Re-pathologizing queer bodies: The re-emergence of gender ideology at the United Nations

As LGBTIQ+ rights gain substantial visibility within the United Nations, so do counter mobilization efforts seeking to obstruct sexual rights at the international level. Drawing on transnational feminist and queer IR scholarship, this paper analyzes the Holy See’s gender ideology revival at the United Nations through an investigation of a side event held during the 63rd Commission on the Status of Women entitled, "Gender Equality and Gender Ideology: Protecting Women and Girls." I conclude that although international organizations like the United Nations regularly understand gender as a social construct, the widening of gender as a concept, coupled with increased support for international LGBTIQ+ rights, has reignited longstanding counter mobilization movements determined to re-pathologize queer bodies. Furthermore, I argue that through a perversion of discourse, the Holy See and its advocates set themselves up as the true defenders of transnational feminist and decolonial practice. By distorting transnational feminist, queer and decolonial work, the Holy See and its advocates perpetuate the legacies of imperial feminist projects through rhetorical maneuvers that aim to uphold the criminalization of queer bodies, heteropatriarchal racialized hierarchies, and savior rescue narratives.