Instrumentalization of equality politics by mechanisms of discoursive regularity

Mojca Pajnik, Roman Kuhar and Rok Smrdelj published an article in Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research on the mechanisms of anti-gender discourse, marked by the denial and delegitimization of gender studies and feminism and by the systematic undermining of LGBTQ+ rights, reproductive rights, and equality policies.

The authors demonstrate that “gender ideology,” as the master frame of anti-gender discourse, is grounded in a recognizable and recurring structural logic. They identify four mechanisms of this regularity – blending facts with falsehoods, oversimplifying complex issues, time-shifting, and relabelling – which, in their interrelated operation, distort equality claims and prove resilient to critical responses.

Contrary to dominant interpretations that conceptualize “gender ideology” as an “empty signifier,” the article shows that this frame is built upon a solid and regular structure that enables it to maintain a coherent discursive logic across different themes, such as debates on marriage equality and reproductive rights.

It is precisely this structural regularity that allows anti-gender discourse to function in the public sphere as a form of neoconservative symbolic violence: while ostensibly conforming to democratic norms, it simultaneously reproduces systemic inequalities. In this respect, the contemporary anti-gender movement differs from classical conservative opposition to gender equality policies.