Analysing Struggles for Trans Rights and LGBTQI Equalities

Abstract

This panel analyses struggles over trans rights and LGBTQI equalities across different national contexts, political regimes and institutional arenas. The papers examine how gender and sexuality have become central sites of political contestation, taking the perspective of both opponents and advocates of equality and highlighting the significant implications for democracy, civil society and citizens’ attitudes. Empirically, the panel addresses a wide range of contexts and approaches. These include parliamentary debates and expert hearings on legal gender recognition for trans minors in Finland; citizens’ gendered responses to anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in authoritarian Uganda; the experiences and responses of gender equality and LGBTQI civil society organisations in Sweden vis-à-vis opposition; digital mobilisation against Pride and trans rights by the radical right Alternative for Germany party in Germany; and the historical and contemporary moral panic around queer people as “groomers” as a way for the far right to target LGBTQ+ communities in the United States. Theoretically, the panel engages with debates on anti-gender politics, far-right and populist mobilisation, instrumentalisation of LGBTQI politics, affective and discursive constructions of gender knowledge, and the democratic role of civil society. By combining institutional, discursive, and demand-side perspectives and different contexts, the panel advances a broad and comparative understanding of how struggles over trans rights and LGBTQI equalities shape contemporary politics.

Title	Details
Do Citizens Reward Homophobic Governments? Evidence from Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act	View Paper Details
Protecting or Politicizing Trans Children’s Rights? Affective-Discursive Reading of the 2023 Gender Recognition Reform Debates in Finland	View Paper Details
Shifting Spaces? Swedish Civil Society Organizations Between Support and Opposition	View Paper Details
Proud to Be What? The Alternative for Germany and the #Stolzmonat Campaign	View Paper Details
The Pitfalls of Resistance: LGBTQ Media, Eastern Europeanism and Brexit	View Paper Details