Criminal Law Politics, Gender and Backlash: Simultaneity Effect (Ukrainian Case)

• In Event: Crime, Science and Politics WG Panel 3: Legitimacy and Transformation in Global Criminal Justice

Abstract

Backlash, in its literal sense, refers to the jolt of a misaligned wheel. As a concept, it denotes a strong reaction against a system that has undergone significant change, implying a forceful drive to return to the previous «status quo».
The logic of backlash responses to gender policies in the contemporary world is rooted in the Enlightenment era, when the birth of the modern political order unfolded as a confrontation between the masculine republic and the feminine monarchy. Since then, gender relations have been employed—and continue to be employed—as a metaphor for political domination. In militarized societies, threatened democracies, and authoritarian regimes, the reinforcement of patriarchal conceptions leads to intensified gender polarization and the growing perception of politics as a "male domain."
The paradoxes of femininity lie in the fact that, on the one hand, what is marked as "feminine" is marginalized in political life, subjected to the effects of gender neutralization and gender blindness—phenomena that become particularly pronounced in populist masculinist discourses. On the other hand, the "woman question," through the effect of simultaneity—where one phenomenon manifests through another—emerges at the epicenter of political turmoil, shaping contemporary political agendas through the instrumentalization of the "masculine" and the "feminine."
Criminal law policy, in this context, becomes preoccupied with the search for scapegoats, running the risk of underestimating serious threats. The very construction of the "political" is shaped by masculinization, reinforcing the repressive potential of the system.
General aims of the research paper:
- the formation of an analytic landscape for understanding the gender backlash political context
- the strengthening of the theoretical grounds for rethinking the threat levels in criminal law politics
- the transforming of the idea of simultaneity as an explanatory model of the recognizing of repressive potential in criminal law politics.

Author

• Olena Kharytonova, Yaroslav Mudryi National Law University