The Role of Threat in the Emotional Discourse of Gender Policy Conflicts

Emotions often animate the rhetoric of policy debates, particularly on issues that invoke conflicts about deeply held beliefs, such as identity, morality, and religion. Coalitions that mobilize around these types of issues—“deep core coalitions”—and the ways in which they form and maintain themselves in response to threats from an opposition are a new area of study within the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF). Conflicts about gender policies like abortion and gender affirming care (GAC), two such emotionally laden policy issues, are especially intense in the United States. The “deep core coalitions” of advocates that emerge around these interrelated conflicts articulate feeling threatened by their opponents—both in terms of policy, but also on a visceral, existential, and/or “deep core” level that includes fear of physical violence to their own bodies or communities. Through a series of semi-structured interviews with advocates fighting for or against abortion and GAC policies, the authors trace how advocates emotionally articulate perceived threats to their beliefs and worldviews, lived experiences, identities, and the communities they represent. Ultimately, this paper asks, what are the different dimensions of how policy actors perceive threats, who do they feel are threatened, and how will they collectively organize to respond?