Special issue introduction: Contemporary international anti-feminism

Abstract

Abstract In recent years, conservative governments and their civil society allies have undermined international women’s rights treaties and SOGI rights initiatives and challenged domestic rights protections. The articles in this special issue grapple with these trends by analysing the ideologies, discourses, and strategies of contemporary anti-feminism in global and comparative contexts. Several prominent patterns emerge: the core significance of social hierarchy and biological essentialism to anti-feminist conservative thought; the polarizing demonization of feminists by religious conservatives and populist nationalists; the appropriation of rights discourses and advocacy tactics by anti-feminist campaigns; and the strategic importance of law and legal language as a terrain of rights contestation. Taken together, this research suggests that anti-feminism is not incidental to reactionary anti-democratic politics, but instead a constitutive element of political movements that seek to naturalize inequality and legally enforce conformity with conservative social norms.