong><\/h2>\n

There are various other voices who join this cacophony of
\noutrage including for example many with grievances against the feminist left
\nsuch as the journalist Bettina Rohl, daughter of Ulrike Meinhof. Rohl\u2019s right
\nwing stance leads her to blame the EU as over-interventionist especially in
\nregard to its \u2018gender mainstreaming\u2019 policies. <\/p>\n

Villa reports how after decades of feminism still the image
\nof the working mother is routinely disapproved of. \u2018For many Germans, working
\nmothers do not therefore embody an appropriate social model\u2019. This kind of
\npublic discourse finds wide readerships and audiences by affecting a simultaneously
\nheroic and purportedly honest stance, one that suggests the author is daring to
\nspeak out, (echoing Trump when he declares that he tweets what others think but
\ndare not say). <\/p>\n

Across many other member states, the EU is blamed for
\nendorsing this \u2018gender agenda\u2019 to the detriment of traditional family life. Indeed
\nthe proclaimed support of the EU for gender equality is seen as one element in
\na wider programme of colonization whereby what was once Marxism is now replaced
\nby gender politics. <\/p>\n

This again reflects increasingly evangelical Vatican fears
\nabout losing its grip amongst Catholics across the world, especially the young.
\nIn Italy it is reported that parents are encouraged to phone an anti-gender
\nhelpline to report \u2018indoctrination\u2019 of their children at school, in what is
\nseen as an \u2018anthropological emergency\u2019 even by leading figures from the left. <\/p>\n

European sexual
\npolitics<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Above all, these volumes speak to the dangerous convergences
\nof interests from the RC church, the far right, the neo-fascistic right, to the
\nmainstream parties of the right, while also finding some traction within the
\nleft and within strains of liberal feminism. <\/p>\n

They converge on a specific vocabulary which envisages new feminisms
\nand LGBTQ politics as embodying a profound threat to national culture and to social
\nreproduction. If such alliances and cross-fertilisations have not found the exact
\nsame opportunities in the UK, for example, this should neither blind us to the
\ndistinctive contours which anti-feminist hostility and anti-LGBTQ opposition
\ntake, nor should it permit any basking in some badly-needed respite of temporary
\nsolace. (I am not immune to grasping onto shards of hope. The need for
\nfantasies of \u2018progress\u2019 is sometimes irresistible.) <\/p>\n

The UK government is less vindictive in the policy
\nenvironment it has put in place for transmen and women, especially youngsters. A
\nhistorically more progressive youth and pop culture contribute to a \u2018common
\nculture\u2019 which in turn has a more socially mixed audience and readership than
\nin many other parts of Europe.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

But against this many have pointed out that after the Brexit
\nvote was reported, hate crimes against non-white people, against white east
\nEuropeans, and against LGBTQ people rose remarkably. This is undeniably the
\ncase. Perhaps one lesson also emerging from these discussions is the added effort
\nneeded on the part of British \u2018remainers\u2019 to find ways of maintaining full
\nparticipation in European sexual politics. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1111\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}