Gender Recognition and the Anti-Gender Movement

In recent decades, jurisdictions across the world have made progress towards gender equality and LGBTQI+ rights. However, a growing backlash, known as the anti-gender movement, is spreading across the world. Mobilizing a broad coalition of groups including family and pro-life associations, radical nationalist parties, and right-wing populists, the Anti gender movement frames “gender ideology” as a neo-colonial imposition from the West, targeting sexuality education, sexual and reproductive rights, and LGBTQ+ rights ( FEPS, 2022).

This coordinated and transnational attack on the LGBTQI+ community is part of a wider anti-gender movement. This hate is a well-organized and well-funded machinery that is being heavily resourced by organizations based in the US and beyond. In May 2023, the Human Rights Campaign released a snapshot report on anti-LGBTQI+ legislation and found over 520 anti-LGBTQI+ bills had been introduced into the state legislature, with over 220 of them specifically targeting trans and non-binary people (HRC, 2023).

Beyond political angling on gender-recognition legislation, new materials such as the Cass Report threaten to introduce a new regime of anti-trans medicalization. This Report already has anti-gender proponents and state legislators around the world calling upon it as a resource in developing anti-gender recognition legislation. This is simply the next iteration of  a historic legacy of persecution and discrimination by the scientific and medical communities (Halem, Manion, Streed, 2024).

Drawing upon international human rights laws and policies we hope that this webinar will build on a comprehensive strategy for protecting trans and gender diverse communities.

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