Of tradwives and TradCaths

Abstract

Building on Borba’s theorisation of the anti-genderism register, the articles in this special issue explore anti-genderism as a political tool for the global right in four cases: online ‘tradwives’ or traditional wives defending national and sexual purity (Tebaldi), homonationalism in the Islamophobic forum r/thedonald (Brotherton), the natalist chronopolitics of Bolsonaro in Brazil (Silva and Dziuba) and the invocation of the spectre of gender to place Poland at the centre of the white West (Baran). Together, they highlight new discursive elements in the nationalist far-right use of the anti-genderism register and the construction of morally marked figures through nationalist discourses of tradition, sexuality, temporality and place. Anti-genderism is not just a call for ‘traditional’ gender or marriage, but the evocation of a gendered nation, an idealised past and a strong future populated with warriors and mothers.