Beyond Fatalistic Normalisation and Panoramic Gestures: Understanding Anti-Genderism from a Relational Global South Perspective

Along with global neoliberalism and the securitarian state regimes, right-wing authoritarian populism thrives on a political imagination, both within and beyond its polarisation logic, that helps populist movements come to power or remain in power in different contexts. Anti-genderism constitutes a pillar of this political imagination, which is becoming increasingly prevalent globally and is mimicked in various contexts. Accordingly, we can see that anti-gender politics is problematised as a global phenomenon through panoramic gestures with emblematic instances (Connell, 2007) gathered from various contexts, but overwhelmingly in relation to Western democracies. Based on the decline of welfare state, failure of neoliberal politics, and exacerbated precarious conditions with care crisis, alongside a relative improvement in women’s rights, gender equality, and political visibility of LGBTQIA+ people, ethnic minorities and immigrants in Western democracies, the grassroots reception of rising authoritarian populism with anti-gender backlash politics is often explained as a symptom of being or feeling “left behind.” These explanations highlight shared feelings of grievance among groups that previously held relatively privileged social status based on their race, ethnicity and gender. However, authoritarian populism has already been at work in many non-Western, Global South contexts, rather different from the grievance-rooted or reactionary examples in the West. Yet, these are fatalistically normalised as pathologies stemming from their lack of well-developed democratic systems. Ironically, both popular and scholarly debates about anti-genderism in relation to authoritarian tendencies across different Global South contexts also gravitate towards such panoramic gestures, mainly reflecting Western concerns and epistemic preferences. To move beyond such fatalistic normalisation and panoramic gestures, this paper deploys a robust analytical framework through a comparison of anti-gender politics in the contexts of Turkey and Mexico, where anti-genderism follows a different trajectory from that of the Global North contexts. Despite distinct cultural and institutional contexts, Mexico and Turkey exhibit converging patterns in how authoritarian and securitarian populist discourses weaponise anti-genderism to consolidate political power, with a normalisation of gendered violence. In both cases, gendered violence is not only tolerated but structurally embedded, serving as a disciplinary and punitive tool that reinforces patriarchal hierarchies under the guise of populist governance tactics. The study adopts a relational Global South perspective, going beyond treating the Global South as a fixed category, thereby expanding our knowledge of anti-gender politics and resistance to these politics beyond the epistemological limitations imposed by the Global North perspective and its concerns. The comparative analysis dismantles methodological nationalism and regional parochialism (e.g., Latin America and the Middle East) by surpassing an isolated and exceptionalist scope. Accordingly, the paper paves the way for a deeper understanding of the current drivers behind the globally prevalent phenomenon of anti-genderism, as well as dissects its locally varied manifestations. By realising the potential of knowledge exchange between South-South contexts as a form of cultural translation (Spivak, 2008), this study can foster transnational understanding of solidarity and advocacy against authoritarian tendencies. Such understanding is essential for devising more effective strategies, employing various methods of democratic resistance and transformation.