Have you been out there protesting? Well…you should be! In this bonus episode, we explore the importance of protest. Participating in a protest isn’t just a cute look – it’s a statistically effective way to make change. So, let’s get out there and fight fascism together!
In this episode we talk about some new, important research, namely the book Transnational Anti-Gender Politics: Feminist Solidarity in Times of Global Attack featuring an interview with the authors, Tomás Ojeda, Billy Holzberg, and Aiko Holvikivi.
Links from the show:
Dr Tomás Ojeda is a queer researcher and trained psychotherapist. He held an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Brighton’s Centre for Transforming Sexuality and Gender (2022-2023), and Visiting Fellow position at the LSE Department of Gender Studies. His research interests lie in the intersections of queer theory, psychosocial studies, anti-gender politics and LGBTIQ+ mental health, with a particular focus on activist and academic responses to current attacks on gender-affirming care. He is the co-editor of the volume Transnational Anti-gender Politics: Feminist Solidarity in Times of Global Attacks (forthcoming, Palgrave Macmillan), and is a member of the Engenderings editorial collective.
Billy Holzberg is a Lecturer/Assistant Professor in Social Justice. His research, teaching and public engagement draw on transnational, liberatory, and collaborative queer feminist approaches.
Prior to joining King’s College London, he was a Fellow in Gender and Sexuality at the Department of Sociology at the London School of Economics, where he also completed his PhD in the Department of Gender Studies.
Billy is broadly interested in the sexual and affective life of power. His research grapples with the role that sexual desire and emotional attachments play in fuelling social inequalities, nationalisms, and neo-fascist politics today and how such dynamics might be counteracted. In exploring these questions, he draws on and contributes to work in queer studies, transnational feminism, affect theory, postcolonial critique, and critical migration and border studies. His work is informed by cultural, visual, and media analysis and he is interested in bridging innovative methodologies and reading practices between the humanities and the social sciences.
His first monograph Affective Bordering: The Emotional Politics of Race, Migration, and Deservingness(Manchester University Press) explores the interplay between affect and migration control, revealing how emotions work to reinforce racial and national hierarchies. Taking the construction of migration as crisis in Germany as its case study, the book brings together queer feminist theories of affect with postcolonial border studies offering an incisive perspective on the reproduction and contestation of borders in today’s world.
Aiko Holvikivi is Assistant Professor of Gender, Peace and Security at the Department of Gender Studies and an Associate Academic at the Centre for Women, Peace and Security, LSE.
My research is interested in transnational movements of knowledges and of people, and how these are produced by and productive of gendered and racialised (in)security. My first monograph, Fixing Gender: The Paradoxical Politics of Peacekeeper Training (Oxford University Press 2024), interrogates these themes through an examination of the practice of ‘gender training’. This research traces the ways in which training produces knowledge about gender; the processes of circulation, translation, resistance and negotiation that are involved; and the epistemic and political effects of such training. The book draws on fieldwork with military and police peacekeepers in East Africa, the Nordic region, West Africa, the Western Balkans, and Western Europe.
A second project through which I have investigated these themes relates to transnational anti-gender politics, how they work, and how activists and scholars are resisting them. I am co-editor, with Billy Holzberg and Tomás Ojeda, of the book Transnational Anti-Gender Politics: Feminist Solidarity in Times of Global Attacks (Palgrave 2024).
Further questions on which I have recently worked include: forced displacement in the WPS agenda; gender experts and expertise; feminist research methods; and sexual exploitation and abuse in international deployments.
I have extensive experience with policy engagement and stakeholder outreach. Before re-entering academia, I worked on questions related to gender and security at the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF) and the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Home Affairs. In these roles I built up experience managing projects on policy research and technical advice and capacity-building in the field of gender and security sector governance, and worked with UN Women; the Albanian State Police and Ministry for Defence; the South African National Defence Forces Peace Mission Training Centre; the Sierra Leone Police; and the UK Stabilisation Unit. As an academic, I have guest lectured at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies and the UK Defence Academy, and serve in an advisory capacity to the Elsie Initiative for Women in Peace Operations (Measuring Opportunities for Women in Peacekeeping) and the Security Sector Reform Advisory Network to the United Nations.
By now we’ve all heard (cried, screamed, etc.) about the election. So now we ask… what tf is going on??? To some, this was a shock. How could so many people, people who are neighbors, peers. and family, vote for what is clearly a fascist trajectory? To us, however, it’s no surprise. Politicians like Trump are part of a larger global anti-gender movement – and that is precisely what this podcast is focused on. Listen to this bonus episode for a short reaction to the election.
Take care of yourselves, take care of each other, and now.. we CONTINUE to organize !!!
By now you’ve heard that Trump and Vance are weird. But are they really? Are they weird or are they just part of the anti-gender movement? Listen to this short and sweet bonus episode to hear our take on it.
Grab your passport and an oat milk latte and join us at the Transnational Anti-Gender Movements and Resistance Conference! This past February, Laurie and Harper travelled to the London School of Economics to engage with other thinkers, activists, academics, and feminists fighting the anti-gender movement across the globe. What a time we had! Hear all about it and maybe learn a thing or two in our first mini episode!
The conference was part of a series of workshops through the research group and network, Transnational ‘Anti-Gender’ Movements and Resistance: Narratives and Interventions. It was co-organized by the London School of Economics (LSE) Department of Gender Studies and the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) Centre for Gender Studies.
The research group: “This new global research network maps the narrative building blocks – the political grammars, conceptual vocabularies, rhetoric, figures, and temporalities – of both ‘anti-gender ideology’ interventions and the political struggles and solidarities engendered in resistance… The research project and network is led by Clare Hemmings, Professor of Feminist Theory and Sumi Madhok, Professor of Political Theory and Gender Studies of the Department of Gender Studies, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK.”
Clare Hemmings: “I have two main areas of research focus – feminist and queer studies – and am particularly interested in thinking through the relationship between these, as well as the ways in which both fields have been institutionalized at national and international levels. This interest has led me to think about how participants in these fields tell stories about their history as well as current form, and to explore how such stories resonate with (rather than against) more conservative agendas. I am particularly concerned with the ways in which ideas travel (or do not) across geographical and temporal borders, and shift when considered from a black feminist or lesbian critical perspective.
Sumi Madhok: “Sumi Madhok is Professor of Political Theory and Gender Studies and Head of the Department of Gender Studies at LSE. Quite unusually, she is a feminist political theorist with an ethnographic sensibility. Her work combines theoretical, conceptual and philosophical investigations with detailed ethnographies of the lived experiences, political subjectivation, and political struggles for rights and justice, specifically, in South Asia.”
Tooba Syed (@Tooba_Sd) is the secretary of the socialist-feminist women collective and organisation, Women Democratic Front. Syed has regional expertise in Pakistan and South Asia and eight years of experience working as a feminist researcher, trainer, campaigner, writer and teacher in the areas of gender studies, gender-based violence, feminist education and climate change adaptation.
Judith Butler is Distinguished Professor of the Graduate School and former Maxine Elliot Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Program of Critical Theory at the University of California, Berkeley. They were the Founding Director of the Critical Theory Program and International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs at UC Berkeley. Butler is active in gender and sexual politics, human rights, anti-war politics, and serves on the advisory board of Jewish Voice for Peace.
Click here to listen to the full keynote panel on YouTube.
Students in this year’s Feminist Theory class at Middlebury College worked together to create an episode for the podcast! They researched, conducted interviews, and did some deep dives into the anti-gender ideology movement in Vermont, Florida, Mexico, and Germany.
Students: El Fahey, Christian Lopez, Aziz, Akbarali, Alex DeFeo, Adriana
Santiago-Lucena, Meron Tesfa, Jannis Kastner, Maria Soto, Nancy Rivera Almanza, Christina Ritter, Ani Hamm
To see the complete reading list mentioned in the episode, check out our resources page!
