Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-wg55d Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-17T02:59:32.477Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

18 - Sexuality under Attack Now

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 April 2024

Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Mathew Kuefler
Affiliation:
San Diego State University
Get access

Summary

This chapter discusses why sexuality has become the site of a new “Cold War” and what are its new elements. Now, a fully-fledged illiberal program is offering an alternative to liberal cultural, social, and political politics. The new political actors fighting for redefining sexuality are capturing states using democratic or quasi-democratic methods to introduce new forms of governance as alternatives to liberal values. The chapter analyses the roots of and actors in these attacks. The example of Russia shows how the recent and ongoing war against Ukraine has changed previous assumptions and made alliances and allegiances very clear. The soft power of Putin”s Russia has been instrumental in the fight for “traditional values” as an inexpensive and effective political tool to undermine liberal values and the European Union. This matters not only because Russia has created an alternative, illiberal political order to liberal human rights over the past decade, but also because it has become an international actor, financing local and international NGOs to disrupt and undermine liberal states” values and activities around the world. The chapter closes with discussing how the appropriation of liberal values combined with emptying their meanings to legitimize a new war of Russia shows that we are really facing a turning point in our history.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Further Reading

Altman, Dennis, and Symons, Jonathan. Queer Wars: The New Global Polarization over Gay Rights. Cambridge: Polity, 2016.Google Scholar
Balogh, Lídia. ‘The Ratification Status of the Council of Europe’s Istanbul Convention Among EU Member States’. MTA Law Working Papers. Budapest: Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 2020. http://jog.tk.mta.hu/mtalwp.Google Scholar
Berezin, Mabel. Illiberal Politics in Neoliberal Times: Culture, Security and Populism in the New Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Bogaards, Matthijs, and Andrea, Pető. ‘Gendering De‐Democratization: Gender and Illiberalism in Post‐Communist Europe’. Politics and Governance 10, no. 4 (2022): 15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campbell, Beatrix. End of Equality. Chicago: Seagull Books, 2014.Google Scholar
Casanova, José. Public Religions in the Modern World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clifford, Bob. The Global Right and the Clash in World Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Corrêa, Sonia, Petchesky, Rosalind, and Parker, Richard. Sexuality, Health and Human Rights. London: Routledge, 2008.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Datta, Neil. Tip of the Iceberg: Religious Extremist Funders against Human Rights for Sexuality and Reproductive Health in Europe 2009–2018. Brussels: European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights, 2021. https://bit.ly/3qLPN0r.Google Scholar
Dibyesh, Anand. ‘Majoritarianism and the (Im)Possiblity of Democracy in South Asia’. Kindle: Ideas, Imagination, Dialetics, 2 May 2014. http://kindlemag.in/majoritarianism-impossibility-democracy-south-asia.Google Scholar
Dietze, Gabriele, and Roth, Julia, eds. Right-Wing Populism and Gender: European Perspectives and Beyond. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2020.Google Scholar
Essig, Laurie, and Kondakov, Alexander. ‘A Cold War for the Twenty-First Century: Homosexualism vs. Heterosexualism’. In Soviet and Post-Soviet Sexualities, ed. Mole, R. C. M., 79102. New York: Routledge, 2019.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Farris, Sarah. In the Name of Women’s Rights: The Rise of Femonationalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fassin, Éric. ‘Sexual Democracy and the New Racialization of Europe’. Journal of Civil Society 8, no. 3 (2012): 285–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fodor, Éva. The Gender Regime of Anti-Liberal Hungary. London: Palgrave-Pivot, 2022.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fraser, Nancy. ‘Social Justice in the Age of Identity Politics: Redistribution, Recognition and Participation’. In Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-Philosophical Exchange, ed. Fraser, N. and Honneth, A., 7109. New York: Verso, 2003.Google Scholar
Goetz, Anne Marie.The New Competition in Multilateral Norm-Setting: Transnational Feminists and the Illiberal Backlash’. Daedalus 149, no. 1 (2020): 160–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Graff, Agnieszka, and Korolczuk, Elżbieta. Anti-Gender Politics in the Populist Moment. London: Routledge, 2021.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grzebalska, Weronika, and Andrea, Pető. ‘The Gendered Modus Operandi of the Illiberal Transformation in Hungary and Poland’. Women’s Studies International Forum 68 (2018): 164–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grzebalska, Weronika, Kováts, Eszter, and Andrea, Pető. ‘Gender as Symbolic Glue: How “Gender” Became an Umbrella Term for the Rejection of the (Neo)Liberal Order’. Political Critique, 13 January 2017. https://bit.ly/3qL1Dba.Google Scholar
Krizsán, Andrea, and Roggeband, C., eds. Gendering Democratic Backsliding in Central and Eastern Europe: A Comparative Agenda. Vienna: Central European University Press, 2019.Google Scholar
Kuhar, Roman. ‘Playing with Science: Sexual Citizenship and the Roman Catholic Church Counter-Narratives in Slovenia and Croatia’. Women’s Studies International Forum 49 (2014): 8492.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laruelle, Marlene. ‘Conservatism as the Kremlin’s New Toolkit: An Ideology at the Lowest Cost’. Russian Analytical Digest 138 (8 November 2013): 24.Google Scholar
Manners, Ian, and Andrea, Pető. ‘The European Union and the Value of Gender Equality’. In Values and Principles in European Union Foreign Policy, ed. Manners, Ian and Lucarelli, Sonja, 97113. London: Routledge, 2006.Google Scholar
Massad, Joseph A. Desiring Arabs. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pető, Andrea. ‘How Are Anti-Gender Movements Changing Gender Studies as a Profession?Religion and Gender 6, no. 2 (2017): 297–9.Google Scholar
Scheele, Alexandra, Roth, Julia, and Winkel, Heidemarie, eds. Global Contestations of Gender Rights. Bielefeld, Germany: Bielefeld University Press, 2021.Google Scholar
Weeks, Jeffrey. Sexuality and Its Discontents: Meanings, Myths, and Sexualities. London: Routledge, 1985.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×