Is “Gender Ideology” Western Colonialism?

Abstract

How should we interrogate and oppose the current anti-gender misappropriation of postcolonial thought and struggles? Recently, we have seen a resurgence of organized anti-gender sentiments across Europe and the globe. A specific anti-gender rhetoric of victimization defines so-called Western genderists as a common enemy and colonizing force against “the people.” By focusing on some key European anti-gender actors, this article analyzes the strategic significance of the specific anti-gender assertion that gender is a neocolonial imposition. Beyond examining how the European anti-gender takeover of postcolonial framing is hypocritical—as anti-gender thinkers are themselves invested in the cisheterosexist myth that is perhaps the most colonial of all—the article argues that the misappropriation reveals something central about the racialized imaginary underpinning their rhetoric. They reproduce a racialized hierarchy of biological plasticity that positions white Europeans as both the ultimate saviors and the most vulnerable victims in the face of “genderism.” By unpacking the politics through which European anti-gender actors use the “non-Western” world as a rhetorical ruse to further Western supremacy, the article also shows the danger of the impulse to suspend postcolonial feminist critique in an effort to distance oneself from the anti-gender misappropriation of such theory and to unite around a common liberal front. Instead, it proposes that postcolonial thought is more vital than ever if we are to counter current anti-gender movements, their Islamophobia, and their transphobia.