Date: 8 May 2025
Abstract:
Anti-gender movements are now well-established transnationally and have mobilised against a broad spectrum of targets including reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ rights, gender equality policies and the teaching of gender studies and sex and relationships education. In recent years, however, anti-trans politics have moved to the forefront. In the UK, where anti-gender politics were once less established than in many European neighbours, a mobilisation against trans liberation that began life as a feminist project has acted as a conduit for conservative opposition to ‘gender ideology’. This panel event will explore the landscape of anti-gender politics in the UK, asking to what extent anti-trans feminisms and broader anti-gender movements have converged.
Video:
Speakers:
Fran Amery (she/her) is a Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Bath. Her research addresses contemporary struggles around gender and LGBTQ+ equality, specifically regarding reproductive rights and justice and the rise of anti-gender movements. Her current research addresses, firstly, organised transphobia, particularly the ‘gender-critical’ movement in the UK, but also its international linkages. Secondly, her research addresses menstrual justice and injustice globally in the context of activism, politics and policy. She is the author of Beyond Pro-Life and Pro-Choice: The Changing Politics of Abortion in Britain.
Sandra Duffy (they/she) is Lecturer in Law at University of Bristol Law School. Sandra’s research has been published in generalist and specialist law journals as well as edited collections. Their most recent publications have focused on anti-gender movements, and trans-related moral panics. Sandra is currently writing their first monograph, on the regulation of gendered identities in the postcolonial context.
Sarah Lamble is a Professor of Criminology & Queer Theory at Birkbeck, University of London. Lamble’s research addresses questions of gender, sexuality, and the criminal legal system; and explores queer feminist alternatives to imprisonment, policing, and punishment. Lamble is currently finishing a Leverhulme-funded research project, Beyond sex versus gender: Rethinking the ‘gender wars’ in Britain.
Alison Phipps is Professor of Sociology at Newcastle University and Honorary Professor in the Centre for Women’s Studies at the University of York. She has been writing about reactionary feminism(s) and anti-gender movements, especially as they relate to sexual violence, for almost a decade. Phipps is the author of Me, Not You: the trouble with mainstream feminism (Manchester University Press, 2020). Her forthcoming book, out later this year, is called Sexual Violence in Racial Capitalism (also with Manchester University Press).