Developments in the Demonization of “Gender Ideology”

When the Vatican first raised concerns about the use of the term “gender” in public law in the 1990s, it claimed to do so in defense of what its spokesperson, Mary Ann Glendon, then sought to describe as a more inclusive feminism. But Pope Francis has now alleged that “every feminism ends up being machismo in a skirt.” With this evolution in mind, this paper will look at the recent opening of new fronts in the war on “gender” – geographic (from Donald Trump’s U.S. to Bolsanaro’s Brazil), educational (from Hungary’s ban on gender studies to the French rejection of the ABCDs of Equality), and constitutional (such as the Bulgarian Constitutional Court’s rejection of the Istanbul Convention because of its use of “gender”).