Where feminists dare

Abstract

This paper focuses on the public debate in Poland and Italy concerning the right to abortion in the contemporary rise of populist neo-conservative forces in Europe and of a global feminist movement. In both countries, the historical Catholic interference into women's reproductive rights and self-determination has been enforced by the renewed alliance of right-wing governments and pro-life groups to converge into a transnational “anti-gender war”. This represents a real backlash against women’s achievements over the last decades in terms of reproductive and sexual citizenship, which appears to be the battlefield for redefinition of western citizenship in times of global crisis. Although different genealogies, we identified a common framing of neo-conservative discourse, and of feminist claims and practices, as that of feminist strikes and social mutualism. In this perspective, we consider these practices as a normativity from below, arguing that feminist movement is addressing a new paradigm of citizenship.

Intersectionality and feminist movements from a global perspective

“…Over the past 20 years a so‐called conservative backlash has reacted to the progressivism of feminist movements and the spread of gender mainstreaming in institutional contexts (Biroli & Caminotti, 2020; Kuhar & Paternotte, 2017). In many countries, far‐right or religiously inspired parties have seized power, playing on the terrain of gender and sexuality a reactionary closure (Bielska‐Brodziak et al., 2020; Biroli & Caminotti, 2020; Kuhar & Paternotte, 2017). In all the cases taken into account, feminist movements developed claims, frames and action that are not only concerned by gender inequalities, but are also aware of the intersecting action of oppressions, ranging from religious norms, authoritarianism, colonialism, extractivism.…”

“…In Europe, feminist protests included countries such as Spain (Campillo, 2019;Portos, 2019), Italy (Barone & Bonu, 2022;Bonu, 2022), France (Lepinard, 2020), and Britain (Aune & Holyoak, 2018). In Ireland and Poland these protests focused mainly, but not solely, on the issue of abortion (Bielska-Brodziak et al, 2020;Calkin et al, 2020;Hall, 2019;Mansbridge, 1993;Szczygielska, 2019).…”

Unpacking LGBT+ hate crimes discourse in Italy: between symbolic recognition and claims for sexual citizenship

“…The war on gender is the heteropatriarchal backlash against sexual citizenship achievements, ongoing since the end of the 20th century and launched by the alliance of reactionary and neoliberal forces throughout the West within the processes of de-democratization following economic crises and the consequent dismantling of welfare state systems described by Brown (2006). The ideological pillars of the anti-gender repertoire consist of the moral imperative to heterosexual reproduction and attacking the right to abortion (Paternotte and Kuhar, 2018; Bielska-Brodziak et al , 2020), through the imposition of the traditional family as the main and exclusive place of recognition of affective and reproductive relationships, social discipline and control, and distribution of welfare resources (Brandzel, 2005; Gago, 2019). Therefore, one of the explicit neoconservative goals is to expropriate LGBT+ people from reproductive rights and sexual citizenship (Herdt, 2009; Bellè et al , 2016).…”

Empathy and Mutuality in Qualitative Research

“…(Blake 2007, 415) Researcher by virtue of being "insiders" in specific communities can understand and empathise with participants' viewpoints (Oakley 1981). Due to the possession of similar values and goals in terms of women's rights, as well as a personal history that predates the research engagement, my position as a trustworthy person, an "insider" of the movement, has often been strengthened by interviewees' references to jointly undertaken 3 Studies conducted in Poland including (Mandal and Kofta 2009;Bielska-Brodziak et al, 2020) show that being a feminist in Poland contains a real stigma and indicates that women who admit to this are treated with aversion. Feminists contest the patriarchal social order based on male domination, in which the status of women is automatically low.…”