The “Free Speech Bus”: Making “gender ideology” appear through media and performance

Abstract

This article argues that the concept of “gender ideology” produces and reproduces reactionary subjectivities using different media (videos, texts, memes, images, etc.), diverse platforms (Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube, TikTok, etc.), and performative actions that form a decentralized propaganda machine that propagates, mobilizes, agitates, and organizes reactionary bases. Using close reading as method of inquiry, I analyze a vast archive of images, videos, and documents from the Spanish organization Hazte Oír/CitizenGo, focusing on the #FreeSpeechBus campaign in which buses with transphobic (2017) and antifeminist (2019) slogans toured different cities across Spain and around the world. The article unfolds in four parts. In the first part, I describe gender ideology and the bus campaign as the product of a decentralized propaganda machine that produces, agitates, and organizes reactionary subjectivities through media and incarnated discourses. In the second section, I situate my perspective in relation to existing literature about gender ideology. In the third section, I will illustrate how “gender ideology” relies on the appropriation of the vocabulary and mobilization strategies traditionally associated with liberation movements as well as a fascist and right-wing repertoire of performative and media strategies. In the final part, I show the importance of fostering a transfeminist antifascism to fight “gender ideology,” an approach that supports the work of activists who are fighting in the trenches, builds on efforts to decenter white cis women as the subject of feminism, supports sex workers, and reclaims media and performance as indispensable weapons in the political battle.