Anti-genderism in Turkey: Masculinist entrenchment through cultural intimacies

Abstract

Anti-gender movements jeopardise the rights of minoritised groups including women and LGBTQ+ people. Examining the existing literature on anti-genderism and the context in Turkey, this paper relates neoliberal conservative social policies and anti-rights front to top-down masculinist entrenchment, mainly operationalising cultural intimacies. The paper examines the main beneficiaries of anti-genderism in Turkey, articulated into top-down masculinist entrenchment aligned with self-preservation, victimhood discourses and the performance of swashbuckling masculinity. Anti-gender politics mainly operate as part of a top-down social engineering project drawing on the logic of masculinist protection and their reception at the grassroots level is predicated on cultural intimacies forged through mutual recognition and reciprocal relationships, which also maintains hegemonic authoritarian political and neoliberal economic order. Although outright support for anti-genderism is still limited in society, the current majoritarian-authoritarian-securitarian political agenda might exacerbate this in future. Hence, we present a comprehensive analysis of how top-down anti-gender politics are negotiated through cultural intimacies in wider society.