Depicting "Gender Ideology" as Affective and Arbitrary: Organized Actions Against Sexual and Gender Rights in Latin America Today

DANIELA LOSIGGIO

Affect, Gender and Sexuality in Latin America

Palgrave Macmillan

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2021; p. 19 - 40

The use of the term ?gender ideology? in Latin America coincided with the proliferation of the movement ?Con mis hijos no te metas? (Don?t mess with my kids) in 2016. Initially, the expression was a source of confusion, as ?ideology? in feminism has traditionally referred to a set of practices, beliefs, and ideas that help legitimize the power of cis-heteropatriarchy. Therefore, when read out of context, it was not initially apparent that ?gender ideology? had been turned on its head to invoke the system of ?absurd,? ?irrational,? ?arbitrary,? and ?anti-scientific? beliefs first presented in Simone de Beauvoir?s The Second Sex (1949) and further developed in Judith Butler?s Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990). The aim of ?gender ideology,? according to this new reading, is to refuse to acknowledge people?s biological sex, thus doing away with a series of fundamental liberties. In a few words, conservative intellectuals have systematically built the ?gender ideology? discourse to take a stance against a full set of practices, struggles, and philosophical perspectives stemming from feminism, queer theory, and activism for sexual rights, reproductive health, and gender equality. As part of their discourse, scientific, legal, and logical-philosophical jargon is utilized to induce ?moral panic? (Korolczuk, 2014) in response to the feminist ?attack? and its implications, i.e., the destruction of the ?natural family,? ?human biology,? and sexual ethics of any kind.This chapter will focus on the discursive strategy of the new anti-rights organizations in Latin America and their efforts to rekindle antinomies that feminist thinkers have already addressed: feelings and desires versus reason, the particular versus the universal, egotistical interests versus the common good, culture versus biology, and ideas versus reality. While one item of each of these pairs is presented as illusory, the other is put forth as objective. This analysis will be accompanied by a brief history of the mobilization against ?gender ideology? in Latin America, with a description of the social actors involved in this movement and its discursive strategy. The theory of ideology provides a framework for this critique.