Gender, Authoritarian Populisms, and the Attack on Democracy

The rhetoric of “saving children” has long been central to the religious right playbook in the United States, especially in campaigns against abortion rights, gay/lesbian rights, and against comprehensive sex education. Today the guardians of the traditional family, increasingly globalized, have shifted their focus to protecting women and girls from so-called “gender ideology.” These campaigns emerge in relation to a renewed authoritarian populism which seeks consent for deeply conservative policies by claiming to represent “the people” against the supposed threat posed by minority groups aligned with elites. In these campaigns, feminists and LGBT people are charged with conspiring with medical professionals and teachers to indoctrinate children and undermine fixed notions of gender and sexuality. Rather than see these campaigns as single-issue attacks on feminists or LGBT people, we should understand them as attacks on democracy; an effective defense against them therefore requires us to promote a vision of inclusive democracy.