Prevention of gender violence and working against LGBT prejudices: The intersection between collective action and institutional dynamics

Abstract

Abstract This study compares two public campaigns against LGBT prejudices: ‘Dislike Homophobic Bullying’, by CIG, the Portuguese governmental mechanism for citizenship and gender equality; and the performative action ‘Exorcise the Pathologization’, included in the Portuguese branch of the international campaign Stop Trans Pathologization 2012. Using critical discourse analysis (CDA) and visual analysis (VA), we conclude that gender violence is a cross-cultural and structural problem embracing a wide range of forms of violence against women and LGBT people in Portugal. It is grounded in a dominant culture where gender is socially constructed as polarized, complemented by the performativity of discourse, the intersectional and institutional power relations underlying social practices. We demonstrate how public campaigns against homophobia and transphobia can contribute to de-naturalizing the gender divide and gender regime, and thus to changing the cultural ground of gender violence. However, without deconstructing gender, they are at risk of reproducing gender hierarchies.