The RESIST Project Report. Effects of, and Resistances to 'Anti-Gender' Mobilisations Across Europe: A Report on Greece

This case study report explores how people living in Greece experience and resist 'anti-gender' politics in their everyday lives. Our participants are not, nor do they wish to be seen as, “passive victims” of these conditions; rather, they emphasised how they engage in daily resistances from their different positions. We spoke with 27 people, 12 of whom granted us a semi-structured interview, whilst 15 took part in four focus groups. We found that whilst virtually all participants experienced 'anti-gender' attacks, some of them were organised and involved political actors, including elected representatives; that transphobic discrimination is institutionalised and structural and present in virtually all spheres of trans people’s lives, compounding acute oppression; and that violence and the fear of violence are prominent in participants’ experiences. Yet, throughout the research, the participants emphasise resistance, solidarity, and community. Everyday resistances in which participants engage include forming communities, “bubbles,” and chosen families. Visibility is seen as a form of resistance; it is also identified as a risk or as making one vulnerable to homophobic/lesbophobic/transphobic attack, particularly in public space, in the family, or in camps—so-called ‘Closed Controlled Access Centres’, in which people seeking asylum are encamped. Migration is seen by some participants as a (personal) solution to escaping 'anti-gender' attacks, violence, oppression, and discrimination—both for people emigrating from Greece and for people seeking asylum in Greece. Whilst participants identify the far-right, alt-right, and the current government as sources of 'anti-gender' politics and discourses, they argued that 'anti-gender' ideologies are also present on the left and amongst some feminisms. Not only does 'anti-gender' not target all feminisms; but in fact, some feminisms reproduce 'anti gender' logics and rhetorics. In particular, participants said trans-exclusionary radical feminism (TERF) is a definitive, if often occluded, aspect of 'anti-gender' politics. Rather than attributing ‘anti-gender’ exclusively to the far-right, participants spoke of it as a slippery discourse that sutures together what may otherwise be understood as opposing political positions. Specifically, they noted the emergence of “anti-woke mania” on the left, which dismisses feminist and antiracist struggles by reducing them pejoratively to ‘rightsism’ («δικαιωματισμός»). Manifestatio