Against our Fetrah:on the epistemic and material implications of anti-gender politics in the Gulf

This chapter critically investigates anti-gender, anti-feminist, and anti-queer politics and discourses in the Gulf region. I focus on specific case studies of anti-feminist lectures, attacks on gender studies, and the Fetrah campaign and explore their epistemic and material implications. Through an analysis that is attuned to the historical and material realities of the region, I track the political and conceptual language used in anti-feminist, anti-gender studies, and anti-queer campaigns to elucidate the authoritarian terrain and surveillance against which feminist and queer activists and scholars struggle. By showing how anti-gender actors in the Gulf region rely on the framing of gender (al-gendara) and feminism (al-nasawiyya) as an external threat, this chapter highlights the importance of challenging the conceptual language of ‘backlash’ for studying how anti-gender, anti-feminist, and anti-queer politics operate transnationally.