Paradoxes of the Right-Wing Sexual/Gender Politics in Hungary: Right-Wing Populism and the Ban of Gender Studies

Erzsébet Barát*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to Book/Report typesChapterpeer-review

Abstract (may include machine translation)

In this chapter, I study gender and sexual politics in right-wing populism applied in Hungarian state propaganda during the 2010s with a focus on the intersection of misogyny and transphobia. I address the paradoxes of sexual politics within the dominant discourses of hate-speech mobilized routinely around the discreditation of gender as ideology at the intersection of anti-intellectualism, Islamophobic anti-immigration, and antisemitic anti-liberalism. I also examine the stance by feminists self-identifying as actors of progressive criticism and show that their rhetoric ends up articulating an opening for the right-wing ideologies of transphobia within feminism. I show that this conservative stance is the result of prioritizing the political economy as if a purely material cause of the regime’s hostile gender politics vis-a-vis a merely cultural and as such allegedly depoliticizing activism of transgender people. I propose their relative distinction that is necessary for building an effective coalition against the regime.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationParadoxical Right-Wing Sexual Politics in Europe
EditorsCornelia Möser, Jennifer Ramme, Judit Takács
PublisherPalgrave Macmillan
Pages173-199
Number of pages27
ISBN (Electronic)9783030813413
ISBN (Print)9783030813406, 9783030813437
DOIs
StatePublished - 2022
Externally publishedYes

Publication series

NameGlobal Queer Politics
ISSN (Print)2569-1317
ISSN (Electronic)2569-1309

Keywords

  • Anti-intellectualism
  • Economization of the political
  • Islamophobia
  • Neoliberalism and feminism
  • Transphobia

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