Nordic study reveals how media amplifies gender culture wars
Researchers find that gender has become a flashpoint in public discourse across Nordic countries, weaponized by anti-gender movements to undermine women's and LGBTQ+ rights. For media companies and policy makers, the study highlights how polarized coverage shapes public opinion on contentious social issues.
Originaltitel: Media and gender: A Nordic perspective
<p>Who is afraid of gender? Judith Butler provocatively asks in her latest book addressing the polarised controversies stirred by the concept of gender in recent years. Her question is posed amid a surge of conservative and far-right movements that have significantly fuelled antagonism around gender debates far beyond the relatively niche circles that have traditionally been preoccupied with its conceptualisation and implications. In these debates, what Butler (2024) dubs “the phantasm of gender” is invoked as a threat to Western civilisation, a denial of nature, an attack on masculinity and “traditional family values”, or an effacement of the differences between sexes. Across Europe, such ideas have been propagated, in particular by actors within the so-called anti-gender ideology movement that leverages various forms of activism to undermine the rights of women and queer and trans people in areas from reproductive justice to protections against gendered violence. But even beyond these highly politicised circles, gender does indeed seem to have become a source of division in public discourse to the extent that the toxicity which increasingly surrounds the notion has been reported to discourage scholars and journalists alike from even engaging with the issue in public debate (Bladini, 2020; Møller Hartley & Askanius, 2021; Paternotte, 2019).</p>