Description
How “anti-genderism” fueled a global right-wing movement In recent years, opposition to “gender ideology” has become a rallying cry for the Right. Politicians throughout the world have invoked the dangers of “gender” to restrict access to abortion, revoke LGBTQ rights, and police education. And yet at the same time, the term“gender” has become standard in everyday speech—a box to check on a passport application or on a form at the doctor’s office. When did the word “gender” become a political controversy? When did the idea of a “gender ideology” first emerge? In The War on Gender, Camille Robcis traces the history of a global movement that she calls “anti-genderism”: the assertion that a “gender ideology,” developed in the halls of academia and foisted on an unwilling public, has become the driving force behind social policy. Robcis argues that anti-genderism was invented by the Vatican in the mid-1990s in response to demands for reproductive and sexual rights made by feminist activists at conferences sponsored by the United Nations. To counter these claims, Vatican representatives decided to oppose “gender” altogether. The culprits, in their view, were not only the activists at the conferences but the “gender theorists” who had inspired them. During the papacy of John Paul II—who made defense of the heterosexual family the bedrock of his reign—the Vatican propagated the expression “gender ideology” throughout the world. It was embraced by many on the Right, including evangelical Christians, who adopted the rhetoric of anti-genderism to further their own illiberal agendas.