Who's Afraid of Gender?

Across continents, a specter haunts contemporary politics—the phantasm of "gender ideology" as an existential threat to civilization itself. From Vatican proclamations comparing gender theory to nuclear warfare to legislative chambers enacting sweeping bans on trans rights, an unprecedented global mobilization has emerged against what was once merely an academic analytical category. This phenomenon transcends simple cultural disagreement, revealing itself as a sophisticated mechanism for consolidating authoritarian power through the manufacture of phantasmatic enemies that condense diverse social anxieties into a single, terrifying object of attack.

The urgency of understanding this anti-gender movement extends far beyond academic debates about terminology or isolated policy disputes. The movement's remarkable success in forging alliances between religious fundamentalists, secular feminists, and authoritarian populists illuminates crucial patterns in how contemporary reactionary politics operates—exploiting legitimate fears about economic precarity and social instability while redirecting popular anger toward vulnerable communities rather than the systems that actually threaten human flourishing. By examining how "gender" functions as a condensed symbol carrying multiple anxieties about modernity, globalization, and democratic transformation, we can discern the deeper mechanisms through which fascist movements manufacture consent for the systematic erosion of human rights and democratic institutions.

The global anti-gender movement operates through a distinctive phantasmatic logic that transforms an analytical concept into an apocalyptic force capable of destroying civilization itself. This phantasm functions not through coherent argumentation but through dream-like associations that link gender to whatever fears prove most potent in specific contexts. The Vatican's comparison of gender theory to nuclear weapons, Hungarian politicians' conflation of gender with unwanted migration, and American evangelicals' characterization of trans-inclusive education as child abuse all demonstrate how the phantasm adapts to local anxieties while maintaining its core structure of existential threat.

The phantasmatic construction reveals its power through characteristic contradictions that would undermine rational argument but strengthen emotional appeal. Gender ideology is simultaneously portrayed as utterly artificial yet devastatingly effective, as marginal academic theory yet capable of reshaping reality itself, as extreme individualism and totalitarian collectivism. These contradictions allow the phantasm to capture audiences with different political orientations and concerns, creating a flexible framework that can absorb diverse fears while directing them toward a common target.

The mechanism operates through displacement and condensation, whereby legitimate anxieties about economic instability, environmental destruction, and democratic erosion become redirected toward the figure of gender ideology. Rather than confronting the actual sources of social disruption—neoliberal capitalism's assault on working families, climate change's threat to human survival, or corporate capture of democratic institutions—the movement offers a more manageable enemy in the form of academic theories, LGBTQIA+ rights, and feminist politics. This displacement provides emotional satisfaction through the identification of clear villains while obscuring the systemic forces that actually generate social crisis.

The transnational circulation of anti-gender discourse demonstrates how phantasmatic constructions can transcend cultural and linguistic boundaries through their appeal to unconscious fears and desires. Despite significant variations in local contexts, the movement exhibits remarkable consistency in its core rhetorical strategies and emotional appeals, suggesting that the phantasm taps into deeper psychological dynamics that extend beyond specific cultural formations. The success of organizations like CitizenGo and the World Congress of Families in coordinating campaigns across continents reveals the sophisticated infrastructure supporting this phantasmatic mobilization.

The phantasm's resistance to empirical refutation explains why factual corrections often prove ineffective or even counterproductive in challenging anti-gender discourse. Because the phantasm operates through emotional and unconscious mechanisms rather than rational argumentation, evidence that contradicts its claims can be dismissed as part of the conspiracy or reinterpreted to confirm the threat's reality. Understanding this dynamic proves crucial for developing counter-strategies that address the underlying anxieties while challenging the destructive projections that fuel political mobilization against vulnerable communities.

The Vatican's transformation of "gender" from an analytical category into a demonic force reveals the sophisticated theological and political project underlying contemporary anti-gender mobilization. The doctrine of complementarity, which presents binary gender as fundamental to divine creation, emerged in Catholic teaching only in the late twentieth century as a strategic response to feminist and LGBTQIA+ movements. This recent theological innovation is presented as eternal truth, demonstrating how traditional authority adapts to contemporary challenges by manufacturing timeless principles that serve present political needs.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger's initial warnings about gender theory threatening the "natural two-parent structure" evolved under Pope Francis into increasingly apocalyptic rhetoric that characterizes gender as "spiritual colonization" comparable to totalitarian indoctrination. This escalation reveals the phantasmatic nature of Vatican opposition, where gender accumulates ever more terrifying associations not through empirical evidence of harm but because it serves as a condensation point for anxieties about secularization, declining religious authority, and challenges to traditional hierarchies.

The Church's characterization of gender theory as "colonization" employs a strategic inversion that projects its own historical practices onto its opponents. While Christianity imposed European gender norms on Indigenous populations worldwide through centuries of missionary activity, the Vatican now appropriates anti-colonial discourse to position itself as defender of cultural authenticity against foreign ideological imposition. This rhetorical strategy obscures the Church's complicity in the very colonial processes it claims to oppose while mobilizing legitimate concerns about cultural sovereignty for reactionary political ends.

The global reach of Vatican anti-gender initiatives demonstrates the Church's sophisticated adaptation to contemporary forms of soft power projection. Through strategic partnerships with Evangelical movements, Orthodox churches, and secular conservative organizations, Catholic authorities have constructed transnational networks that operate across denominational and national boundaries. These alliances reveal how religious institutions function as vehicles for broader reactionary political projects that extend well beyond theological concerns to encompass economic, racial, and geopolitical agendas.

The Vatican's projection of child abuse onto gender advocates represents perhaps the most cynical aspect of its anti-gender strategy. Having systematically covered up clerical sexual abuse for decades while transferring predatory priests to new parishes, the Church now positions itself as protector of children against the supposed dangers of gender-inclusive education. This reversal exemplifies how phantasmatic mechanisms work—the actual source of harm externalizes its violence onto its critics, using moral righteousness as cover for continued abuse while deflecting attention from institutional crimes through the manufacture of external threats.

The emergence of trans-exclusionary radical feminism represents one of the most troubling developments within contemporary gender politics, demonstrating how progressive movements can become vehicles for reactionary agendas through phantasmatic projections that override solidaristic commitments. These feminists, who prefer the designation "gender-critical," have constructed an analysis that paradoxically aligns with right-wing attacks on gender theory while claiming to defend women's rights and feminist principles against male encroachment.

The theoretical foundation of trans-exclusionary feminism rests on a biologistic understanding of sex that contradicts decades of feminist scholarship on the social construction of gender categories and the historical variability of sexual classification systems. By insisting on the immutability of sex assigned at birth and characterizing transgender identities as threats to women's spaces and rights, these feminists reproduce essentialist arguments that feminism has historically challenged. Their selective appropriation of feminist history obscures the movement's longstanding commitment to questioning naturalized categories and expanding possibilities for human flourishing beyond traditional gender constraints.

The alliance between trans-exclusionary feminists and reactionary political forces demonstrates how shared opposition can overcome fundamental ideological differences through the mechanism of phantasmatic projection. Despite disagreeing on issues like reproductive rights, economic equality, and state power, both groups find common ground in their hostility to transgender rights and gender theory. This tactical convergence reveals the dangers of single-issue politics that sacrifice broader coalitional possibilities for narrow strategic gains while inadvertently serving authoritarian agendas.

The psychological dimensions of trans-exclusionary feminism often involve phantasmatic constructions that mirror those found in right-wing anti-gender discourse. The figure of the transgender woman becomes invested with threatening masculine power that supposedly infiltrates women's spaces, while transgender men are characterized as confused victims of patriarchal manipulation who betray their essential female nature. These projections reveal how trauma and fear can be mobilized to justify discriminatory politics that contradict feminist commitments to equality and liberation for all people marginalized by gender hierarchies.

The international circulation of trans-exclusionary feminist discourse, particularly through British networks and media platforms, demonstrates how local political formations can achieve global influence through strategic alliance with broader reactionary movements. The particular intensity of anti-transgender sentiment in the United Kingdom reflects specific historical and institutional factors, including the medicalized approach to gender recognition that subjects trans people to extensive psychiatric evaluation, but its export to other contexts reveals the transnational character of contemporary phantasmatic politics that transcends national boundaries through shared structures of fear and projection.

The anti-gender movement's appeal to biological reality and material facts obscures the complex processes through which sexed bodies are formed, understood, and politically mobilized in contemporary societies. Rather than representing a simple opposition between natural facts and social constructions, current scientific research reveals dynamic interactions between biological, social, and environmental factors in the development of embodied subjects throughout the life course. This co-constructionist understanding challenges both biological determinism and linguistic constructivism while affirming the material reality of sexed bodies as sites of ongoing political contestation.

The concept of co-construction, developed within feminist science studies and developmental systems theory, demonstrates how genetic, hormonal, nutritional, social, and environmental influences interact from prenatal development through aging to produce the phenomena we recognize as sex and gender. Anne Fausto-Sterling's research on athletic performance reveals how testosterone levels overlap significantly between male and female athletes, while training, access to resources, and social support interact with hormonal factors in ways that make it impossible to isolate biological determinants of athletic success. This interactive model exposes the inadequacy of nature/culture distinctions that treat biology as fixed substrate upon which society operates.

The historical analysis of sex assignment practices reveals how seemingly neutral scientific procedures are embedded within social and political frameworks that shape their implementation and interpretation across different contexts. The medical management of intersex conditions, the development of hormonal therapies, and the classification systems used in legal and administrative contexts all demonstrate how scientific knowledge operates within social relations that determine what counts as relevant evidence and how such evidence should be interpreted. The colonial imposition of binary gender systems on Indigenous populations with different understandings of gender diversity illustrates how supposedly universal biological categories serve particular political projects.

The scientific evidence for sexual dimorphism as a spectrum rather than a binary challenges the foundational assumptions of anti-gender arguments while revealing the normative rather than descriptive character of sex classification. Intersex conditions, hormonal variations, and chromosomal diversity demonstrate that biological sex itself exhibits more complexity than simple male/female binaries suggest. The insistence on maintaining binary categories despite this complexity reveals attempts to impose social order on biological diversity rather than simply recognize natural facts, exposing how appeals to biological reality often serve political rather than scientific purposes.

The materialist understanding of sexed bodies developed through feminist and queer theory offers resources for affirming bodily reality while challenging essentialist reductions that obscure the social relations shaping biological processes. By attending to how environmental factors—including nutrition, toxins, social stress, and economic conditions—literally become incorporated into biological bodies through processes of ingestion, inhalation, and embodied experience, this approach reveals how the materiality of bodies is always already social just as social relations are always already embodied. Understanding these dynamics proves crucial for developing political responses that can defend both bodily autonomy and social transformation against reactionary appeals to natural law.

The anti-gender movement's success in linking disparate fears and anxieties into a coherent phantasm of civilizational destruction requires equally sophisticated responses that can address legitimate concerns underlying gender panic while exposing its authoritarian instrumentalization. The movement's ability to present itself as defending children, protecting women, and preserving democracy while actually attacking the rights and freedoms of vulnerable populations demonstrates the need for counter-narratives that can reclaim these values for progressive politics through the construction of broader coalitions capable of addressing systemic sources of social crisis.

The interconnection between attacks on gender rights, reproductive freedom, racial justice, and democratic institutions reveals that effective resistance must be coalitional rather than focused on single issues that can be isolated and defeated through divide-and-conquer strategies. The same authoritarian movements attacking trans rights simultaneously work to restrict abortion access, suppress voting rights, defund public education, and concentrate wealth in elite hands while scapegoating marginalized communities for the resulting social disruption. Defending gender equality requires building alliances across these struggles rather than treating them as separate issues that can be addressed through narrow identity politics.

The phantasmatic character of anti-gender discourse suggests that rational argument alone proves insufficient to counter its emotional appeal and unconscious satisfactions. The movement succeeds by offering psychological rewards through the identification of clear enemies and the promise of their destruction, providing a sense of agency and purpose to those feeling powerless in the face of economic precarity and environmental crisis. Counter-movements must offer alternative sources of meaning and belonging that can compete with the emotional rewards of authoritarian identification while addressing the material conditions that make people susceptible to phantasmatic appeals.

The global character of both anti-gender organizing and resistance movements demonstrates the importance of transnational solidarity in contemporary struggles against authoritarianism. The same networks spreading anti-gender ideology across continents must be met by equally sophisticated networks of feminist, LGBTQIA+, and anti-racist organizing that can share resources, strategies, and support across national boundaries. The success of movements like Ni Una Menos in building broad coalitions against gender violence, economic exploitation, and environmental destruction provides models for the kind of intersectional organizing necessary to counter authoritarian gender panic through expansive solidarities.

The ultimate goal of coalition building against the anti-gender movement must involve creating alternative visions of social organization that can address the legitimate fears and needs that authoritarian movements exploit through phantasmatic projections. Rather than simply defending existing institutions and rights against reactionary attack, progressive movements must articulate compelling visions of economic security, environmental sustainability, and social solidarity that provide genuine alternatives to the false promises of authoritarian nationalism. Only by addressing the underlying conditions that make people susceptible to gender panic can movements build the broad-based coalitions necessary to defeat contemporary fascism while creating more just and sustainable forms of social life.

The global anti-gender movement represents a sophisticated form of reactionary politics that operates through phantasmatic constructions of existential threat rather than coherent ideological arguments or empirical evidence. By analyzing how "gender" functions as a condensed symbol carrying diverse anxieties about economic precarity, cultural transformation, and democratic change, we can understand the movement's remarkable success in forging alliances across traditional political boundaries while mobilizing opposition to progressive social movements through the exploitation of legitimate fears about social instability and the projection of systemic violence onto vulnerable scapegoats.

The movement's fundamental challenge to democratic values and human dignity requires responses that address both its phantasmatic dimensions and the material conditions that fuel its appeal to those experiencing economic insecurity and social displacement. This demands the construction of broader coalitions capable of defending gender justice while addressing questions of economic inequality, environmental sustainability, and democratic participation that extend well beyond narrow identity politics toward expansive solidarities that can offer genuine alternatives to authoritarian nationalism and build more inclusive forms of social organization based on principles of equality, dignity, and collective flourishing.