by Ségolène Pruvot
On November 19, 2022, during the annual demonstration against sexist and sexual violence organized by the feminist collective NousToutes around November 25 (International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women), the far-right group Némésis infiltrated the march, wearing outfits resembling niqabs. Their banners displayed slogans such as “My burqa, my choice,” “Feminist and Islamist,” and “My Koran, my laws.” The aim of these identitarian activists was to “denounce the inconsistency of neo- feminism with respect to political Islam, the fact that today, they tolerate Islamist slogans more than anti-immigration ones,” as explained by Alice Cordier, spokesperson for Némésis.
Media-focused flash actions are one of the favored strategies of this new breed of extreme right-wing groups. Small groups like Les Antigones or Némésis—limited in numbers of their members but with significant media presence and social media followings—position themselves as the true defenders of women’s rights, contrasting their actions with those of “neo-feminists,” “woke,” and “islamo-leftist” feminists, whom they claim endanger women and women’s rights.
The main lines of arguments and the new repertoires of action anti-gender movements develop often mirror the practices of left-leaning social movements. These movements strive to appropriate the legacy of feminism, positioning themselves as the true defenders of women’s rights against what they consider deviant feminist movements. The FIERCE research reveals how anti-gender actors, often aligned with the extreme right, have been able to leverage an intersectionality of hate (Bard et al., 2019), mixing anti-gender, anti-migrant, and anti-Islam positions to discredit feminist movements and attack women’s and LGBT+ rights.
La Manif Pour Tous as a stepping board for anti-Gender Mobilization in France.
Since La Manif Pour Tous (The Protest For All, LMPT) in 2013, anti-gender movements in France have become more active in the public sphere. They vehemently oppose what they derogatorily term “gender theory” or “gender ideology.” Initially, these movements focused on opposing marriage equality and same-sex families. However, since 2018, their focus has shifted primarily to opposing feminism, which they perceive as unnatural due to its differentiation between sex and gender. Transgender rights and medically assisted procreation (MAP) for all have become prime targets for anti-gender activists, with feminist movements advocating for transgender rights becoming one of their main adversaries.
Despite their relative failure – the legislation allowing “wedding for all” was passed in 2013 – the conservative movement’s scale led some to refer to it as the “Conservative May 68” (Brustier, 2014). The La Manif Pour Tous protests also marked the moment when “gender” became a contested term for the French public. Its opponents explicitly linked the term with American academia in order to position it strategically as a suspect “foreign import.” “Gender theory” became the theme around which diverse groups could organize, renewing a conservative and largely Catholic opposition to female and LGBT+ emancipation and equality (Fassin, 2001).
In this context, in September 2013, the government launched “Les ABCD de l’égalité” (The ABCDs of Equality), an experimental program in 600 schools across the country to raise awareness about gender stereotypes. As soon as the project was announced, LMPT and their allies, including right-wing Muslim parents and public personalities, launched a massive campaign involving street protests, spreading false information online, and targeted cyber-attacks. The program’s opponents claimed that the ABCDs were teaching explicit sexual content to children and brainwashing them with “gender theory”. Although initial results were encouraging among participating classes, the project was canceled after a teacher received death threats. One consequence of the LMPT battle against the ABCD de l’égalité was the removal of the word “gender” from some educational content.
A variety of movements is gaining influence with the mobilizations against medically assisted procreation (MAP) and against the rights of trans people.
In 2017, presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron proposed to open medically assisted procreation (MAP) to “all women,” arguing that differentiating between heterosexual and lesbian
women was discriminatory. In 2019, the first protest against “MAP for all women” took place, coordinated by the newly formed Marchons enfants! collective. This collective includes many former members of La Manif Pour Tous. Between 2019 and 2021, protests by both pro- and anti-‘MAP for all’ activists occurred. Although the anti-‘MAP for all’ groups never mobilized as strongly as LMPT, a heated public debate ensued.
Following the adoption of the ‘MAP for all’ law (August 2021), the debate shifted to transgender rights. A heated debate, notably fueled since 2021 by the Observatoire la Petite Sirène, is ongoing in French media and public discourse regarding children and teenagers’ medical transitions and operations, as well as simplified measures for changing gender officially in the civil status after a transition (proposed since 2017 by trans rights associations and some political parties
and supported by the “Defender of Rights”).
Before 2022, anti-gender movements had limited legislative success, beyond the withdrawal of the ABCD de l’Egalité. However, their influence within the state has been documented, notably concerning the weight given to fathers’ rights movements in discussions about children’s rights, as seen in the general recognition of the “syndrome of parental alienation” in French jurisdictions. More recently, an official Senate report on gender transitions was heavily influenced by the anti-gender association Observatoire la Petite Sirène (Observatory of the Little Mermaid) and adopted as a new law proposal by the Senate in May 2024 (Sénat, 2024).
Conclusion
The new “nebula” or constellation of anti-gender and anti-feminist movements appears to have strengthened and consolidated considerably following LMPT, converging on issues linked to reproductive rights. Among the new groups, some have gained considerable influence in the public debate and within political parties, such as Sens Commun, a direct offspring of LMPT created in 2013 “with the stated aim of influencing from within the conservative political party, UMP” (Le Monde, 2020). Smaller “radical” extreme right-wing groups, such as the French Spring and Génération Identitaire, gained visibility, and new public figures emerged, often young women like Thaïs d’Escufon, the then-spokesperson of Génération Identitaire. Today anti-gender discourses are relayed by mainstream media outlets and by regular journalists and tribune writers.
The French case illustrates how anti-gender movements have successfully renewed their strategies, framing themselves as defenders of women and children while undermining feminist, LGBTQAI+, and migrant rights. They have built a powerful narrative that continues to influence both public debates and political institutions.
Anti-gender movements in France are numerous, diverse, and well-connected, both internationally and in places of power, as numerous studies and journalistic articles have documented in recent years. The article from which this excerpt is taken analyzes the impact of the growth of these movements on feminist movements, and the forms of mobilization and reaction that French feminist movements have been able to develop
Text