ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 tells the story of Poland’s anti-gender campaigns beginning in 2012 and seeks to explain how they connect to both the rise of the populist right to power and their subsequent assaults on women’s reproductive rights and the LGBTQ community. Three stages of the campaign are examined, showing how the focus changed over time and how strategies of resistance evolved. The chapter looks at political uses and abuses of “gender” analyzing how anti-gender campaigns changed people’s views on specific issues, and which social groups turned to be most susceptible to these arguments. The dynamic of collaboration between right-wing populists and ultraconservatives takes the form of opportunistic synergy . The chapter expands from the Polish example to discuss this dynamic in a broader context, looking at international cooperation between various players in the anti-gender world and politics. Differences between Poland and Western countries are examined: in the West anti-genderism works in tandem with femonationalism, with refugees vilified as “barbarians” who threaten gender equality; in Poland anti-feminist ethno-nationalist rhetoric has been much more pronounced. While there are context-specific elements of Polish anti-gender campaigns, it is a part of a broader resurgence of right-wing extremism and religious fundamentalism, a coordinated transnational effort to undermine liberal values by democratic means.
