Political Struggles around ‘Gender’

De-centering Queer Feminism (?)

Abstract

This article focuses on the recent struggles around the concept of “gender” in the context of the anti-gender(ism) propaganda of the incumbent Hungarian right-wing populist regime since the year 2010. The government’s “war on gender” is discussed through the analysis of three legislative acts passed under the precarious conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim in their analysis is, on the one hand, to illuminate how a certain radical feminist discourse that self-identifies as a “gender critical” position has emerged, one simultaneously finding itself caught up in the official routine intimation of hate speech. On the other, it is to forge an intersectional position that may speak across this harmful internal division by shifting the critical gaze onto the shared enemy of hegemonic masculinity and to propose a trust-based queer solidarity.