ABSTRACT
The Vatican-inspired transnational right-wing mobilization against “gender ideology” is a transnational conservative countermovement against gender equality and LGBTQ rights that coalesced in the aftermath of the global economic crisis of 2008. Central-Eastern Europe holds a special position in the anti-gender imaginary and the region has been a strategic target for the movement. Anti-gender mobilizations operate by demonizing the concept of gender, which the movement uses as a flexible synonym not just for feminism, abortion, and gay marriage but also western influence, individualism, and the dissolution of social bonds. The anti-gender worldview is a story of cultural, moral, and spiritual decay caused by chaos in the sexual realm, allegedly caused by corrupt liberal elites located in the West. Gender is said to be a threat to the family and a danger to children. The chapter examines the scholarship on the anti-gender movement’s origins and its growth through networks such as the World Congress of Families, making a claim for its alliance with populist parties.
