Anti Gender Movements in Europe

Gender refers to the social and cultural differences rather than biological ones. It is against the identification of male and female socially. Therefore, it is a social construct. There have been a various protest against the idea of gender, its education at schools, abortion rights and same sex parenting across the world. I will be dealing with the movements and events that took place in Europe.

The so called “gender ideology” had its roots in the Christian tradition had been used by the Catholic Church and the World Conference on Women in Beijing. The movement stayed contrary for the right wing popülist parties. Despite the efforts taken by EU such as the Gender Equality Strategy and the LQBTQI Equality Strategy, many countries ratified policies by concerns about the “established” values. One example can be the Istanbul Convention which was signed in 2011. It primarily aimed to combat violance against women and domestic violance. It is a convention of human rights targeting to tackle the inferiority of women and the disadvantages encountered in private and public sphere. It had an understanding ogf gender as a social construct yet not clearly definding the rights of LQBTQI associates.

In May 2011, Istanbul Convention was opened for signature in Bulgaria. The terms “sex” and “gender” was likely to be manipulated in Bulgarian language created discontent. “Being discussed predominantly within the academia until recently, the term gender was recognised by many as a term imposed by the West and as a part of a bigger strategy for imposing unnatural values inconsistent with the Bulgarian Christian norms and moral.”

It was understood as promoting a third gender, implementing improper values to students by gender education, encouraging homosexuality and being against the current legaslation which allows the marriage between men and women. Society and Values Association initiated a campaign for ratification of the convention through online platforms. SVA created online petitions for defending the traditional family values by desregarding the EU values and gained support from the United Patriots of Bulgarian nationalistic coalition. Bulgarian Socialist Party was also agains the convention and supported the prostests across Bulgaria. Even though many NGO’s and academics worked against the massive public protests and petitions, the ruling party GERB put her interest in the ratification before the Bulgarian Constitution Court. The protest were not limited to petitions and protest but strong encouragment of misleading texts by anti gender authors like Gariele Kuby and Judith Reisman were present. Facebook groups with more than 12.000 participants fought for the anti gender ideology.

Starting from the spring of 2013, parliamentary debates about the rights of people engaging in same sex marriage, law against homophobia and the introduction of gender education through schools were prominent and the protests especially stemming from Catholic authories took the lead. “The logics that underlie the reshaping of Catholic activism in Italy are characterized, on the one hand, by elements of continuity with a tradition of Catholic pro-life action (Avanza 2015) and, on the other hand, by tactical and discursive elements related to a set of recent transformations in the field of gender policies and sexuality.” Vaticans position regarding the term gender came as an anti natüralist position in the international sphere and stated their views as being not protective for the family values and life. La Manif Pour Tous Italy was one of the strongest actions taken.

“In France, members of rightwing political parties, conservative Catholic groups and
clergy, and their ideological allies among the professional, intellectual, and state bureaucratic
elite have long resisted change that undermines their vision of the family, sexuality, and gender
(Fassin 2015; Robcis 2013; Paternotte 2011).” Their position were stemming from the Catholic values and they were being against the abortion rights or in a larger context the gender theory itself. In 2013 LMPT was largely organized against homosexual marriage with the newly elected Socialist Party. Political Service Organization ( Fondation de servise politique) was example that gained media support organized against homosexuality and gender study education at schools. They were being against the pedegogical insentives blaming them to be anti ideology.

Lately in 2022, Poland’s Ordo Iuris institute came up with the idea of a tink- tank called the Logos Instittute. The aim of the tink tank was to encourage rational politcal debate and find solutions to problems like housing and climate change. However, it seems that there have been a huge policy change for Ordo Iuris. Previously on 2016, Iuris supported a bill banning abortion and submitted to Poland’s parliament which fueled the Black Monday in Poland. LGBTQ free zone campaign was another drastic even that took place. There was a counter campaign fort he lqbtq declaration by Iuris fort he protection family life encouraging lqbtq free zones. In 2011, Poland left the Istanbul convention and started a camaign called “Yes To Family, No To Gender”.

In 2018, the far right party L’SNS in Slovakia initiated a bill that limits the right of abortion stemming from the reasons of maintaining a slim figure, career reasons or just not wanting to have the baby. In 2019, having an ultrasound of the baby became compulsory. The bill called “On Helping Pregnant Women” came as a further challange making the women wait for 12 weeks even the decision is made. In such situations there is a possiblity that the woman is raped or baby has some health issues and the bill makes the process dangerous for the women. This leads women to undergo abortions in unhealthy spaces and cross border countries. Threatening the basic rights of women.

It is clearly seen in the abovementioned events and implementations that Christian values, established values and extereme views affect womens life style choices. Politics effect in the private sphere in womens lives lead dangerous results. Illeberal politcs and popülist practices heavily effect the topic of gender. Even though EU seems to promote gender equality and empowerment of women, local politics become a barries. More freedom and liberal policies are needed fort he situation of women. International treaties must be more efficent protecting womens, LGBTQI’s and other diadvantaged groups rights. The pressure on NGO’s, civil union’s and other mass movements must be removed. Only a new definition of freedom will lead a better world.

Works Cited

1) Darakchi, S. (2019a). “The Western Feminists Want to Make Us Gay”: Nationalism, Heteronormativity, and Violence Against Women in Bulgaria in Times of “Anti-gender Campaigns.” Sexuality &Amp; Culture, 23(4), 1208–1229. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-019-09611-9
2) Avanza, M. (2015) ‘Mobilisations anti “idéologie du gender” et milieux catholiques
pro-life en Italie’, in Van der Dussen, S., Paternotte, D. and Piette, V. (eds),
Habemus gender! Déconstruction d’une riposte religieuse, Brussels: Editions de
l’Université Libre de Bruxelles, pp. 207–221.
3) Fassin, Éric. 2015. “Extrêmes droites en tous genres.” Lignes 45 (3): 32–42.