Solidarity, Counterpublics, and Transversal Politics: The Intersectional Urgency of Anti-Gender Attacks in Germany

This paper presents an intersectional reading of the lived experiences of backlash, concretely anti-gender politics in Germany, based on qualitative interviews with 24 participants from across the country. Having been subjected to anti-gender hostility, the interviewed feminists and LGBTIQ+ people emphasized the importance of communities in mitigating attacks, hostility, and fear. Many described retreating to “safe spaces” or “bubbles”, where they experience solidarity and care. These community spaces also operate as counterpublics, as conceptualized by Ewa Majewska (2021), forming through mutual recognition of wider public exclusions. Solidarity, understood as shared anger and resistance, is central to counterpublics and functions as a springboard for coalition politics, echoing Nancy Fraser’s (1990) notion of counterpublics as ‘spaces of withdrawal and regroupment’. The participants’ communities facilitate mutual care, resource sharing, and the production of counter-discourses that reach broader publics. However, intersectional marginalizations, particularly around race, disability, and trans/intersex identities, emerged as barriers to solidarity. Multiply marginalized interview partners reported experiences of exclusion, microaggressions, and resistance to intersectional approaches within feminist and queer communities. This led some to withdraw to smaller communities or disengage entirely. Hostility and mistrust within these communities further complicated collaboration, which highlights how intra-community divisions exacerbate vulnerability to anti-gender politics. Participants expressed a strong desire for solidarity, coalition politics, and dialogue, which, moving forward, calls for conflict resolution strategies informed by intersectionality. The data analyzed in this paper illustrate the risks of exclusion faced by those who are multiply marginalized, as well as the transformative potential of intersectional, coalition-based political practices in response to backlash politics.