Challenging the Binary: Christian Democratic Responses to Transnational Anti-Gender Mobilisation

In July 2025, a transnational, online, cross-platform anti-gender campaign centred on a CitizenGO petition was launched against German Constitutional Court nominee Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf. The campaign portrayed her as "anti-life". As pressure mounted, the German parliament postponed the vote, after which the nominee withdrew. The leaders of Germany’s Christian Democratic parties (CDU/CSU) played a key role in the process. This paper examines how the CDU/CSU responded to the transnational anti-feminist campaign and asks how the responses contributed to the facilitation and institutionalisation of transnational anti-feminist agendas on a national level. While Studies on Anti-Feminism provide well-established concepts for this analysis, they often reproduce a binary understanding of feminism and anti-feminism. However, postcolonial and decolonial critiques challenge Western-centric assumptions, including the temporal logic of backlash, which interprets anti-gender mobilisation primarily as a reaction to previous achievements. Building on these debates, this paper argues that the binary opposition between 'feminists and LGBTQI+ actors' and 'anti-gender actors' should also be questioned, as it obscures co-constitution. Actors share vocabularies, borrow tactics, and adapt repertoires through interaction. I apply this co-constitutive lens to the CDU/CSU. Although the Merkel era yielded significant progress in gender equality legislation and policy, the party's leaders are often labelled anti-feminist. The party hinders the liberalisation of abortion laws and the improvement of trans rights. The party's Women's Union selectively appropriates feminism, presenting itself as a firewall against anti-feminism. This study employs qualitative discourse analysis of social and traditional media statements by CDU/CSU politicians between 1 and 12 July 2025. Responses are categorised as either demarcation or confrontation, or co-optation or silence. It then assesses whether these responses contribute to the institutionalisation of transnational anti-feminism, or constitute a firewall against transnational anti-gender campaigns. The paper contributes in three ways: 1. It traces how transnational digital campaigns manifest at the national level of politics. 2. It specifies the mechanisms by which the CDU/CSU's responses facilitate the institutionalisation of anti-feminism during a high-stakes judicial appointment, 3. It offers a co-constitutive perspective that challenges the binary opposition between feminism and anti-feminism.