Lesson 4.1: Anti-Gender Politics and Displacement

1. Intro

2. Push Factors: Persecution, Surveillance, Public Hostility

As discussed in previous topics in this course, ‘anti-gender’ politics manifest through legislative change, public hostility, media discourses, and state repression. For queer, trans, and feminist activists in certain regions, these pressures create an environment where safety, dignity, and participation in public life become increasingly constrained and often endangered.

Across RESIST findings, participants consistently described how legal restrictions, police harassment, public hostility, and authoritarian governance pushed them to seek protection abroad. ‘Anti-gender’ mobilisations frequently coexist with nationalism, populism, or authoritarianism, creating layered exposures to harm.

For many Kurdish, feminist, queer, and trans activists, leaving Turkey / Northern Kurdistan was simultaneously an escape and a long-term strategy for survival and political continuity. In RESIST, exile describes a state of in-betweenness: safe, but not yet free; distant, yet still politically attached. Participants described an increasingly repressive environment post-2015, marked by bans on Pride marches, intensified online hostility, and targeted policing of gender- and minority-related activism. As Bawer explained:

[Since] 2015 the government started to directly attack the LGBTQIA+ movement […]it is difficult today, but it was always difficult. Homophobic violence [...] it has many forms. (Exile Report, p. 7)

Turkey’s withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention, the collapse of the Kurdish peace process, and post-2016 emergency rule reinforced a climate where violence escalated and impunity prevailed. Hate crimes and femicides increased, and perpetrators were emboldened. Arat, a trans woman and and activst put it bluntly:

I would have died if I stayed in Turkey. (Exile Report, p. 7)

In the RESIST data, participants described an increasingly repressive environment post-2015, marked by bans on Pride marches, intensified online hostility, and targeted policing of gender- and minority-related activism.

Leaving was therefore not only a flight from violence but an act of political persistence.

• Egemen, an academic who signed a petition against state violence (an "Academics for Peace" petition, titled "We Will Not Be a Party to This Crime") fled to continue his scholarship. 
• Yazan, a gay left-wing politician, left after sustained media harassment and escalating threats.

‘Anti-gender’ politics in Turkey thus acted as:

• a push factor, producing direct persecution; and
• a framing device, branding queer, feminist, and Kurdish dissidents as “perverts”, “terrorists”, or threats to the nation.

Exile therefore can be seen as both personal rupture and a strategy for survival. In RESIST, exile describes a state of in-betweenness: safe, but not yet free; distant, yet still politically attached.

In Belarus, ‘anti-gender’ hostility is deeply woven into state governance. Participants linked repression of feminist and queer activism to an authoritarian strategy that portrays gender equality as a foreign threat to national stability and moral order.

After the 2020 protests, repression intensified. If prior to 2020 people had spaces to think together and heal, afterwards,only individual therapy was available, which could not replace community. People described feeling isolated. (Belarus Report, p. 10)

Another organiser described the atmosphere of constant alert, that they were constantly calculating risks, knowing that telling people the truth (about the severity of surveillance) would increase anxiety. The pressure never stops, as Belarus participants described (Belarus Report, p. 11)

Here, exile often followed deep isolation: a need not only for physical safety but for emotional survival.

3. Border Violence: Camps, Illegal Pushbacks, Structural Racism

As the RESIST Exile Report (p.5) notes, “anti-gender’ experiences continue

through complex migration processes, illegal pushbacks, and poor conditions in refugee camps, along with everyday and structural racism in host countries.

In other words, migration regimes not only extend ‘anti-gender’ violence across borders; by creating and militarising borders, they enact ‘anti-gender’ violence on people crossing them.

Some participants travelled via fellowships or visas; others were forced to use dangerous and criminalised routes. These journeys exposed many to risks to their lives, assault, detention, and systematic humiliation. Meral, a Kurdish activist, described reception centres as degrading:

In the arrival camps, they humiliate you so much […] you feel like a bug. (Exile Report, p. 9)

Requests for protection were often met with apathy.

4. Bureaucratic Violence & Betrayal by State Institutions

Asylum systems produce new, and reproduce old harms experienced by the people who flee countries in search of safety and dignity. They incounter: 

• disbelief
• moral judgement
• heteronormative expectations
• excessive demands for proof

One of participants from the exile case (EXIINT07) survived for six months in Germany as an “illegalised” person before even being allowed to apply for asylum. He recalled:

You’re selling your trauma just to get help. (ExileReport, p. 10)

Queer asylum seekers experience prolonged uncertainty and exposure to risk while waiting for decisions. Many flee extreme homophobic, transphobic, or lesbophobic violence in their countries of origin, yet forced encampment and drawn-out procedures leave them vulnerable. P

articipants reported intrusive questions about sexual practices that violate privacy and reflect ‘anti-gender’ stereotypes. Greek participant GRCFG3.4 said: 

Waiting for decisions adds stress and fear GRCFG3.4 explained, 

Sometimes, we are tired of waiting. [...F]or me, it’s been three months, still no decision. [...I]t’s so stressful waiting […] I’m always thinking about it [...] I don’t know what is my fate [...M]y friends, here, we are going through the same thing [...] we have similar stories. (Greece Report, p. 18)

Trans refugees faced further hurdles in name-change processes and residency bureaucracies, revealing how migration systems reproduce gendered violence. Trans refugees in Greece face major hurdles in accessing Legal Gender Recognition (LGR) and other bureaucratic processes, even when asylum has been granted for being trans. Laws like L. 4491/2017 exist, but non-binary people and trans refugees often cannot use them. Marachi said:

Even after legal recognition, public services can out trans people and expose them to discrimination. Harry explained that when he received the COVID vaccine, it was issued under his dead name, and at conscription he faced humiliating questioning: 

Kassandra described renewing her Palestinian passport as traumatic because she had to: 

appear with my deadname, of course, but not only that: with male presentation […] they’re asking me to play a part that for me is so traumatic to re-enter.

These examples show how migration systems in Greece reproduce gendered violence, creating new barriers for trans refugees. (Greece Report, p. 11)

These dynamics reflect what Didier Fassin calls bureaucratic violence: harm enacted through procedures that are aimed to discipline, control, and eliminate rather than to protect.

5. Exercise: Understanding the Intersections of ‘Anti-Gender’ Violence and Migration

Objective: To test your understanding of how migration intersects with ‘anti-gender’ violence, in this exercise you will map the factors behind migration and exile of LGBTIQ+ people and feminist activists.

Task: Fill out the table below using the examples from the RESIST Project’s research covered in this session. While revisiting the case study on Belarus and the case study on exiles from Turkey and Northern Kurdistan, consider the following questions:

• What sociopolitical conditions make the home country a dangerous or unfavourable place to live for LGBTIQ+ people and feminist activists?

• What events or sociopolitical conditions contribute to migration and exile? Why do people decide to leave their home countries? Why are they forced to leave?

• What conditions queer, trans, and feminist individuals and activists are seeking in their host countries? What conditions would make their lives liveable?

• What forms of border and asylum regimes might obstruct their entry into the host country? What larger systems are at play here (e.g. transphobia, racism, xenophobia, etc.)?