The Hydras of Contemporary Anti-Gender and Ultra-Rights Politics

Since the early 2010´s, across the Americas and Europe, anti-gender cyclones have preceded and not rarely fed perfect political storms leading to de-democratization and the take over of state by ultra-right forces. Conservative resistance to the transformations of gender and sexuality orders are not new, but an inherent feature of politics in modernity. But what has been seen in the last decade is not more of the same. For the centrality and the virulence of contemporary anti-gender politics to be fully grasped its imbrication with the post 1960s re-configuration of religious ultra-conservatism and the secular ultra-right, must be closely examined. In particular with regard to how “gender phantasmagories ” easily ignites political panics, which energize the so called Gramscian turn of what used to be reactionary politics. The formations resulting of this shift are complex and mutable. Like hydras, their many heads move in many directions and feed in highly contradictory ideological sources. The ideational and discursive ecosystems they generated have broken through the ordinary boundaries of the political spectrum, attracting actors who may be formally place at left side to the spectrum, and enhancing a confusion, which tends to favor the goals of the ultra-right. My contribution in the panel with be to critically retrace these long courses and sinuous paths and examine the limitations of conceptual frame works, such as backlash and counter movements, to proper grasp these undercurrents and their implications for democratic gender and sexuality politics.