Gender studies as the political straw man

Abstract

As we are moving further into the third decade of the twenty-first century the ideological tensions, in and around gender studies, including masculinity studies, are increasing and decreasing in parallel. We are currently, and have for quite some time been, under heavy attack from different expressions of anti-genderism, and especially from ethno-nationalist and alt-right movements (see for instance Verloo, 2018). No cease-fire in sight here it seems, but rather a continuously raised tone, and seemingly small prospects for any common understanding, as joint understanding is not the vocabulary of the current ideological war-mongering of the far-right and neo-conservatism. The ideological stalemate seems to be set for some time to come. Gender studies is a prime target for the general neo-conservative and right-wing wave that has turned countries like Poland and Hungary within the EU into illiberal and authoritarian states within a democratic union of member states. Gender studies have taken the form of a political straw man. The ignorant, but recurring and utterly exhausting attacks on gender studies are repeating similar arguments over and over again. The most recurrent argument, in the Nordic context, is that gender studies are preaching that everything connected to gender are social constructions. When we are trying to counter such simplistic arguments, which I personally sometimes try to do in different public media outlets (in Sweden), such as op-ed articles, in public panels, podcasts etcetera, there are always diversions and strategies to avoid listening because there is no substance based in knowledge about what gender studies are, and what kind of knowledge that is being produced. At times, it could possibly be a joint frame of understanding when it comes to, for example, masculinity, vulnerability, and mental health, and in particular suicide rates among men. The latter is a subject I have researched the last couple of years, and where we draw upon a wide range of everyday understandings by ordinary Swedes, which feeds into the research and the findings we present. The findings have even been presented in the Swedish Parliament, in a seminar attended by all political parties, including ‘ethno-nationalists’ and conservatives. In personal interactions, prior to and after the seminar, we managed to agree on a basic understanding on mental health, vulnerability, and masculinity, but in the political discourse I have, however, rarely met any genuine intentions of actually trying to understand what kind of knowledge production gender studies stand for. These misrepresentations are the norm. Typically, a straw man fallacy is when someone takes another person’s argument and distorts it in some kind of extreme way, and then attacks the extreme distortion, as if that is really the claim the person is making. This seems to happen to me and others that are discussing gender and gender studies in an open public debate in different media outlets. It sometimes happens within academia as well, but with less intensity than it happened 20 to 30 years ago. The ‘anti-genderism’, which is official policy in Hungary and Poland, is spreading to other parts of the European continent and beyond in various forms as well. The unifying authoritarian traits of masculinity, political nativism, and populism are surprisingly homogenous, and something that we