Not in the mood for gender and feminism. Exploring affect and expertise through Spanish anti-gender movements

Abstract

This article explores the use of affect in the study of anti-gender movements – a loosely connected network of actors that seeks political goals through their opposition to women's and LGBTQ+ rights and lives. Drawing on ethnographic data from Spain, it examines ‘anti-gender’ moods and the collective attunements that underpin these movements. Through this affective turn, it suggests that these moods can have profound binding and mobilising effects, capable of cultivating dynamics of hateful love; this is, anti-gender movements create spaces that nurture love for the perceived ingroup and simultaneously stoke hate towards the Other. The article suggests that how things are communicated is entangled with what is communicated, stressing the importance of the expert as a figure that contributes an authorising dimension to this mood of hateful love.