From Right against Rights Mobilization to Anti-Gender Mobilization

The RAR is defined as a “collective extra-institutional and institutional mobilization to check, roll back, or reverse specific rights promoted by previously [and currently] marginalized groups and communities” that aims “to restore, promote, or advance a status quo ante of traditional political, social, economic, and cultural rights” (Escoffier et al. Reference Escoffier, Payne, Zulver, Leigh, Zulver and Escoffier2023, 3). RAR groups do so by mobilizing in the street and in social media, alongside mobilization within formal political (e.g., party; lobby), legal (legislation), and electoral (election campaigns) institutions. This definition encompasses the mobilization by the RAR targeting historically marginalized ethnic, racial, environmental, and human rights communities, as well as women and LGBTIQ+ rights (Payne and De Souza Santos Reference Payne and Aruska de Souza Santos2020).

The “right” in the RAR has a distinct understanding of rights when compared to the left. Castro Rea (Reference Castro Rea2018, 91) states that “even if both ideological syndromes declare their support to the idea of equality, … the right understands the term as the opportunity given to each individual to prove her value and reap the benefits of her salience, the left sees equality as the substantive result of social interaction that every human being has the right to enjoy.” The left, in other words, emphasizes equal rights for all, while the right sees rights as “earned by those deemed worthy” (Escoffier et al. Reference Escoffier, González, Payne, Zulver, Infante-Batiste and Richard2024, 132). The literature on right-wing mobilization in Europe and the United States has made a similar left-right distinction on rights (Carter Reference Carter2005, Reference Carter2018; Rydgren Reference Rydgren2007). Blee and Creasap (Reference Blee and Creasap2010) differentiate “rights talk” used by the left to dismantle hierarchies and by the right to defend or reassert dominant group status.

In Latin America, scholars term the left-right divide on rights differently. The “discovery of law” (Smulovitz Reference Smulovitz2025) is a phenomenon beginning in the 1980s and the democratic transitions when left-leaning human rights groups used rights tools to address right-wing regime’s abuses; “lawfare” is the term used to describe the clash between the right and the left over rights (Gloppen Reference Gloppen2021). The left aims to expand the “discovery” from human rights to environmental, abortion, women’s, LGBTIQ+, Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and other rights, while the right engages in “lawfare” to maintain exclusionary and traditional property, religious oriented, and individual rights and privileges.

The RAR framework further refines the right-left divide over rights by considering the mobilization by the right in response to the “rights revolution” (Epp Reference Epp1998) in the region. The RAR capitalized on the perceived threats to traditional rights with the mobilization behind rights for the historically marginalized. The “rights revolution” and the tolerance of those rights by the so-called Pink Tide governments on the left and center-left, became a political opportunity for RAR mobilization. “[W]hile social movements tend to respond to disadvantages, grievances, and exclusionary contexts, perceived threats mobilize right-against-rights groups” (Escoffier et al. Reference Escoffier, González, Payne, Zulver, Infante-Batiste and Richard2024, 133). The Judith Butler incident referenced at the beginning of this article is a prime example of a perceived threat by the right; Butler’s ideas represent a threat to traditional notions of gender, sexuality, and the “natural” family. The RAR seizes onto and mobilizes against perceived threats to the rights of the worthy and historic power relations.Footnote ² The quest for equal rights for women and the LGBTIQ+ community threaten the traditional family, particularly the dominant role of the heterosexual father in that family and his ability to protect the “innocent” child. It thus prompts a RAR response.

The RAR’s perception that the erstwhile rights and privileges of the heterosexual male are no longer protected through that group’s influence in government and society has led to new forms of mobilizing around rights. The right is adapting and expanding “naming and blaming” strategies previously used by rights advocates of the 1970s and 1980s (Felstiner et al. Reference Felstiner, Abel and Sarat1980–81; Keck and Sikkink Reference Keck and Sikkink1998). These strategies are succinctly set out in Escoffier et al. (Reference Escoffier, González, Payne, Zulver, Infante-Batiste and Richard2024, 133):

This phenomenon of the right’s appropriation of rights-based language and tactics is termed “framejacking” (Bob Reference Bob2011, 30), or the hijacking of rights frames to limit rights. In anti-gender mobilization, this includes promoting a specific set of rights (e.g., rights of the family, freedom of religion, children’s rights, the right to life) to oppose same-sex marriage, comprehensive sexual education, and abortion. Rather than “anti-rights,” therefore, the RAR uses rights language to roll back rights for historically marginalized communities and advance rights that protect heterosexual male dominance. We note that the RAR is not only involved in “backlash” politics; they are not simply reactive but rather engaged in “productive or creative” rights-shaping politics to maintain and promote traditional rights and privileges (Paternotte Reference Paternotte2023; Paternotte and Verloo Reference Paternotte and Verloo2021).

These mobilizations have gained scholarly attention in Latin America. Some approaches have adapted and applied the European and US literature on the populist right to Latin America’s distinct history of elite-driven and authoritarian right. Following the European scholarship, this literature tends to explain the phenomenon in terms of economic and political instability in the region. The focus is primarily on formal—political party and electoral—mobilization and democratic backsliding. It is less oriented toward the right’s extra-institutional mobilization and its impact on the rights of marginalized peoples and mobilizations in the streets by the right.

This expanded focus from institutional politics to mobilization in the streets and on social media is one of the unique contributions of the RAR approach. The right is mobilizing in new ways and for new reasons. It no longer is, if it ever was, a single type of right-wing. A marked difference exists in RAR groups from the forms of institutional right that previously excluded the historically marginalized, however. Recognizing categories of right-wing forces in the region reveals an extra-institutional anti-gender right that is less concerned with political and economic instability and focused more centrally on threats to traditional forms of power, rights, and privileges.

Gaps in the Anti-Genderism Literature

This article adds conceptual value to our understanding of and ability to analyze these mobilizations by disaggregating and defining who makes up these heterogenous anti-gender groups, and when, where, and how they behave in unique ways.

We are certainly not the first to write about the rise of anti-gender mobilizations on the right. However, to date the literature has been somewhat unspecific about the combination of actors involved, pointing to coalitions of religious groups (both Catholic and evangelical), the State, the alt-right, and culturally conservative political movements (Graff et al. Reference Graff, Kapur and Danuta Walters2019; Paternotte and Kuhar Reference Paternotte, Kuhar, Kuhar and Paternotte2018a). For example, Zaremberg and Roggeband (Reference Zaremberg, Roggeband, Zaremberg and Roggeband2025, 1) introduce their book on anti-gender mobilization in Latin America by noting the threats from “rising authoritarian tendencies spearheaded by a heterogeneous set of—religious and secular—conservative actors.” Paternotte (Reference Paternotte2023, 81) refers to anti-gender “campaigns” that include politicians and state officials, social movements, and civil society actors. Most scholars do not, however, investigate whether these heterogeneous groupings of anti-rights actors always operate in the same way, at the same time, or in the same places; this is where the RAR approach adds value to the field.

As discussed above, scholars note that diverse groups of anti-rights actors come together to oppose gender equality and sexual rights, critique the very concept of “gender,” and reframe it as a threat to traditional values (Corredor Reference Corredor2021; Paternotte and Verloo Reference Paternotte and Verloo2021; Paternotte Reference Paternotte2023; Wilkinson Reference Wilkinson2021). They reject the rights, laws, and policies they view as gender-based, such as sex education, marriage equality, and abortion legalization (Zaremberg and Roggeband Reference Zaremberg, Roggeband, Zaremberg and Roggeband2025; Paternotte and Kuhar Reference Paternotte, Kuhar, Kuhar and Paternotte2018a, Reference Paternotte, Kuhar, Kuhar and Paternotte2018b; Paternotte Reference Paternotte2023). Graff (Reference Graff2016) contends that when it comes to mobilization against so-called “gender ideology” the concept is conceptually weak, but politically powerful. Graff and others have used the metaphor of “symbolic glue” to discuss the capacity of the term to forge political antagonisms, construct a new “common sense,” and coalesce heterogeneous actors behind a seemingly common cause or a common enemy (Grzebalska et al. Reference Grzebalska, Kováts and Pető2017; Kováts and Põim Reference Maari2015; Paternotte Reference Paternotte2023; Paternotte and Kuhar Reference Paternotte, Kuhar, Kuhar and Paternotte2018a). There is a gap in the literature, however, when it comes to understanding whether all actors respond to gender rights in the same way, for the same underlying ideological reasons, or with the same goals in mind.

Another set of anti-gender rights literature avoids specifically characterizing the actors involved in the group, but instead emphasizes how these actors organize, mobilize, and promote their views across European and Latin American contexts (Biroli and Caminotti Reference Biroli and Caminotti2020; Biroli and Roggeband Reference Biroli and Roggeband2025; Corrêa Reference Corrêa2020; Corredor Reference Corredor2019, Reference Corredor2021; Graff et al. Reference Graff, Kapur and Danuta Walters2019; Paternotte and Kuhar Reference Paternotte, Kuhar, Kuhar and Paternotte2018b; Paternotte Reference Paternotte2023; Piscopo and Walsh Reference Piscopo and Walsh2020; Zaremberg et al. Reference Zaremberg, Tabbush and Friedman2021; Zaremberg and Roggeband Reference Zaremberg, Roggeband, Zaremberg and Roggeband2025). This literature tends to focus on these groups as reactionary countermovements engaging in backlash politics (see Mansbridge and Shames Reference Mansbridge and Shames2008; Piscopo and Walsh Reference Piscopo and Walsh2020; Biroli and Caminotti Reference Biroli and Caminotti2020; Corredor Reference Corredor2021). Scholars, such as Corredor (Reference Corredor2021, 2), refer to “ideologically conservative groups that use rights rhetoric as a political strategy to preserve dominant group privilege at the expense of traditionally marginalized communities.” Zaremberg et al. (Reference Zaremberg, Tabbush and Friedman2021, 529) also refer to “the idea of a counter-movement as consisting of actors who seek to roll back women’s progressive rights.” Yet, in our research, we find that countermovements are not the only type of mobilizations around anti-genderism. Other streams of literature open up the possibility for alternative forms of mobilization; for some, like Pereira (Reference Pereira2023) and Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser (Reference Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser2012), anti-genderism is seen as a populist construct. Yet, for others, populism is an accompanying trait to anti-genderism, but not definitional (Carter Reference Carter2018). Our RAR database identifies anti-gender mobilization involving elite neoliberal groups that are not populist at all. Our article thus offers analytical value by offering a typology that allows for the study of differences within anti-gender mobilizations.

Thus, the RAR approach fills a gap in—and responds to a call for—greater conceptual clarity around who is behind anti-gender rights mobilization, why, when, where, and how they mobilize and to what impact (Sen et al. Reference Sen, Vallejo and Walsh2017; Piscopo and Walsh Reference Piscopo and Walsh2020, 269).

RAR Approach to Anti-gender Rights: A RAR Typology of Anti-Gender Mobilizations

The main contribution of the article is recognizing the heterogeneity of who is involved in anti-gender RAR mobilizations, the array of mobilization strategies they employ, and their differential impact on gender rights. Such insights identify possible means for challenging their capacity to undermine those rights. Specifically, we examine internal vulnerabilities, incompatibility with other RAR and traditional right actors, and tools and strategies to disarm their effectiveness. Drawing on Payne (Reference Payne, Leigh, Zulver and Escoffier2023), we focus on three types of mobilizations: countermovements, uncivil movements, and radical neoliberal mobilizations.

Countermovements are not a new form of mobilization (Meyer and Staggenborg Reference Meyer and Staggenborg1996; Mottl Reference Mottl1980). Originally adapted from US and European social movement scholarship, they are identified as one of the key forms of mobilization against gender and other rights of marginalized peoples in Latin America (Corredor Reference Corredor2021; Biroli and Caminotti Reference Biroli and Caminotti2020). Because countermovements emerge to contest social movements, it is not surprising that gender-rights mobilizations in the region would prompt their rise. In terms of rights, Payne (Reference Payne, Leigh, Zulver and Escoffier2023, 31) notes that countermovements “emerge to block social movements’ rights advances and to restore and protect traditional rights in new ways.” They tend to be led by movement entrepreneurs, or leaders who “frame issues, mobilize movements, and shape movement organizations and strategies” (Staggenborg Reference Staggenborg, David, Porta, Klandermans and McAdam2022). They primarily engage in non-violent public street action and social media protests. Countermovements’ tactics seem to be strategically designed to broadly appeal to a moderate right, but attract radical and extreme-right followers, including religious groups, nonetheless. This is a mixed group with males and females involved in leadership and the rank and file. Similarities in discourse, signs, and symbols across the region suggest an anti-gender RAR “playbook” influenced by external actors. The RAR database identifies a powerful group of right-wing transnational advocacy networks (R-TANs). Although they resemble the pro-rights TANs connected to human rights and environmental rights groups in previous decades (Keck and Sikkink Reference Keck and Sikkink1998), we have observed an important variation: R-TANs sometimes originate within the region, cross borders within Latin America, and have influence within and outside the region. Our tracking of R-TANs shows that a large percentage (32 of 38 movements, 84.2%) focus on anti-LGBTIQ+ and anti-reproductive rights.Footnote ³ Similarly, our RAR database shows that countermovements are the largest group of all anti-rights groups in Latin America; they also constitute the main form of anti-gender mobilization (88.63%).

Uncivil movements target rights defenders seemingly with the aim of eliminating them, through their use of vitriolic and intimidating language, hate speech, threats, and realized acts of violence. The term originated to identify certain types of mobilization in Latin America, but it applies to groups of white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and others around the globe (Payne Reference Payne2000). We differentiate uncivil movements from countermovements in several ways. First, they are not oriented toward social movements’ perceived rights gains, but rather against specific sets of rights-seekers and rights holders whether they form part of social movements or not (Payne Reference Payne2000). Second, they tend to see elites, traditional right-wing parties, and institutional politics as “sell-outs” who have abandoned right-wing ideology and values. Sensing that they are excluded from institutional politics, they attempt to reassert their power against what they perceive as a global conspiracy of a cosmopolitan elite, including academics, intellectuals, non-governmental, national, and international governmental and non-governmental forces on the left and right. They perceive that they are excluded from power by the traditional elite and left-leaning political elites and they mobilize to assert their power. They often act outside the law, yet uncivil movements tend to align with and promote political figures on the extreme right and authoritarian military and police security systems. They express virulent anti-communist, anti-feminist, anti-LGBTIQ+, and anti-migrant attitudes in their social media outlets and at public rallies. These public facing activities co-exist with more underground forms of online and physical threats and intimidation. While they tend to eschew the mainstream right, they often develop alliances with personalistic and extremist right-wing political figures, such as Bolsonaro, Milei, and Bukele. They also seem to admire certain right-wing influencers in extremist fringes, sometimes using their words as a “call to arms” to attack rights-promoters. As such, they are primarily straight males who resemble “incels” and homophobic groups in their attack on women, women’s rights, and the LGBTIQ+ community. They seem to perceive themselves as the rearguard promoting anti-rights policies when right-wing politicians are too afraid or beholden to do so. These groups are difficult to track since they often involve “lone wolf” strategies (Payne Reference Payne2000), operate clandestinely to avoid legal detection for their violent tactics, and eschew organization in favor of loose and easily dissolvable connections. As such, the uncivil movements are a small portion of the total RAR mobilizations (7.20%). Within the category of uncivil movements 77.19% constitute anti-gender RAR groups.

The third category of right-against-rights movements are radical neoliberals. This is a unique category of right-wing mobilization that defies the populist or far- and extreme-right approach taken in the United States and Europe. They involve individuals with social, economic, and political resources. They are elites who would seem to have the power to influence policies affecting them within the system and without the need to engage in collective action. Radical neoliberal mobilizations, like countermovements, respond to perceived threats to traditional rights. Differentiating them from countermovements and uncivil movements, these groups are oriented toward the defense of elites’ economic and business interests, for example, land, development, profit, and hiring/salary rights. They emerge whether or not a social movement is behind the perceived threats to those rights. They are motivated, moreover, not only by countering rights and rights-promoters, but by the aim to restore and expand their own rights and privileges as economic elites. Radical neoliberal groups dedicate significant energy to consolidating public legitimacy; they often bring together young, attractive influencers to be the face of the movement. They have polished, professional social media presences, write op-eds in mainstream newspapers, and engage in public debates and courses and “training schools.” They create and finance NGOs, foundations, and think tanks, creating a pseudo-academic, pseudo-scientific, neutral and objective ethos that masks their anti-rights agenda. It is not intuitive that radical neoliberals would engage in anti-gender mobilization. Indeed, that many members of their groups are women suggests that they do not oppose all women’s rights, but only those that threaten the status quo. They reject the rights promoted by feminists and groups with non-dominant sexual orientations or gender identities that demand a fundamental shift in power dynamics; they promote the rights advocated by traditional and conservative women—such as women’s political rights—that neither question nor challenge elite (primarily white male) concentration of wealth and political power. Perhaps, not surprisingly, we find that only a small portion of this category of RAR actors is anti-gender (15%). Even if a minority group, their power and influence over rights make them a key group to study in terms of impact.

These three types of RAR groups share some traits but are also distinct. They share a sense of threat from gender-rights groups and advocate for their own traditional rights and privileges. Yet, as Payne et al. (Reference Payne, Zulver and Escoffier2023) contend, these groups are not only “backlash” movements responding to new threats and seizing political opportunities to mobilize against those threats (e.g., elections, legislative debates, peace processes, trials). They also create the perception of threat, developing a notion of moral panic (Cohen Reference Cohen1972). They promote worry, hostility, and consensus around an exaggerated or disproportional fear of threat (Goode and Ben-Yehuda Reference Goode and Ben-Yehuda2009). They use “framejacking” tactics to demonize their adversaries who promote equal rights, such as gender rights, to block or rollback rights of marginalized peoples, and to promote exclusionary and defensive rights-enhancing strategies. They also possess distinctive traits from each other: who they are (elite and non-elite; exclusively straight male or mixed sex), what motivates them (rolling back of gender rights, eliminating rights-seekers, expansion of economic liberalism), and how they act (publicly and pro-institution; clandestinely and anti-system; and market-oriented neutrality).

A better understanding of the similarities and differences among anti-gender mobilizations allows for the development of tactics to try to reduce their power. Toward that purpose, the next section explores the RAR database findings before we address three emblematic case studies of such mobilizations.

Fundación Sí a la Vida—A Countermovement in El Salvador

Fundación Sí a la Vida (Yes to Life Foundation) is a RAR countermovement based in El Salvador. It has been called “the Salvadoran organization principally responsible for the country’s abortion ban” (Redden and Lakhani Reference Redden and Lakhani2017) and has thus had a powerful impact in the country. The group pre-dates the emergence of an abortion rights movement and it persists even after having secured the criminalization of abortion. It is thus not a “backlash” or reactionary movement, but rather one that stands poised to “restore and protect traditional rights in new ways” (Payne Reference Payne, Leigh, Zulver and Escoffier2023, 31). Fundación Sí a la Vida is emblematic of anti-gender countermovements in the RAR database mobilized to block gains in women’s sexual and reproductive rights. We observe, however, that the group also engages in anti-LGBTIQ+ activism.

Fundación Sí a la Vida appears to share its messaging primarily online, through religious conference spaces, and through a space called Hogar María Isabel (María Isabel Home). According to the group’s Instagram, Hogar María Isabel is a “shelter for mothers and their children in vulnerable situations” (@hogarmariaisabel, Instagram). The group therefore aims not only to oppose abortion rights, but also to champion alternative and “caring” solutions to prevent abortion. The group engages in non-violent protest, another typical characteristic of RAR countermovements.

Fundación Sí a la Vida is spearheaded by a “movement entrepreneur,” Julia Regina de Cardenal, president since 1987. Her primary function is consistent with countermovement leadership, to “frame issues, mobilize movements, and shape movement organizations and strategies” (Staggenborg Reference Staggenborg, David, Porta, Klandermans and McAdam2022). She is an active leader and has been involved in public protest.

In 2018, El Salvador’s Legislative Assembly debated exceptions to the criminalization of abortion, such as allowing it in cases of pregnancy resulting from rape (Malkin Reference Malkin2018). The national legislature ultimately decided not to vote on proposals to limit the ban. While the direct role of Cardenal and Sí a la Vida is unclear in El Salvador’s national legislature’s decision, she and members of Sí a la Vida protested the same day that decision happened, entering the gallery of the legislative assembly. The group protested and Cardenal “accused those who supported a relaxation of the ban of receiving foreign funding” (Malkin Reference Malkin2018).

The group is not only oriented against abortion, but a broader set of gender rights. Cardenal has, on occasion, used public platforms to shame abortion-seekers (Redden and Lakhani Reference Redden and Lakhani2017) and members of the LGBTIQ+ community. In one video she denounces women who “celebrate” their abortions and prays for the Lord’s forgiveness (Vida Humana Internacional 2026). In the same video, she shows an image of a celebrity with her trans daughter and says: “It looks like two women. … [But] that is her son, not her daughter.” This example of the movement’s broad anti-gender focus illustrates its perception of threats to traditional family values from abortion and LGBTIQ+ rights, particularly what the family should look like, and who does and does not have a place within it.

Like other anti-gender countermovements, Fundación Sí a la Vida engages in strategic framing. Despite the obvious Christian orientation of the movement’s leader and followers (see example above), its website distances the organization from religious principles and presents its motivations in secular human rights terms. It thus appropriates rights language typically used by the left to develop and bolster its arguments against abortion rights. By presenting itself as an organization that fights against injustice and works on health, education, security and economic stability, Fundación Sí a la Vida adopts “framejacking” strategies (Kane et al. Reference Kane, Moragas, Stallone, Leigh, Zulver and Escoffier2023, 130; Bob Reference Bob2011).

The organization promotes a broad message that seems to be aimed at expanding its appeal beyond radical anti-abortion advocates. The opening webpage notes that its mission is to “[p]romote respect for human life from conception to natural death, through a comprehensive training by strengthening the will, affectivity and comprehensively supporting women, adolescents and Salvadoran families in a situation of unexpected pregnancy, helping to improve their quality of life” (Fundación Sí a la Vida, n.d.). It notes that its vision is “[t]o be a foundation that offers a real solution to social problems, based on values and moral principles that lead the population towards an objective truth and the common good of families; forming leaders that promote the pro-life culture in society.” It also includes among its values “respect for life and human dignity,” “defense of the natural family,” and “positive values education.” Rights language disguises the harmful impact on women’s rights; indeed, the ban the group supports has imprisoned women who miscarried, who sought ways to end life-threatening pregnancies, who tried to end unviable pregnancies, or who hoped to end a pregnancy resulting from violent rape.

Reframing that impact, the group’s website promotes the view that it has “saved” lives: 12,000 people from abortion (Fundación Sí a la Vida, n.d.). It has adopted the anti-abortion struggle as its primary way of countering the activities of the pro-abortion movement, including the campaign to support “Las 17,” 17 women jailed for up to 40 years following reported miscarriages that were judged by the state as abortions or homicides (Amnesty International 2015).

Countering local and international activism for the release of “Las 17,” Fundación Sí a la Vida reframed the women’s stories. Its webpage has a special section for the women who it claims formed part of the “17,” with a video that begins by flashing the words “The Real Story.” It shows photos of the women, as well as graphic images meant to represent their dead fetuses. Below the photos of the women, the video flashes text that describes the supposed conditions of the fetuses, calling them “son” or “daughter,” and “[s]on abandoned in a bag with a fractured skull and trachea” (Fundación Sí a la Vida, n.d.). The video concludes by questioning the understanding of “Las 17”: “[s]pontaneous abortions? Obstetric problems? False! Homicides!” (Fundación Sí a la Vida, n.d.). Following Payne’s (Reference Payne2000) analytical understanding of framing, this video on the organization’s website is an example of how Fundación Sí a la Vida has used the strategies of “naming” and “blaming” to bolster its objectives. The women are targeted in the video as perpetrators of homicide to support Fundación Sí a la Vida’s anti-abortion arguments. To the beat of triumphant music, they are presented as “cultural villains” (Payne Reference Payne2000, 24–7) and “demonized” (Payne Reference Payne, Leigh, Zulver and Escoffier2023, 38).

Fundación Sí a la Vida has also engaged in what seems to be a careful treatment of its religious orientation. As already noted, the website does not frame the group’s mission, vision, and values in religious terms. More inconsistency emerges across the group’s online platforms. The group’s Instagram account, for example, is replete with religious iconography: references to Jesus, Pope Francis images, a cross-wearing woman, priests leading mass, pregnant woman resembling the Virgin Mary, and announcements for religious conferences, such as a conference for priests, seminarians, and religious individuals titled “Ethical Aspects of Procreation: Contraception.” The group, in other words, seems to try to appeal to a religious and secular membership. It thus casts a wide net to include those who care about their version of “human rights” (e.g., the rights of the unborn) alongside those motivated by religious concerns. As a typical anti-gender countermovement, Sí a la Vida thus employs non-violent protest, online engagement, and “framejacking” practices. It appears to have succeeded in protecting one of the most restrictive abortion bans in the world. Drawing on the social movement literature, we might expect such success to lead to mobilization fatigue. Yet, the group remains poised to fight any future threats to the ban and other gender-rights threats to traditional rights and privileges. We suspect that what sustains the movement is the perception of a future threat to the ban. That threat is not motivated by the calculation of power within the country, but perhaps more critically, a regional understanding of the successes of the right-to-choose movements in Colombia and Argentina. It may also look to the US defeat of Roe v. Wade, and the success of Dobbs, as inspiration to maintain a long view. This positive and negative learning within the Americas is a RAR anti-gender mobilization trait that demands further attention, particularly in understanding how R-TANs might be promoting and sustaining anti-gender rights activism across countries.

Uncivil “Masculinista” Movements

The groups referred to as “masculinistas,” “machosfera,” or “mascus,” by Brazilian feminists emphasize a particular type of anti-gender RAR movement in Latin America not currently identified in the existing literature. While overlapping with incels, men’s rights groups, explicitly anti-feminist, or “macho” mobilizations, they represent an explicitly violent form of misogyny and homophobia. The focus of their violence is threats to heterosexual male dominance, which they attribute to the gay community and feminists. They use violence and intimidation against individuals within those groups, rather than countering social movements, especially public gender-rights advocates.

These groups, like many uncivil movements, are rarely formally registered as organizations, making them difficult to track. They usually do not have a name, an identified leader, membership list, website, or other ways to find them. They exist largely underground, on the deep web. When they post on social media, they do so anonymously. The informality and anonymity of these groups enable them to maintain impunity for their violent acts. A mascus victim, Débora Diniz, characterizes them as “communities of hate that flourish in virtual clandestinity” and her organization refers to them as “points of contact in the sharing of identities, practices, strategies…a social space” (Anis 2019).

Diniz contends that mascus do not disband but rather become more skillful at avoiding detection. She refers to them as “a lawless territory of permanent threat and risk without oversight … [where] the values of hate are cultivated through anonymity, hidden behind pseudonyms or monikers … [promoting] hate themes—weapons, misogyny, homophobia, Nazism, militarization” (Anis 2019). Indeed, potential adherents to such groups may find them more appealing if they remain unregistered, informal, and unidentifiable. Like-minded individuals can become linked to each other, carrying out loosely coordinated violent threats, while maintaining impunity from prosecution through anonymity and hidden organizational structures. Brazilian scholars have tracked the way anti-gender and other extreme right violent groups use the “surface web” and the “dark web” to diffuse their message while simultaneously avoiding detection (Rodrigues Reference Rodrigues2025; Valente Reference Valente2023).

The RAR database finds that anti-gender uncivil movements, like mascus, are fewer in number than anti-gender countermovements. They are, nevertheless, impactful by endangering gender rights and harming gender-rights advocates and gender-rights holders. Incidents of violent homophobia—such as the threats gay politician Jean Wyllys faced forcing him to leave Brazil in 2018—have led to the creation of the term “homocaust.” Wyllys’s case is typical of the impact of these groups on the LGBTIQ+ community; despite public attention to the attacks, the prominence of some victims, and seemingly rigorous investigations, they are rarely identified and their violent attacks continue with impunity.

We address here two cases of mascus attacks on Brazilian public intellectual feminists that reflect a similar pattern. Débora Diniz, an anthropologist who teaches at the University of Brasília (UNB) Law School and runs an NGO (Anis) advocating decriminalization of abortion in Brazil, received such violent threats that she felt she had to leave the country. Feminist blogger and University of Ceará professor Dolores (“Lola”) Aronovich Aguero, faced vitriolic hate speech and violent threats prompting her to mobilize behind increased legislative protection against online anti-gender uncivil movements. We analyze how these two academics and public advocates seemed to provoke mascus, the impact of mascus mobilization, and efforts to try to reduce that impact.

The specific event prompting vicious attacks on Diniz in 2018 was a parliamentary hearing on decriminalizing abortion. Diniz was scheduled to present her academic research at that hearing: her study that identifies the high death rates in Brazil, particularly for poor women of color, resulting from illegal abortions. Diniz has faced criticism throughout her career for taking on controversial issues. In 2018, however, the threats changed in three ways: in their tone, scope, and context. Their tone was so threatening that the police could not guarantee that the mascus forces that targeted Diniz would stop at rhetorical or symbolic forms of violence. Due to the high level of threat, the police provided her with around-the-clock protection. The scope of the threats expanded from their previous personal attacks on Diniz to threatening those associated with her. Her husband and colleagues were threatened in their workplace. She worried about her students, saying, “They even suggested that they would cause a massacre at the university if I continued to teach. … We just don’t know if this is mere bravado. There is the risk of contagion, however, that someone else might carry through on the threat, once the hate violence was unleashed” (Pires Reference Pires2018). Diniz connects that risk to the changed context in 2018, specifically Jair Bolsonaro’s election to the presidency. “His administration’s agenda,” states Diniz, “is, at its core, anti-gender, especially on issues of sexuality and abortion” (Bähre and Diniz Reference Bähre and Diniz2020). The context empowered the mascus. In that context, and in the face of threats to UNB students, Diniz left the country and has not returned.

Part of the context in Diniz’s case is the rise of right-wing media celebrities—in her case Bernardo Küster—who incite mascus’s threats. Küster, a YouTube star with 750,000 subscribers and an endorsement from former President Bolsonaro, targeted Diniz. He claimed without evidence that she was “backed by shadowy foreigners” aiming to abolish Brazil’s abortion ban, “or even [to] make abortions mandatory” (Fisher and Taub Reference Fisher and Taub2019). Fisher and Taub (Reference Fisher and Taub2019) suggested that these sorts of statements generated “far-right and conspiracy channels” that “began citing one another” and that the “YouTube’s recommendation system learned to string their videos together. However implausible, any individual rumour might be on its own, joined together they created the impression that dozens of disparate sources were revealing the same terrifying truth.” The threats echoed some of the language used in Küster’s videos, calling for Diniz’s rape and torture and setting a bounty for her killing (Fisher and Taub 2019). Küster referred to these echoed threats, seemingly “gleefully,” but without ever explicitly endorsing them, thereby avoiding any legal repercussions (Fisher and Taub Reference Fisher and Taub2019).

Küster’s disavowal of directly inciting violent threats against Diniz is intrinsic to uncivil movements. They lack the organizational structure of a “movement,” and resemble instead an “eco-system … a network of people acting together through contagious effect: they are not bound by any formal or central coordination, but rather bounce off each other’s stimuli to engage or to take anonymous action in sharing hateful or fake content. Social media platforms make money by keeping people connected for as long as possible, and their recommendation systems often do so by suggesting more and more extremist provocative content that play with people’s emotions, like fear, anger and doubt” (Bähre and Diniz Reference Bähre and Diniz2020).

In the police investigation of over 500 threatening posts, texts, and phone messages to Diniz, they identified only two suspects behind the posts. One, using only his initials (H. G. M.) had posted: “People like you should die. They should bleed to death.” The police identified him as an unemployed, 42-year-old man, living with his mother, 1400 km away from Brasília. He had a record of illegal arms possession and assault from which he had been absolved, and he had ties to an extreme right-wing group. Despite this background, the police did not take him into custody and made only minor slander and threat charges. The second suspect had sent threatening WhatsApp messages to Débora Diniz. Yet when the police located and confronted him, he claimed that his cell phone had been stolen. Without material confirmation of his involvement in threats, he was not apprehended (Fuzeira and Albuquerque Reference Fuzeira and Albuquerque2018). The police claim that they have used sophisticated tracking strategies to identify other suspects behind threats to Diniz to no avail.

“Lola” Aronovich faced similar violent verbal assaults from mascus. Her blog Escreva, Lola, Escreva provoked mascus death threats, defamation campaigns, and digital attacks. The attacks were not only aimed at Aronovich herself but also her husband and other family members. Although in her case, two attackers were convicted in 2012 and received a 1.5-year sentence, they continued attacks against her after their release. In an ironic twist, one individual associated with the mascus attacks on Aronovich brought a case against her for “apologia ao crime” (incitement of a crime). The accusation stems from Aronovich’s post defending a woman who (illegally) aborted. The case has endured for years without any decision on the merits of the case or the acceptance or rejection of Aronovich’s freedom of expression defense.

The attacks on Diniz and Aronovich provide insights on a particular anti-gender form of uncivil movement: mascus. This group incorporates “a language of toxic masculinity, aggression, obscenities (linguagem chula), war gaming, religious allegories, and fear mongering (amedrontar multidões)” (Anis 2019). Uniting mascus is the threat to male domination from the perception of the rise of LGBTIQ+ groups’ and feminists’ increasing strength and power in society. As Diniz states, “They view the ascension of women and LGBTs as an affront to masculinity” (Pires Reference Pires2018). They target women academics “who convey an ‘unwelcome’ message … to attack the scholar’s character and mental health … [thereby] ‘delegitimizing knowledge’” (Bähre in Bähre and Diniz Reference Bähre and Diniz2020). By attacking women academics’ power, mascus seem to perceive universities encouraging “critical thinking” as a threat (Bähre and Diniz Reference Bähre and Diniz2020).

The cases against Diniz and Aronovich could be viewed as backlash politics, what Diniz describes as a reaction against “more women, black and LGBTI people occupy[ing] spaces of power” (Bähre and Diniz Reference Bähre and Diniz2020). Diniz further describes the violent turn in speech, as a “thrill in disseminating hate and misinformation that targets human rights activists” (Bähre and Diniz Reference Bähre and Diniz2020). Human Rights Watch-Americas director José Miguel Vivanco reflects on Diniz’s situation: “It is deeply disturbing that Débora Diniz is facing death threats and was forced to enter police protection because she is defending women’s rights to make fundamental decisions about their bodies and lives. … No one should have to fear for their personal safety or security because of their human rights activism. People should not have to fear for their lives to testify before Brazil’s highest court” (HRW 2018).

We argue that these attacks constitute more than a rights backlash; they represent a concerted effort to terrorize feminists and LGBTIQ+ activists who are in the public view. Their impact is powerful; they cause harm. Both Diniz and Aronovich have struggled to fight back and reduce threats from mascus. Diniz has gained attention and support within Brazil and abroad (Scholars at Risk Network 2018; Bähre and Diniz Reference Bähre and Diniz2020). Aronovich successfully promoted the 2018 Lola Law (Lei Lola), authorizing the police to investigate internet misogyny crimes (Valente 2023).

Our study of the Brazilian mascus suggests that a particularly virulent anti-gender mobilization is gaining traction, primarily online. It is hate speech with a particular misogynist and homophobic orientation. The targets of the threats do not know whether they will be carried out or not. The murders in Mexico of TikTok influencer Valeria Márquez in Jalisco (Pardo Reference Pardo2025) and Veracruz mayoral candidate Yesenia Lara Gutiérrez (Rios and Valdés Reference Rios and Valdés2025) suggest that global attention and promotion of Lei Lola-type legislation in other parts of the region may provide the catalysts to fight against misogynist online threats that result in feminicides. To promote such a response requires identifying such anti-gender mobilizations as more than backlash; they are instead a form of terror against feminists.

Radical Neoliberal Movements: The Liberty School Foundation’s Anti-Gender Agenda

Anti-genderism is often hidden within the machinations of radical neoliberal movements. They are not explicitly oriented against women and LGBTIQ+ rights like the mascus. Anti-gender mobilization would also not seem to be a logical way for them to protect and shore up elite economic privileges. These groups tend to be oriented instead against progressive movements’ demands for redistribution and increased economic and social rights, perceived threats to their goal of concentrating political, social, and economic power for a small business-oriented group. Through tactical use of social media, think tanks, and “educational” foundations, they cast a wide net to attract young people who are both disillusioned with institutional politics and endorse traditional values.

Although anti-gender rights would not seem to fit the radical neoliberal mobilization agenda, the RAR database identifies 24 radical neoliberal movements attacking women’s and LGBTIQ+ rights, particularly sexual and reproductive rights. The Colombian Liberty School Foundation radical neoliberal movement illustrates the phenomenon. We show that these groups do not overtly oppose women’s and LGBTIQ+ rights. Nonetheless, in their pursuit of power they promote exclusionary and traditional worldviews that include limited and restricted women’s rights. To be clear, radical neoliberal movements are not alone in invoking the conservative ideal of a “traditional woman;” authoritarian, religious, populist (including left-wing populist, see Caravantes Reference Caravantes2021) movements share this view. The way radical neoliberals rationalize their anti-gender stance is distinct, however. It emanates from the “articulations between neoliberal economics and moral conservatism” (Paternotte Reference Paternotte2023, 86).Footnote ⁶

The Fundación Escuela Libertad (Liberty School Foundation) in Colombia is an example of a radical neoliberal movement that aims to roll back women’s rights, even though this is not its main objective. The Foundation’s website quickly positions its members as working to reinstate the “natural order of things” in the context of left-wing indoctrination in schools, politics, culture, the media, and social networks. Paternotte refers to these types of anti-gender campaigns as mobilizations’ “creative or productive dimensions” (Reference Paternotte2023, 84; see also Paternotte and Verloo 2021). As an example, the Liberty School Foundation offers courses that teach the “truth about history,” positioning itself as an “intellectual” organization seeking to “establish a new political—less liberal and less democratic—order” (Paternotte Reference Paternotte2023, 84).

The Foundation’s educating mission is furthered through its website and Instagram posts (Fundación Escuela Libertad, n.d.; Escuela Libertad, n.d.). On it, opinion pieces, “academic” resources, and the organization’s Freedom Channel TV YouTube content promote its positions on a range of topics. The Foundation’s Instagram page has nearly 14,000 followers. The organization uploads multiple, well-produced reels every day, featuring well-dressed, well-spoken young people, including multiple women. It presents itself as a group of public intellectuals engaged in think-tank-type research and advocacy, often generating its own press releases and publications—under the “Academic” section of its website—based on legitimate economic data, but then drawing its analysis and conclusions from far-right political platforms.

A team of investigative reporters published a damning exposé of the Foundation. Questioning its objective, research-driven stance, the report showed the family and professional links between the Foundation’s leadership and powerful far-right politicians like María Fernanda Cabal and members of the Colombian Federation of Cattle Ranchers (Fedegán) with historical ties to paramilitarism (Cuestión Pública Reference Pública2023). The article documents the Foundation’s disinformation campaigns aimed at smearing the left-wing government’s reforms and cabinet and delegitimizing Colombian elections (Cuestión Pública Reference Pública2023).

The Foundation’s social media posts reveal the connection between its anti-left political agenda and advancement of elite social and economic power and anti-gender rights. In intermittent posts, the Foundation promotes an anti-woke agenda that positions it as anti-abortion, anti-trans, and anti-“gender ideology.” For example, an IG reel posted on March 12, 2025 (@feslibertad) involves a presenter laughing at a video clip of a transgender couple. After mocking them, he says: “biology doesn’t make mistakes.” A March 5, 2025 reel overlaid on an existing video of a woman talking about how to access abortion in Colombia with a clip of one of their members (a man) referring to abortion as murder of a baby. The caption below the reel reads: “The power that radical feminism has given women over another life is unacceptable. While many women fought to be able to vote or hold positions of power, today some are fighting to legalize the death of the unborn” (@feslibertad, March 5, 2025).

That statement reveals that the Liberty School Foundation does not oppose all women’s rights. It promotes women’s political rights, for example. Indeed, the Foundation often posts videos extolling the “virtues” of right-wing women politicians like María Fernanda Cabal. A woman’s right to choose to abort, to enjoy bodily self-determination, on the other hand, is “unacceptable.”

The Foundation is thus engaged in a balancing act of promoting modern, evidence-based, rational, public intellectual positions and its traditional views of women. It elides those positions subtly. For example, on March 8, 2025, an Instagram reel declared International Women’s Day an ideological battlefield fought by radical feminists. Looking into the camera, a young, attractive woman remarks that a growing number of women no longer feel represented in the marches. Her speech is accompanied by images of women protesters wearing balaclavas or engaging in violent activities. She shifts directions in the speech to congratulate other women who have accepted their “correct role as the fundamental base for the transcendence of civilization and the first pillar for strengthening new generations” (@feslibertad), meaning that by adopting their traditional roles as mothers and supporters of their husbands, they are virtuous. The Foundation’s creative, productive dynamic (Paternotte Reference Paternotte2023) is evident in the way it links anti-women’s rights to a pro-traditional women’s power stance.

A TikTok video from early 2024 further illustrates the Foundation’s creative construction of anti-gender rights through the promotion of traditional women’s power (Lancheros Reference Lancheros2024). Following a trend across the platform where users satirically highlight stereotypes associated with their various identities, women members of the Foundation created a “women on the right” version of the video. The video went viral. In it, various women state:

In this video, the women in the Foundation position themselves in opposition to feminism. They affirm their belief in the traditional family and create an archetype of what is wrong with “radical feminists.” Specifically, they see feminists as expecting benefits because of their gender, seeing themselves as victims because of their sex, and believing that glass ceilings prevent women from advancing in the workplace. For the Foundation women, the redistribution of social, political, and economic power threatens elites’ rights and privileges. As Brown (Reference Brown2019, 10) finds, what seems to be a contradictory view of women’s rights is coherent in “neoliberal formulations of freedom [that] animate and legitimate the hard Right … [which mobilizes] for securing white, male, and Christian hegemony, and not only for building the power of capital.” The Liberty School Foundation associates its ultimate goal of consolidating economic and political power with a particular “idea of the family” and women’s role in it (Cooper Reference Cooper2017).

The Liberty School Foundation highlights the reasons why, and ways in which, radical neoliberal movements participate in anti-gender movements. While its actions are perhaps less overtly anti-women and anti-LGBTIQ+ rights than countermovements or mascus uncivil movements, the Foundation illustrates the link between radical neoliberal mobilization and traditional gender views, the coherence of neoliberalism and the consolidation of capital and moral conservatism. Its promotion of “traditional family values” and intellectual opposition to “radical” leftism or wokeness positions the group against sexual and reproductive rights, thus contributing to a broader ecosystem of the right against rights in Latin America.