Gender & Authoritarianism
PRA uses the term gender & A form of top-down political system that concentrates state power in the hands of a single leader and/or group of close allies. Learn more to describe the ways that certain cis-heteronormative, male-supremacist, and misogynist “values” are used to maintain authoritarian control over people of all genders, but are particularly limiting to women and trans people. The exertion of power through gender “norms” ranges the scale from the body and home to the nation and globe, and is especially used to regulate BIPOC people. Gender & authoritarianism expansively covers claims to the “natural family” or “traditional family,” while upholding “family values” and working to upend “gender ideology” through anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ activism.
Introduction
Strategies for Resistance
A Framework for Action Against Gender & Authoritarianism
Gendered power inheres in authoritarianism. Countering authoritarianism in the U.S. and globally thus requires a framework for analyzing and understanding the centrality of gender—and the anti-gender campaigns that mobilize it—to authoritarian politics. This analysis also reveals the power of a robust gender justice front in pro-democracy efforts.