6. The Old New: Anti-Gender Mobilizations in North Macedonia

Not everyone in North Macedonia was surprised by the emergence and success of anti-gender mobilizations, accompanied by their captivating and provocative tropes, narratives, and figures (Kuhar & Paternotte, 2017). Those immersed in the study, advocacy, and quotidian challenges related to the histories of gender and sexual inequality anticipated such developments, seeing anti-gender mobilization in North Macedonia as a manifestation of the enduring and deep-seated gender inequality, homophobia, and transphobia, with the new twist, new frameworks, strategies, and actors who put them into practice.

The term ‘gender ideology’ was introduced by the fourth President of North Macedonia, Gјorge Ivanov, in 2017, during his public speech regarding the ratification of the Istanbul Convention. Nevertheless, a more structured mobilization against ‘gender ideology’, marked by the onset of anti-gender campaigns, gained momentum in years 2020–2021. This is why, in 2018, Miškovska Kajevska claimed that within the broader anti-gender mobilizations across Europe, US, and the Global South, ‘where the terms ‘gender ideology’ and/or ‘gender theory’ are more often than not employed to name the danger one (preventively) mobilizes against, such terms were absent from the relevant discussions in Macedonia’ (2018b, 62).

Despite the dynamic transformations of the socio-political, cultural, and economic landscape over the past decades, the enduring reality of entrenched patriarchal regimes and pervasive homophobic sentiments persist among the citizens of North Macedonia (Dimitrov, 2012, 2015; Cvetkovich & Dimitrov, 2015). Given this context, the presence of anti-gender rhetoric no longer comes as shocking, especially if taking into account previous experiences with religious entities and government-backed initiatives opposing gender equality, such as the anti-abortion campaigns that took place in 2013 (Miškovska Kajevska, 2018a), or the publicly stated homophobia and transphobia of the previous government, led by the conservative, Christian, and nationalist party VMRO-DPMNE, in power from 2006 to 2017 (Miškovska Kajevska, 2016, 2018b).

In a context shaped by the dominant heteronormative, patriarchal, and homonegative attitudes (Dimova, 2022; Savevska & Ivanovska, 2022; Kolozova & Savoska., 2019; Topuzovska et al., 2019; Cekić & Bliznakovski, 2023), accentuated by an enduring influence of the VMRO-DPMNE (and their public vilification of the civil society), structural inequalities and inadequate institutional support for the implementation of gender and sexual equality policies (European Commission, 2019–2023; Women’s Rights in Western Balkans 2021–2023), we claim that anti-gender campaigns in North Macedonia were fuelled by the desire to keep heteropatriarchal hegemony firmly in place. In other words, the primary objective of the local anti-gender initiatives is to uphold hegemony rather than to respond to or resist the existing gender-positive policies, practices, and knowledge. What anti-gender actors counter is the lived experience of dislocation, caused by the socio-political and economic crisis induced by neoliberal rationality, broken political promises, and exploitation, which shattered the horizons of intelligibility of one’s structural position in society.

In this chapter, we differentiate between the current forms of anti-gender mobilizations, acknowledging their continuity with the negative opinions on feminism and LGBT + rights held by the traditionally conservative parts of society, and the patriarchal and heteronormative politics of political regimes in North Macedonia. Current anti-gender mobilizations build upon and repackage previous ‘heteronationalist narratives’ (Ćeriman & Vučković Juroš, 2023), and represent distinct phenomena with specific discursive and narrative strategies, the strategies of political mobilization, public organization, and institutional/legal/policy interventions and effects. We focus on the specific means through which transnationally structured anti-gender discourses have been translated into the local context.

In this section, we discuss the conditions and socio-political background in North Macedonia that enabled the emergence of anti-gender mobilizations. We propose to look at a conjuncture of four different socio-economic, political, and affective crises that produced fertile ground for the growth of anti-gender mobilizations.

First, we point to a broad complex of the (bio/necro)political frames embroiled in the socio-economic experiences that produce political anxieties, uncertainty, and fear. The politics of fear is integral to the anti-gender affective rhetoric that taps ‘into people’s economic anxiety and growing sense of ontological insecurity’ (Graff & Korolczuk, 2022, 30), which was part and parcel of the decade-long authoritarian rule of the populist, conservative, and illiberal VMRO-DPMNE (Lambevski, 2015). The same period was characterized by the socio-economic devastation and the transformation of the Macedonian citizen into a homo laborans, imprisoned in the processes of making ends meet in the struggle for bare survival. The cruelly optimistic attachments (Berlant, 2011) to great national narratives were the only form of sustained survival in the citizen’s life. These investments were further encouraged by the nationalist panic fuelled by state disputes with Greece and Bulgaria. The dispute with Greece led to changing the constitutional name of the country, while Bulgaria set a veto on opening EU accession negotiation dialogues. All these reproduced and mobilized the nationalist fears of foreign invasion, reflected in anti-gender discourses of ‘gender ideology’ as Western, EU, bureaucratic colonization by other means (Graff & Korolczuk, 2022; Zaharijević & Lončarević, 2020). The outmigration of citizens was the other survival strategy. Both strategies were motivated by the high levels of ‘corruption, eroded trust in public institutions, perceptions of socioeconomic inequality, persisting intergenerational poverty, low-quality healthcare and education systems, alarming levels of air pollution ‘enriched’ by outdated and harmful technologies donated by Western democracies’ (Cvetkovska et al., 2021), the relatively high poverty rate, and the fact that ‘almost 400,000 people lived in poverty in 2019’ (World Bank, 2023, 8). In 2022, approximately 70% of the population expressed dissatisfaction with the current socio-economic situation, while 40% believed that the economy would worsen in the coming year (ibid.).

Pessimism, political depression, and anxiety about the future (Bajraktarov et al., 2023) are confirmed by the over 1,300,000 prescriptions for diazepam¹ issued in 2022, a number that is certainly higher if illicit purchases are taken into account (Stojančov, 2022; Radio MOF, 2023), and even more disconcerting considering that the country’s population is less than two million. This ominous figure bears witness to the perceived limitations, sense of inhibition, and inability of interest and enjoyment, specific to the negative emotional experiences of the many marginalized and dispossessed subjectivities and groups. This stands in the way of a sustained and long-lasting interest in complex objects and situations, of an interested, curious, and playful engagement with the world, and an expansion of cognitive and motivational relations with the world and others (Tomkins, 1995, 75–105).

We must also include the phenomenological experiences of vulnerability and broken futures related to the COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with the ongoing economic crisis. Together they served as the background for mobilizations of the discourses of security, protection, danger, panic, and sources for an increasing distrust towards state institutions and international corporations. Dissatisfaction with democracy increased significantly, so the ‘bigger part of the population believes that the Western style of democracy is not the most suitable for the local political system’ (Institut za demokratija, 2022, 12). This led to the exacerbation of the authoritarian and right-wing populist tendencies among citizens, who see the political system ‘as inherently ineffective in terms of citizen participation in decision-making’, and are ‘prone to conspiracy theories, and believing that what the state needs is “strong leaders”’ (Rechica et al., 2022, 31).

This conjuncture and its multiple stressors generated the effects of dislocation through which the subject’s positions and habituated forms of navigating the ordinary and the social were brought into question. Dislocation, as the experience of crisis, enabled the reorientation towards contesting forms of discourses and identifications as alternative forms of organization of experience (Laclau, 2005; Marchart, 2018). The irruption of anti-gender mobilizations is, we claim, primarily not just a symptom of the crisis of neoliberal consensus and liberal democracy (Kováts, 2017; Kováts, 2018) nor is it just a general ‘reactionary response to neoliberalism’ (Graff & Korolczuk, 2022). Rather, anti-gender actors actively mobilize a new populist logic, articulating a ‘response to the dislocation of the [political] structure’, (Laclau, 2000, 40) through which a certain future is created and made possible, while the present is made intelligible, consequential, and meaningful. The anti-gender actors enact a ‘hegemonic recomposition’ of the structure, by making use of gender, sexuality, sex, body, family, and nation as the ‘particular nodal points of articulation’ (Laclau, 2000, 44) of the possible future, of the intelligible present that reflect and reproduce the already deeply entrenched hegemony of heteropatriarchy.

The second crisis we want to emphasise relates to the ‘Colourful Revolution’, the political and discursive shifts that it introduced, and its failure to maintain the hegemonic articulation it introduced through the protests. We claim this to be one of the major causes of the emergence of anti-gender mobilizations in North Macedonia, and of its (ab)use of the rhetoric of human rights and strategies of civil organizing and resistance. The ‘Colourful Revolution’ refers to the series of protests during 2015 and 2016, spurred by the leaked conversations that disclosed mass violations of human rights and illegal wiretapping of approximately 20,000 politicians, journalists, public intellectuals, and activists by the then-ruling VMRO-DPMNE. These protests toppled the VMRO-DPMNE and created a new progressive liberal/left populist subject, framed through the signifiers of active citizenship and sovereignty of the people, unified through the production of tendentially empty signifiers such as freedom, equality, justice, human rights, civil society, the people, and the political. We argue that the struggles mobilized around these signifiers and the ensuing radical transformation of public discourse created the background for the various civil mobilizations, to which anti-gender mobilizations belong. Even more importantly, the political hegemonic (re)articulation lead by the Social-Democrats and other social actors during and shortly after the Colourful Revolution, failed to meet demands and fulfil desires and promises, which led to enhanced political apathy, political depression, disappointment, resentment, and anger among the majority of citizens. These failures and the surge of distrust in institutions and democratic procedures enabled, as Grzebalska (2016) showed, ‘conservative protest movements [to] create a space for [marginalized] people to vent their fears and insecurities, voice their anger and dissatisfaction with politics and claim a sense of agency and empowerment that European liberals and social democrats once promised—but failed to deliver’. Broken promises helped transform citizens into ‘the silent majority’ and ‘ordinary people’ antagonized by corrupted elites, displacing their political anger onto the phantasmatic enemy condensed in ‘gender’. This incoherent and empty signifier functioned as the symbolic glue (Kováts, 2018) or the sticky object (Ahmed, 2004). It could stick due to the rich history of misogyny and homophobia.

Our third point relates to the limitations specific to the Macedonian history of gender equality struggles and the related crisis in the effectiveness of political representation by civil society organizations. Activist struggles and discourses on gender equality have been reduced to identitarian issues that lack intersectionality (Cvetkovich, 2019; Ghodsee, 2004). On the other hand, the hegemony of the liberal consensus and the proceduralist, technocratic, and legalist frameworks characterize human rights organizations, including women’s and LGBT + organizations (Kolozova & Savoska, 2019; 22–26). Mouffe’s critique of particularism, embodied in the neoliberal political rationality and its framing of political agency through free market rationality and individual human rights as the moralization of the constitutively antagonistic political field (Mouffe, 2018), is pertinent here. We believe it to be particularly useful in understanding the rise of anti-gender mobilizations in North Macedonia, and in seeing it as a response to the reduction of the political to individual motivations and interests, framed by the liberal politics of the greatest part of the Macedonian civil society. Anti-gender actors appeal to the void created by liberalism’s individualist and politically neutral managerialism, being ‘better aware that politics always consists in the creation of […] collective identities’ (Mouffe, 2005, 55), no matter how pseudo-political and anti-social the alleged collective identities evoked by anti-gender actors are. Also relevant for this context is the dominant focus on EU integration processes and the international advocacy specific to gender and sexual equality, which in the populist imagination of anti-gender mobilizations easily creates a metonymic link among feminism, LGBTI + rights, transgender rights, and the imperialist and colonialist Western powers.

Ultimately, new culture wars and the new ‘Cold war’ geopolitical constellation and crisis are the last infrastructural source for anti-gender mobilizations in North Macedonia we want to mention. By this, we refer to the translation of concepts, ideas, tropes, rhetoric, and strategies already developed in Western countries, such as the UK and the US, and the Roman Catholic Church, and their appropriation in North Macedonia made possible by the unaccounted financial support and the international travels of major anti-gender actors. Starting from 2022 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the influence of Russian ideological strategies, particularly those related to the field of gender and sexuality, has become salient (Trajanoski, 2023). This became most evident with the activation of the pro-Russian nationalist, conservative party Rodina Makedonija, one of the key actors in anti-gender mobilizations. It is also visible in the close connections of Gordana Godzo, one of the central voices of anti-gender mobilizations and the leading representative of the Coalition for the Protection of Children, with this party, as well as her public endorsement of Putin’s anti-gender politics.

Springing from the landscape we described, at the beginning of the new decade anti-gender campaigns gained widespread support. Two intersecting frames delineated the key targets of anti-gender mobilization. The first relates to the opposition to any deviation from the heteronormative patriarchal paradigm, with the aim to stop initiatives promoting gender equality and diverse sexual orientations’ visibility. This is evidenced in the resistance mounted against the 2021 educational reform targeting gender-sensitive and comprehensive sexuality education, in the campaigns against the Skopje Pride Parade, and attempts at the censorship of certain publications. The second frame sought to reinforce systemic boundaries by supporting policies excluding LGBT + individuals and obstructing systemic commitment to gender equality. The examples include resistance to Legal Gender Recognition² and the Law on Gender Equality,³ followed by the initiatives to re-introduce the terminology of ‘equality between men and women’ instead of ‘gender equality’ in the equal opportunities strategies.

In pursuing their primary objectives, anti-gender actors engaged in various forms of association. The genesis of their initiatives can be traced back to four groups—Prezemi Odgovornost (Take Responsibility), Od nas za nas (United We Stand Tall), Ucebnici i nastava mora da ima (Textbooks and School Presence are a Must), and Da go zacuvame brakot i semejstvoto (To Save Marriage and Family). In 2021, they blended into the Coalition for the Protection of Children,⁴ comprising of 38 entities, among them humanitarian organizations, religious associations, informal initiatives, and political parties. The Coalition gained momentum in 2022, when the Orthodox foundation Eleusis from Strumica, the largest city in southeastern North Macedonia, joined, becoming the potent mobilizing force with the support of the local government, media, and the community. Strumica evolved into a hub for anti-gender activities, extending its influence to the neighbouring municipalities and beyond. This ‘grassroots’ approach presented an authentic image of self-organization, contrasting with the perceived elite nature of the country’s civil society. By 2023, the five major religious denominations in North Macedonia, later also joined by the Serbian Orthodox Church, unified their efforts, gaining substantial political support, and played a role in rejecting the Law on Gender Equality and the legal gender recognition model within the Law on Civil Registry.

The mobilization strategies employed by anti-gender actors demonstrate a great deal of flexibility. Their repertoire of actions features protests, petitions, public forums, film screenings, and advocacy initiatives. Initially, anti-gender actors established their presence through online communication channels, including Facebook group and pages, Instagram profiles, and websites. Their online engagements featured diverse activities, mobilizing the public for specific actions (e.g., hindering the inclusion of Comprehensive Sexuality Education within the curricula for elementary education) and educational initiatives such as online lectures and webinars (e.g., featuring Miša Đurković, the Serbian political philosopher and director of the Institute for European Studies in Belgrade), disseminating influence and garnering support.

The consolidation of alliances, notably with the Macedonian Orthodox Church, enhanced the visibility of anti-gender campaigns both in the traditional media and in the public, through their street actions and their appearances in the squares, churches, and state institutions. Protests emerged as a favoured avenue for political mobilization within anti-gender initiatives, especially against specific legislation or policies. The trajectory began with demonstrations at the Ministry of Education and Science, expanding to protests led by parents opposing ‘gender ideology’ in education. A significant protest orchestrated by the Macedonian Orthodox Church against the adoption of the Law on Gender Equality and the Law on Civil Registry marked the pinnacle of this summoning strategy. In contrast to the vibrant atmosphere of Pride parades, these protests embraced the stereotypical imagery associated with conservative mobilizations, incorporating religious and nationalist symbols. Notably, parents and children served as primary speakers, expressing concerns about perceived threats to their personal safety and well-being attributed to gender equality policies. The protest led by the Macedonian Orthodox Church distinguished itself in scale and organization, featuring prominent figures like the Archbishop of the Orthodox Church and the academic Katica Kulafkova⁵ from the Macedonian Academy for Science and Arts.

Protests often emerged as a key tool for mobilization, either preceding or following other strategies like petitions and public events. In Strumica, with the support of the local government, the Eleusis Orthodox Foundation organized three public forums in 2023, hosting speakers from diverse fields, including doctors, professors, 'gender-critical' women’s rights activists, and anti-gender advocates. Film screenings, covering around 30 municipalities, showcased carefully selected transphobic films. Public sessions, held in over 15 local municipalities, resulted in policy changes in, for the time being, 12 municipalities, substituting ‘gender’ with ‘sex’ and replacing ‘gender equality’ with ‘equality of the sexes’ or ‘equal opportunities for women and men’, along with the introduction of the new definition of men and women. This definition stipulates that a woman is an individual born with the female biological sex, and a man is an individual born with the male biological sex, irrespective of their internal feelings or self-determination.

Across North Macedonian cities and towns, public spaces like squares, streets, churches, cultural venues, and local government halls transformed into arenas for mobilization, socialization, and ideological bonding with the local population. The events served not only as platforms for the ideological instruction, but also involved a series of promotional activities as a manifestation of public engagement and socialization within the local community. Whether through film screenings, petitions, or public forums, the activities were enacted in a grassroots manner, with local teachers, journalists, public officials, and clergy actively disseminating promotional materials in streets, markets, schools, bus stops, and churches. In this way, engagement moved beyond preaching to the passive audience: the local population was turned into an active contributor to the collective struggle.

The visual documentation of the public events captures ‘common people’ listening to the speeches, engaged in the discussions, and exchanging opinions and concerns. Mobilization equals socialization, particularly for the so-called ‘oppressed, silent majority’. The idea that there is someone to share your concerns with and a collective willingness to resist, acted as the powerful means of bonding and affirmation of belonging. In essence, these occasions served a dual purpose, functioning both as the spaces of mobilization and forums for the socialization of ‘concerned citizens’. The concerns about the perceived threat to the heteropatriarchal hegemony and the commitment to resist this threat became the vehicles for the connection and affirmation of collective identity.

The strategies and narratives employed by anti-gender actors play an active role in shaping social reality, crafting and imposing their worldview through carefully chosen expressions, imagery, and symbolism. In the North Macedonian context, there are six distinctive discursive strategies and narratives⁶ that demonstrate both commonalities and some specificities in comparison with broader regional and European contexts.

The foremost identifiable discursive strategy and narrative of anti-gender mobilizations relies on populist narratives and polarization strategies, casting ‘gender ideology’ as an ‘empty signifier’ (Laclau, 2005; Mayer & Sauer, 2017) that acts as a symbolic placeholder. The term encapsulates deeply ingrained concepts and ideals within our language and culture, such as those protecting what is conservatively considered to be natural, normal, or of national interest, known as an attack of at least one component of the ‘Ns triad'—nature, nation, or normality (Kuhar & Patternote, 2017). By framing it as a pervasive threat, anti-gender campaigns encourage individuals to identify as a unified front against gender, gender ideology, gender equality, or gender and sexual diversity, branding those who are in any way associated with them as a common enemy.

The main goal of the strategy is to convince the public that societal issues—such as poverty, inequality, climate change, and the erosion of healthcare—are related to the neglect of the heteropatriarchal system. These issues are strategically utilized to manipulate the alleged concerns regarding the simulated fall of the three Ns, and produce emotional responses, associating them with everyday occurrences. As an instance, healthcare coverage for transgender people, access to free contraception, or protective gear for the prevention of HIV and STIs are indicated as a reason for the large number of the victims of the health crisis of the precarious living conditions of people with disabilities. Through this, anti-gender actors fabricate a division between the majority of the oppressed heterosexual, gender-conforming individuals and the ‘elite minority of gender ideologists’, consisting of feminist or LGBT + individuals and organizations. Portraying themselves as the defenders of the broader community, anti-gender actors position their resistance against ‘gender ideologists’ as heroic, accusing them of serving foreign institutions and the global capital. This results in the delegitimization of certain political figures and progressive voices, accompanied by the vilification of the already marginalized social groups.

Have you noticed how those elected by the people to serve them serve LGBTI+ organizations instead, adopting the laws the majority disagree with? They gathered to discuss the consequences faced by LGBTI+ people, who account for less than 1% of the entire population, and how discriminated they were, while bluntly disregarding discrimination against people with disabilities, children with disabilities, the homeless or hospital patients. None of them matters, because LGBTI+ people have the advantage and are more important. Their suffering and pain are greater than yours. (Take Responsibility, 6 February 2022)

Employing ‘opportunistic synergy’ (Graff & Korulczuk, 2022), anti-gender organizations strategically align with the politicians and parties sharing similar ideological principles. Through collaborating with established right-wing figures, they push to replace authorities advocating for progressive change with those more inclined to uphold the prevailing status quo. Within the Macedonian context of continuously postponed EU accession negotiations, they tailor their rhetoric to resonate with local nationalist sentiments, capitalizing on existing anti-EU sentiments. This narrative establishes a deceptive divide between an alleged ‘corrupt global elite’ and the ‘innocent local population’ whose traditional values are perceived to be at risk.

Go to hell, you and the EU. All of you. Who do you think you are to propose, and those in the Assembly to even discuss such a law and, God forbid, adopt it!!! Who gave you the right???!!! We voted for you, we should be the ones asked??!!! Our votes put you there, not your father!!! This is a traditional environment, where such bullshit from the EU cannot apply. Unlike the sick minds of the EU, we are healthy people!! If someone wants to be like them, leave and do whatever you wish with your life!!! (Save Marriage and Family, 22 March 2022)

In addition, the anti-gender discourse depicts influential right-wing leaders, such as Putin, Orban and Vučić, as the defenders of national interests, presenting their regressive political behaviour as the model for emulation.

The second most prevalent discourse and narrative of anti-gender actors is their use of a certain kind of nostalgia for the ‘good old days’, which can also be otherwise defined as evocation of ‘the good old times when women were subsumed under the person of their husband, treated as legally continual minors, barred from or having restricted rights to their progeny and the products of their labour’ (Zaharijević et al., 2023). Their central objective is to uphold the prevailing social norms and legislative systems that were inherently gender unequal, homophobic, and exclusionary. The core conflict between anti-gender and gender sensitive narratives centres on the contrast between the desire for maintaining a status quo and the desire for change. This dynamic features the interplay between the past and the future, where visions and desired contexts come into sharp focus.

Invoking the tradition and the return to the ‘good old days’ with their ‘good old values’ introduces an additional dimension to the clash of the value-systems between anti-gender and gender sensitive narratives. Anti-gender advocates are adept in instigating nostalgia for the times past, making it a pivotal element of their political strategy—a construct of a retrospectively fashioned utopia, or a ‘retrotopia ‘, grounded in a bygone yet ‘undead past’ (Bauman, 2017). This inclination towards the past emerges as a response to the uncertainties, fragmentation, individualism, and violence characterizing the contemporary world. To be more precise, the anxiety stemming from the intricacies of modernity fosters fantasies of reverting to an idealized past (Bauman, 2017). The anti-gender narratives of nostalgia are far from original solutions; rather, they are a continuation of the ubiquity of certain cultural narratives and large-scale right populist projects that remained present long after the rule of the VMRO-DPMNE, capitalizing on Skopje 2014,⁷ that changed the appearances and living conditions in modern Skopje, and instilled new habits of glorifying a non-existent past among the people. Extensive literature on anti-gender mobilizations also draws connections between anti-gender groups and populist politicians, particularly in their shared affinity for a past perceived as an ideal future (Kuhar & Paternotte, 2017; Graff & Korolczuk, 2022). Here, nostalgia is utilized to instil apprehension of ‘the new’ and maintain stagnation by portraying examples from the past as current bumps in the road leading to progress.

Moral panic narratives and scapegoating strategies emerge in the Macedonian context as yet another famous modus operandi of anti-gender mobilizations. Gender and sex-related concerns, particularly those impacting transgender individuals, become contentious points within feminist and women’s movements. The dynamic between anti-gender mobilizations and ‘gender-critical' feminists, known as ‘trans-exclusionary radical feminists’, centres on portraying trans women as a threat to women and children. This rhetoric accentuates the sexuality and physical characteristics of trans women to spread fear and disgust in the public. The visuals and narratives highlight isolated cases of crimes involving trans individuals, aiming to depict the entire transgender community as dangerous, in order to deliberately ignore the vulnerability of trans women to violence, to exploit gender-based violence, and to divert attention from systemic violence against women.

Anti-gender actors frame trans women as invaders of women’s spaces, portraying them as unjustly taking away the rights and roles reserved for ‘authentic’ women. This stirs anger in the women’s rights movement, despite the fact that problematic, discriminatory, and normative aspects of participation of women in, for example, sports or beauty pageants have traditionally been neglected or criticized by feminists. Anti-gender mobilizations seek to redefine feminism, excluding gender as a category and promoting their version of ‘real’ women. They categorize trans women as people who do not belong in their own bodies, shaping a version of feminism aimed at protecting ‘authentic’ women from transgender individuals, LGBT + activists, and civil society.

This approach, however, fails to celebrate the historical achievements of women and restricts the definition of women to mothers, wives, and homemakers. Within their rigid perspective on ‘real’ women, anti-gender mobilizations emphasise sexual purity, viewing female sexuality as a taboo and as solely focused on reproductive capacity within heterosexual marriage and family. As a result, sex workers are seen as vulnerable victims who could be potentially transformed into ‘real women’ through conversion, while trans women were consistently excluded from this perspective, except in the possibility of returning to their biological sex by detransitioning.

The alignment of ‘gender-critical' feminists and anti-gender actors forms a divisive axis between intersectional feminism and ‘gender-critical' feminism. Exploited strategically by those opposing gender sensitivity and diversity, this division influences ideological struggles, social discussions, daily lives, policies, laws, and administrative procedures. Stemming from collaborative efforts between women’s organizations and anti-gender groups, this conflict further divides the movement for gender equality. Anti-gender mobilizations heighten discord, particularly on transgender issues, within factions of feminist, women’s, and LGBT + movements. It is anti-gender actors who benefit, strengthening their rhetoric on the aspects particularly harmful for transgender lives and putting the issues related to gender-based violence and domestic violence to the background. As a direct consequence, transgender individuals in North Macedonia have faced the repeated failure to pass the newly proposed Law on Legal Gender Recognition, which has been consigned to parliamentary oblivion.

Within the expansion of anti-gender rhetoric, narratives promoting security, discipline, punishment are used for a further degradation and discrimination of marginalized communities and they predominantly take initial action in the realm of education. This discourse focuses on depicting children as passive, ‘innocent Others’ (Robinson, 2008), vulnerable to an expanding threat from ‘gender ideology’, which is portrayed as endangering the roles of parents, educators, and the society at large. Anti-gender mobilizations capitalize on the perceived ‘danger’ of young people and children’s exposure to the knowledge about gender and sexuality, using it as a pretext to create a stark opposition between children and adults. This dichotomy justifies the continual control parents are to exert over every aspect of a child’s life, using their right to raise their children according to their religious and philosophical beliefs as justification for interfering with teaching materials and didactic content, and the integrity of teaching and educators, especially in primary education. Anti-gender actors often portray themselves as concerned traditional parents, selfless benefactors, and heroic figures acting in what they deemed the child’s ‘best’ interest. They view parenthood as possession exchanged for respect, claiming they have the inherited and sacred prerogative to control their children. Anti-gender actors assume the role of sole ‘guardians’ responsible for the constant monitoring of their children.

For those of you watching a lot of movies, imagining that the prosecutors are like detectives protecting the helpless people, particularly children, we recommend you to face reality. This is Macedonia and NO ONE will protect your children, except for yourselves! (Take Responsibility, 30 March 2022)

Through the narrative of the ‘established’ or ‘justified’ control, anti-gender actors emphasize their dedication to the protection of children from gender-sensitive contents in education. Any mention of a comprehensive sexual education soon is termed as demonic. Casting themselves as the critical voice of reason and, at the same time, relying on conspiracy theories, fake news, or alarming accounts from other countries, anti-gender actors manage to externalize danger, taking it out of the domestic sphere and into the school environment. Moral panic was first raised with the implementation of the educational reforms in 2021, and there is a high probability that the same strategy will be employed with any new attempt at proposing similar policies in the future. The result of these misrepresentations is a distorted view of the Macedonian formal educational system and the strengthening of the public’s distrust in institutions.

Formally, my generation is sexually uneducated. We are self-taught. Well, we got married and had kids anyway. Our grandchildren will be sexually educated. Let’s see if they will be happier. My opinion is this: In this morally sick world, which blurs the line between the natural and the unnatural, to give your children from a young age a wrong socially organized sex education, before giving them a stable emotional and spiritual education, is to allow them to sit on a powder keg and light a cigar. (Venko Andonovski, a university professor and popular author, ‘Pornographic Sexual Education’, Nova Makedonija [New Macedonia], 26 January 2021)

Let us show the next government and the future minister of education, whoever it might be, that they should deserve our votes, serve the people who pay them, that our children belong to us, not to the state, and that they have no right to meddle with their psycho-physical development. […] Regardless of who forms the government, the power lies in us, in our desire to provide a peaceful childhood for our children! (Take Responsibility, 6 November 2021)

Anti-gender narratives that link gender with the politics of death and evil are chiefly articulated by religious figures. The union between anti-gender mobilizations and the Macedonian Orthodox Church injects distinctive elements into the prevailing narratives, revolving around the concept of the ‘final battle’, where life is pitted against death, good against evil, freedom against slavery. Unlike the trends in other contexts where secularization of the ‘religious discourse’ is noted, in North Macedonia we see the high prominence of traditionally religious narratives, occasionally garnered with philosophical and mystical ruminations.

The Church’s narrative in certain respects diverges from that of the anti-gender actors. While they champion the ‘common sense’ argument asserting that no man can truly be a woman, the Church articulates the narrative around the Ultimate Truth, presented as assaulted by the ‘demonic forces’ of homosexuality that bring death and slavery. The anti-gender discourses of the high priests are organized around three tropes: Truth, Freedom, and Hope, the battle for which is waged today between the forces of the good (biological men and women, heterosexuals, family-oriented individuals, and God) and the forces of evil (‘gender ideologues’, homosexuals, and the Demon). A close reading of the speeches made by the religious leaders of all denominations reveals a similar wording: the initiatives promoting gender and sexual equality are inherently demonic, totalitarian, evil, wicked, and mortal. The Macedonian Orthodox Church in particular builds upon a binary opposition between truth and ideology, genuine freedom and totalitarianism, safeguarding the Christian order and revolting against the Creator’s order, and eternity (embodying future and hope) versus Death. Bishops’ narratives delineated a clear line between Macedonian feminist organizations and religious actors, making it clear that the ‘genuine’ care for women means mobilizing for the heteronormative family and their role within it.

Religious anti-gender narratives portray women as the main source of hope, particularly within the discourses that Edelman (2004) terms retrofuturism—the future-oriented view centred on reproduction in heterosexual families. The child, an offspring of the Woman and the symbol of innocence in need of protection, becomes the beacon of the future, juxtaposed with the queer—a symbol of a relentlessly narcissistic, antisocial, and future-negating force (ibid.). The future-centric politics of ‘hope’ has proved successful in the Macedonian context, positioning mothers, along with their husbands and children, as the embodiments of eternal life and hope. Framing faith as the liberation from sin and mortality, and ‘homosexuals’ as mortal souls and sinful bodies, it creates a sharp divide between faith and queer people. Thus, despite the frequent appearance of ‘love’ in bishops’ speeches, love becomes subtly packaged as hatred towards queer individuals and activists. Again, this division has a dual function: it affirms the community and belonging of the ‘non-freaks’, mobilizing them in the name of salvation in the impure and corrupt world.

Beloved faithful people, Christ himself said: ‘Leave the children alone and do not forbid them from coming to Me, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.’ However, this ideology, one of the most totalitarian that humanity has ever seen, is directed against this commandment of Christ and against children. Well, if children are the future of the world, then who desires a man with no future, if not the one we know is the enemy from the Beginning. (The Archbishop of the Macedonian Orthodox Church, General nationwide protest, 29 June 2023)

In the battle for life over death and good over evil, hatred is strategically employed as a discursive act—a necessary weapon for eliminating the phenomena and bodies deemed worthy of disdain in the pursuit of genuine values and truth (Mladenova, 2023). At last, this confrontation with truth is exacerbated by media bias as shown in the study on gender disinformation (Jovanovska and Jovanovska, 2023). The study shows that the anti-gender narratives of the Church are disseminated uncritically in the media, often without inclusion of any other voice, consolidating the anti-gender religious narrative as the only Truth.

Finally, anti-gender mobilizations in North Macedonia build upon heteronormative exclusionary narratives, particularly evidenced in discussions on marriage and family. There is the staunch promotion of the concept of the traditional family as a closed structure and as the only form of family. It relies on anecdotal ‘inspirational’ stories, motivational quotes that foreground heterosexual partnerships, and portrayals of marriage as a personal achievement, even in the face of domestic violence. For instance, stories dramatically titled ‘Marital Revenge’ or ‘Married for 91 Years and Still in Love as Newlyweds’ depict self-sacrifice for love, encourage forgiveness despite the abusive behaviour, or indirectly justify child marriages by romanticizing tales of everlasting love in marriages that began when the partners were minors and/or had an arranged marriage without their consent. What these stories advocate for is endurance and suffering in marriage as a national duty, thus eliminating the role of equal partners and presenting matrimony that ultimately binds you to the state.

The number of marital partners willing to sacrifice themselves for the sake of the family is decreasing. Their decisions are related only to personal happiness, not the happiness and needs of their children. The prevailing attitude is ‘better happy children and divorced parents than unhappy families’. The accent is placed on individual happiness, not collective, family harmony. (prof. dr. Svetlana Trbojević, Head of the Institute for Social Work and Social Policy at the Faculty of Philosophy at UKIM, Save Marriage and Family, 11 December 2021)

In contrast, diverse family structures, such as queer individuals, same-sex couples, single parents, or those with non-conforming sexual orientations or gender identities, are labelled as threats to the nation and civilization. Within the anti-gender narrative, these groups are cast as adversaries, symbolizing the feared decline of the traditional family as the primary societal unit, purportedly under constant attack. Meanwhile, the ideal family, envisioned as a union between two heterosexual partners, celebrated for their procreation, is upheld and championed. In this context, only communities displaying a ‘linear increase’ and engaged in active reproductive behaviour were acknowledged as authentic families. Those not meeting these criteria are stigmatized as socially undesirable and branded as narcissistic adversaries directly jeopardizing the survival of the nation’s population.

The modern growth of worldlessness, the withering away of everything between us, can also be described as the spread of the desert. (Arendt, 2005, 201)

Notwithstanding the alleged hyper-politicization and passionate and active engagement of anti-gender actors in their hegemonic struggle for the articulation of the old-new populist subject in North Macedonia, we contend that their actions lead to privatism, privatization, de-politicization, and de-democratization. Depoliticization is evident in their simplification and moral translation of neoliberal structural inequalities and exploitation. Anti-gender mobilizations reject the political and social histories and genealogies of sex, gender, and embodiment through casting them as ontologically natural. In their rendering, bodies are doubly confined—first, through their allegedly ahistorical nature, devoid of bodily worldliness and transcendence, and second, through the alleged truth of the body encapsulated in the naturalness of sex. Furthermore, Anti-gender hyper-politicization is reducible to the weaponization of freedom as an unrestricted individual entitlement to unrestricted aggression. Unsanctioned in its violent outbursts and directed towards already marginalized and thus vulnerable groups, freedom turns into a privatized and familial tool to harm rather than nurture social bonds, plurality, and integration (Brown, 2019, 2022).

The violent and insistent demand for freedom—discursively framed as an alleged obstruction of their freedom to express their ‘true’ sex, to determine the contents and formats of public education for their children, and to express their opinions and hate—is a symptom of the neoliberal deracination of the social and political sources and understanding of freedom, as much as it is a symptom of the neoliberal wet dream to have one’s ‘personal protected sphere’ expanded. Freedom is stripped of its political meanings and disembedded from its practice amongst the plurality of others and the in-between space of co-appearance (Arendt, 2005). If there is any sign of responsibility for the political, it is towards the political reduced to the familial bonds and their underlying grammar of privatism and possessiveness, exemplified through the possessive relationship of the concerned parents to their children, and an implied reduction of their future to the reproduction of the sexual, gendered, and national phantasmatic regimes.

Unlike some scholars of anti-gender mobilizations (Graff & Korolczuk, 2022, 11, 16), we claim that, in our context, neoliberalism and the anti-gender populist grammar are convergent and mutually reinforcing. The actions and investments of anti-gender actors can be described as cruel optimism (Berlant, 2011), as ongoing attachments and affective investments to/in objects, scenes, ideals, norms, institutions, worlds, and forms of life, as clusters of promises and sources of endurance, the proximity to which, instead of bringing us close to the things promised and the fantasy of good life, turns against our flourishing, both individual and collective. The cruel optimism of anti-gender mobilizations, instead of saving us from neoliberalism, attaches citizens to the already compromised conditions of possibility, that is, to neoliberal rationality and bio-/necro-politics, the very object of their critique and the source of their anxieties, embodied in gender as the imagined existential threat. As a politics of crisis, anti-gender mobilization is a ‘case of ‘capitalism saving capitalism from capitalism’ (sometimes even creating the mirage of a capitalism without capitalism)’ (Toscano, 2023, 109).

How and where to begin with something new? Perhaps from a collective exploration of various strategies and practices that invent new alternative inventories encompassing emotions, objects, scenes of desire, relational dynamics, embodiments, habits, worlds, and communities. This prospect should start from the impasses and the experiences of disruption within the normative, violent, and hegemonic socio-political systems, specifically those related to gender, sexuality, nationality, and capital—to sever the relations of attachment to cruel optimism.