What is in a name? Alternative gender knowledge and the retrogressive worlding of radical right digital media

Abstract

ABSTRACT The article explores the role of radical right digital media in alternative gender knowledge production during the 2018 “Referendum for Family” in Romania and critically reflects on the challenges it poses for feminist and LGBTQ+ local struggles for recognition and representation. Using mixed research methods for data collection and analysis, the article seeks to address two questions: What are the discursive articulations of gender in ActiveNews and their intersectional dynamics with sexuality, religion, national identity? What (normative) assumptions underpin alternative knowledge claims on gender in ActiveNews? The study aims to shed light onto an important aspect of anti-gender mobilization, which intends to create what in my view could be labeled a “retrogressive worlding.” The argument of the article is anti-gender campaigns endeavor to create a specific worlding centered on alternative gender knowledge, wherein digital media plays a key role. The findings reveal that alternative gender knowledge fabricated by ActiveNews discredits empirical data and conceptualization of gender, sexuality, family as socially constructed and historically malleable. The anti-gender tropes serve a “retrogressive worlding” that does not accommodate gender as analytical category or non-normative gender display and sexuality.