Paper short abstract:

Linking northern to southern debates on backlash, we argue that this can be understood as complex crisis management, to mitigate volatility in gender orders, threatening elites and capitalism. It is used to manage crises with fixes in; binary ‘bodies’, heteronormative ‘families’ and ethnic ‘nations’

Paper long abstract:

Twenty-five years after the Beijing Conference we should be celebrating but are facing a tide of misogyny, homo/trans-phobia, attacks on sexual and reproductive rights and more. Terms like ‘patriarchal backlash’ have increased in use to describe similar trends in different settings, yet mainly focused on Europe and the Americas. The concept remains contested as variably; an expression of male ‘resistance’, a pro-active patriarchal ‘restoration’, or a mode for a broader ‘reactionary’ politics to play out and coalesce. Common narratives behind these trends comingle ideas of gender, ethnic, class, racial and sexual hierarchies, stoking and exploiting majority groups’ fears – of losing privilege, of porous borders and alien bodies. Linking this literature to a broader set of southern debates we explore how best to understand such backlash and how masculinity figures in its operations.

We argue that these phenomena are better understood as forms of complex crisis management. A confluence of crises – political, economic, climate and (now) pandemic – operating at different timescales and paces creates volatility in gendered social relations, threatening the reproduction of elite rule and capitalist growth. Forms of 'patriarchal backlash’ are thus being used to manage such complexes through a series of spatial fixes in; the individual space in the binary sexed ‘body’, the privatised space of the heteronormative ‘family’, and the bordered and ordered space of the ethnic ‘nation’. In better understanding the patriarchal nature and machinations of these forces we can seize opportunities presented by this confluence of crises to expose and resist backlash.