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Lesson 3.3: Mental Health and Personal Consequences

3. Fatigue and emotional exhaustion

‘Anti-gender’ mobilisations produce what participants called ‘intellectual fatigue’ or ‘methodological exhaustion.’ Activists feel trapped in repetitive, defensive labour — explaining, correcting, and debating the same misconceptions. 

Emotional fatigue functions as a political strategy: it narrows what people feel able to demand or imagine.

Spain – Catalonia and the Basque Country

“Reactionism creates fatigue, an intellectual fatigue. It creates a fatigue of saying that we are not moving forward. It creates a methodological fatigue, I no longer know how to close this debate once and for all.”  (ESPINT02, Spain – Catalonia and the Basque Country Report, p. 10)

Roger, another participant in the case study on Spain – Catalonia and the Basque Country, reflected:

“If you’ve been fighting for something for a few years and what you see is that the situation is going to the opposite extreme, it’s very discouraging. You feel that everything is already lost and there is no new world.” (Spain – Catalonia and the Basque Country Report, p. 10)

These words capture how exhaustion becomes political: it narrows what can be imagined, demanded, or sustained. Yet fatigue can coexist with moments of renewal. Roger also recalled how collective protest reignited hope, reminding us that solidarity remains a source of emotional repair.