Anti-gender politics in East-Central Europe: Right-wing defiance to West-Eurocentrism

Kováts, Eszter

doi:10.3224/gender.v13i1.06

Cited by 21 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…In religious Poland, LGBTQ+ and gender ideology are defined as a threat to the nation (Graff & Korolczuk, 2021), and a similar trend was observed in Slovakia (Guasti & Bustikova, 2020). Although negative attitudes towards LGBTQ+ rights and visibility are identifiable all across the post-socialist region (Graff & Korolczuk, 2021), which is fuelled by anti-Western sentiments (Kováts, 2021), Czechia has remained relatively untouched by this (Sloboda, 2021). Nevertheless, homophobia persists in Czechia.…”

Section: Contextmentioning

confidence: 76%

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Childlessness and Barriers to Gay Parenthood in Czechia

Hašková

Maříková

Sloboda

et al. 2022

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This mixed‐methods article focuses on childlessness and barriers to parenthood among non‐heterosexual men in Czechia. On the quantitative sample of 419 men (165 gays, 125 bisexuals, and 129 heterosexuals with same‐sex romantic/sexual attraction), recruited on a representative online panel, we map the parenting desires, intentions, and perceived barriers to parenthood. Our analysis identifies a substantial group of gay men without parenting desires and intentions compared to heterosexuals and bisexuals, and the lack of legal recognition of same‐sex families as a crucial barrier to gay parenthood. The qualitative enquiry, based on semi‐structured interviews with 23 self‐identified gay men aged 25 to 47 years, explores how they reflect on (not) becoming parents and contextualises those reflections. The deployed concept of “parental consciousness” captures the variety of considered pathways to gay parenthood and proves itself useful in understanding the low parenting desires and a generational shift among Czech gay men. We argue that men able to come out in their early adulthood in the post‐socialist context tend to have more diversified perspectives on possible pathways to parenthood. Among gaymen without children, we identified three distinct perceptions of the state: given childlessness, chosen childfree life, and a life stage/indecision. The informants pursuing parenthood have seen identity‐specific barriers to parenthood as crucial, which is discussed in the context of state selective regulations of the relational lives of persons with non‐normative identities. Although Czech gay men’s parental consciousness has increased, legal conditions remain crucial for increasing their real‐life options.

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Section: Contextmentioning

confidence: 76%

“…In contrast, Hungary has experienced a strong neoconservative nationalist backslide towards LGBTQ+ rights since 2010 (Kováts, 2021). In religious Poland, LGBTQ+ and gender ideology are defined as a threat to the nation (Graff & Korolczuk, 2021), and a similar trend was observed in Slovakia (Guasti & Bustikova, 2020).…”

Section: Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Childlessness and Barriers to Gay Parenthood in Czechia

Hašková

Maříková

Sloboda

et al. 2022

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“…Jenny Evang argues in her article, "Anti-gender Politics in Queer Times: 'Genderismus' and Norwegian Homonationalism", that a Western European homo-and femonationalist rhetoric on anti-gender movements is parasitic upon the larger structure of racialised homophobia. Evang builds on recent influential work, such as that by Ester Kováts (2021), that shows how homophobia is projected onto Eastern Europe and Muslim populations and communities within countries that deem themselves progressive and liberal. Such projections build on longer historical genealogies, such as that of the idea that post-socialist countries and Muslim cultures are "lagging behind" when it comes to gender equality and LGBTQ rights.…”

Section: Unpacking Reproductive Politics and Racialised Homophobia In...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Anti-gender Politics and Queer Theory

Alm¹,

Lund²

2023

lambda

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Anti-gender Politics and Queer TheoryIN WHAT WAYS can queer theoretical approaches to anti-gender politics offer meaningful insights into and new perspectives on how to respond to, alleviate and complicate the analysis of reactionary mobilisations, inside, outside and on the borders of the academy? Whereas recent years have seen a wealth of scholarly publishing on anti-gender campaigns, much of which chronicles the organised, networked, and transnational attacks on LGBTQ+ populations and gender and queer studies and scholars, there have been relatively few concerted engagements that seek to analyse these campaigns and their effects through the lens of queer theory itself. We were curious about what added knowledge about current anti-gender politics -defined in short as reactionary and populist mobilisations against gender equality and sexual democracy (see e.g., Graff & Korolczuk 2022) -could be gleaned from engaging queer theory. To this end, by utilising our editorship of lambda nordica, we wanted to offer a platform for exploring the conceptual tools that queer theory can offer in the project of analysing reactionary mobilisations against gender, sexuality, and democracy itself, and -perhaps -inspire us to move towards generative futures, politically and theoretically.This special issue examines contemporary anti-gender politics and contains a number of promising theoretical lenses from sociological,psychoanalytic, queer, trans, gender and feminist scholarship that may contribute to an understanding of their complexities. In so doing, it offers careful, generative critiques and highlights some of the limitations of existing approaches, including those of one-dimensionality, historical presentism, racism, nationalism and femonationalism. Anti-gender Presence in Academia and Its EffectsShortly after commencing our editorship of lambda nordica in spring 2020, we decided to plan a special issue on anti-gender politics in relation to LGBTQ+ and queer scholarship and liveability. It felt urgent then, and it feels even more urgent now as we are wrapping up the editorial work in early 2023. Anti-gender attacks on academic gender studies programs and individual scholars, especially those of us who identify as queer, non-binary or trans or work in such fields, proliferate in many countries in Europe (e.g., Verloo & Paternotte 2018; Ergas, Kochkorova, Pető & Trujillo 2022), and globally (e.g., Sabitova 2018; Teixeira 2019). These attacks must, of course, be understood in relation to broader attacks on academic freedom worldwide. As Andrea Pető has argued, academic gender studies being a critical field that seeks change, opens it to attacks from anti-gender movements that accuse it of being unscientific and ideologically driven. Pető suggests that the spreading of antigender attacks on gender, feminist and queer studies in many countries, indexes broader dangers for academic freedom and critical knowledge production in other fields as well (Stork 2022). Similarly, Agnieszka Graff and Elżbieta Korolczuk, in their recent bo...

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“…In particular, the post‐communist countries' treatment of minorities, from ethnic to sexual, became a marker of Eastern distinctiveness. As Eszter Kováts writes, “[s]ubscribing to LGBT rights became a marker of being [West‐]European” (Kováts, 2021, p. 83; Slootmaeckers, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mental Maps of Eastern Europe: States, Mentalities, Modernisation

Varga

2022

J Historical Sociology

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Eastern Europe has been the object of orientalising discourses portraying it as a region defined by problematic statehood, underdevelopment, and nationalist-religious warmongering. These discourses have produced 19 th -century mental maps of Europe contrasting a perceived 'core' European area ending with the Frankish Empire's eastern border and coinciding with later Enlightenment influence and an indistinct 'Orient' or 'East', bypassed by "modernising" processes. This contribution focuses on (post-)Cold War discourses in social science and shows how these discourses re-produce 19 th -century layers of orientalising map-making and keep East-West differences alive by tracing deficient, fragile or repressive state institutions back to alleged Eastern European 'mentalities'.'the West' and turn them internally indistinct in falling behind "modern civilisation". As this article exemplifies with Eastern Europe, the region's diversity calls for a mix of such features to make it internally indistinct and externally distinct from the 'West', resembling how colonial categories reduced the perceived diversity of Western hemisphere populations (Mignolo, 2001, p. 434).

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Anti-gender politics in East-Central Europe: Right-wing defiance to West-Eurocentrism

Cited by 21 publications

References 38 publications

Childlessness and Barriers to Gay Parenthood in Czechia

Childlessness and Barriers to Gay Parenthood in Czechia

Anti-gender Politics and Queer Theory

Mental Maps of Eastern Europe: States, Mentalities, Modernisation

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