50451 - Right-Wing Misappropriations of Feminism

Description

Right-wing misappropriations of feminism often co-opt the language of gender equity to promote conservative agendas, undermining the movement's core principles. By framing issues like women's empowerment in the context of actively choosing traditional gender roles or family values (e.g., Trad Wife social media representations), repurposing body positivity to endorse intentional weight loss and cosmetic surgeries, crafting anti-choice and anti-trans rhetorics that emphasize regret narratives, and proclaiming concerns about women’s safety and well-being by focusing on supposed threats to these (e.g., immigrants, trans bathroom access, access to medical technologies), these narratives dilute feminist struggles for systemic change and reinforce existing inequalities rather than challenge them. For this thematic panel, we seek papers that explore right-wing misappropriations of feminism and that outline effective strategies to guard against such misappropriation.

Sub Unit

• Section on Sociology of Sex and Gender / Right-Wing Misappropriations of Feminism

Presider

• Cinzia D. Solari, University of Massachusetts Boston

Individual Presentations

• Anti-Gender Mobilizations in the UN - Tara Marie Gonsalves, Columbia University

• Conservative Feminism: An Analysis of a Patriarchal Bargain - Emily Wagner, University of Nevada-Las Vegas; Torisha Khonach, Los Angeles Trade-Technical College

• Defending Feminism Through Intersectionality: Feminist Strategies Amid Right-Wing Movements in Brazil - Roberta S Pamplona, Mount Royal University

• Heels and Holsters: The Complicit Intimacies of Police Wives - Adora Lily Svitak, Yale University

• Moms for Liberty and Right-Wing Anti-Futurity - Piper Thomson, University of Virginia

Discussant

• Madeleine Pape, University of Lausanne

Session Organizers

• Carla A. Pfeffer, Michigan State University

• Heather McLaughlin, Oklahoma State University

• Cinzia D. Solari, University of Massachusetts Boston

• Dan Cassino, Fairleigh Dickinson University-College at Florham

• Katherine Mueller, The Ohio State University

• Ethel L. Mickey, California State Univ-San Bernardino