Authors

Discussion

The abolishment of women’s and LGBTQ rights has become one of the main goals of the so-called “anti-gender campaigns” emerging on a global scale. This study investigates discourses and notions that reject the concepts of “gender” and “gender-based violence” in times of “anti-gender campaigns” in Bulgaria. Based on discourse analysis and data from social media comments, the study demonstrates how “gender politics of fear” in Bulgaria have been included in the heteronormative, political, religious, nationalistic, and anti-feminist discourses and how gender and LGBTQ equality policies are identified as a threat to the traditional Bulgarian values. As a result of this, the Bulgarian Constitutional Court decided that the term “gender” is against the Constitution and the “natural order”. Having projected “public fear”, the anti-gender platforms and networks in Bulgaria have been further used to sabotage the National Strategy for Children and other state policies. This presentation will analyse (a) the actors, the strategies and the rhetoric of the anti-gender campaigns and (b) the consecutive anti-gender/LGBTQI actions inspired by the “success” of the anti-gender campaigns.