From anti-gender experiences in Catalonia and the Basque Country to the proposal of anti-gender as political violence

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Abstract (English)

In recent years, feminist and LGBTIQ+ movements in Europe have increasingly become a target from organized oppositional anti-gender actors. While substantial scholarship has focused on the ideological roots and strategies of these groups, less attention has been paid to how this opposition is experienced by those it targets. This article shifts the analytical focus from the perpetrators to those subjected to these attacks, exploring how activists and advocates experience this hostility not merely as ideological disagreement, but as ideologically driven violence framed as political violence. Drawing on 33 interviews and 4 focus groups with feminist and LGBTIQ+ advocates and civil society actors in Catalonia and the Basque Country (Spain), we analyze how this violence is perceived, experienced, and navigated. Our findings reveal that it manifests both in physical and digital spaces and operates through emotional mechanisms such as fear, exhaustion, and hyper-vigilance. These emotional effects have tangible political consequences, including self-censorship, withdrawal from public discourse, and decreased participation in activism and institutional politics. The intensity and reach of these impacts suggest that political violence against feminist and LGBTIQ+ politics is effective in achieving its goal of demobilizing those who challenge patriarchal and heteronormative orders. By centering lived experiences, this article contributes to feminist scholarship on anti-gender movements by conceptualizing opposition to feminist politics as a form of targeted political violence. It emphasizes the central role of emotions in both the operation and effects of this violence and highlights its entanglement with intersectional structural inequalities, including sexism, racism, fatphobia, and classism. We argue that addressing this form of violence requires moving beyond frameworks that view it as spontaneous, personal, or isolated. Instead, it must be understood as a coordinated and strategic effort to undermine feminist political projects.