FGENs first conference ‘Living Gender in Diverse Times’ brings Network members and international keynote speakers in trans, gender and sexuality studies together over two days to share ideas and work and to forge future collaborations. In exploring the diverse ways in which gender is lived and understood in current times, the conference addresses practices of gender regulation and resistance, representations and mediations, and social institutions and transformative cultures. In addition to individual presentations, the conference will host roundtable discussions and cultural/visual interventions.

Feminists have long been concerned about the ways in which women are sexualized in our culture (e.g., via sexual harassment, objectification, slut-shaming, and sexual violence). But of course, sexualization is not a female-specific phenomenon. Other marginalized groups—including LGBTQIA+ people, people of color, and people with disabilities—have long described the various ways in which they are reduced to their real or imagined sexual attributes (their bodies, behaviors, or desires) to the exclusion of other characteristics, often facing disproportionate levels of sexual violence as a result. Here, I will provide an overarching framework for understanding how these seemingly disparate forms of sexualization are all interconnected, and thus we must strive to end them all. In this light, I will critique “gender critical” activists’ increasing reliance on sexualization as a tactic—smearing trans people en masse as “sexual predators,” “perverts,” and “pedophiles”—and show how it is antithetical to feminism.

Biography
Julia Serano is the author of four books, including Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity, and Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive. Her writings have also appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, TIME, Salon, The Daily Beast, and Ms. juliaserano.com.

This presentation will discuss the main findings of the book, which examines the new phase of global struggles around gender equality and sexual democracy: the ultraconservative mobilization against “gender ideology” and feminist efforts to counteract it. We argue that anti-gender campaigns, which emerged around 2010 in Europe, are not a simple continuation of earlier trends (backlash), but part of a new political configuration: the rise of right-wing populism. While much of our data is drawn from the Polish case, we extensively discuss transnational networks such as the World Congress of Families and Agenda Europe, and developments in countries such as Italy and France. We show that the Polish case is both context-specific and paradigmatic for the global trend: a right-wing populist revolt against liberal democracy and progressive values, and the rapid growth of coalitions between ultraconservative, mainly religious organizations and right-wing populist forces around the issue of gender.

The presentation will focus on the relationship between populism and gender. Rather than looking for specific gendered aspects of populism as an ideology, we will discuss a growing opportunistic synergy between the right-wing parties and ultraconservative groups opposing “gender.” This synergy plays out on two distinct levels: ideological/discursive and strategic/organizational. Since populism is not a robust ideological project, it readily feeds on ideas and narrative structures promoted by the anti-gender ultraconservative movement, albeit often in an opportunistic and selective fashion. Populists also cooperate closely with the anti- gender organizations as they need new cadres in the process of a sweeping elite change. Simultaneously, the actors behind anti-gender campaigns use the organizational resources that right-wing parties offer and access to political processes, especially in contexts such as Poland where the latter are in power. What facilitates this collusion is the fact that the ultraconservative critiques of “gender” have been framed in populist terms. The movement presents itself as a necessary and courageous defense of “the people” against powerful and foreign “liberal elites,” with “gender ideology” emphatically identified as a modern version of colonialism.

Agnieszka Graff and Elżbieta Korolczuk, Anti-Gender Politics in the Populist Moment.

Biographies
Agnieszka Graff is an associate professor at the American Studies Center, University of Warsaw. She is a cultural studies scholar with research interests in gender studies, feminist history, nationalism, and public discourse on gender. Her articles have appeared in Signs, East European Politics and Societies, Public Culture, European Journal of Women’s Studies as well as a number of collected volumes. She co-edited the Spring 2019 issue of Signs on Gender and the Rise of the Global Right. Her most recent publication, co-authored with

Elżbieta Korolczuk is an Associate professor in sociology working at Södertörn University in Stockholm and American Studies Center, Warsaw University. Her research interests involve: social movements, civil society, poliAcs of reproducAon as well as right-wing populism and mobilizaAons against “gender”. She co-edited two books on motherhood and fatherhood in Poland and Russia (in Polish) and published two volumes on social movements and civil society in Central Eastern Europe: Civil Society Revisited: Lessons from Poland co-edited with KersAn Jacobsson (Berghahn Books, 2017), Rebellious Parents. Parental Movements in Central-Eastern Europe and Russia co-edited with Katalin Fábián (Indiana University Press, 2017).Most recent publications include a monograph Anti-gender Politics in the Populist Moment written with Agnieszka Graff (2021, Routledge). She is also a commentator and a long-time women’s and human rights activist.