FEMGEN 170: Backlash: Feminism Since 2016

Course Description

As a political movement seeking the liberation of women and sexual minorities from gendered oppression, feminism has always had detractors - and pronounced periods of backlash. But since 2016, and in the long aftermath of Hillary Clinton's defeat to Donald Trump, anti-feminist backlash in media and politics has taken on a distinct 21st-century character, mixing old arguments with new scapegoats and adopting stylistic postures that blend open male supremacy with disavowing irony. Examining changes in popular opinion and the evolution of anti-feminist arguments on issues from abortion, to sexual violence, to trans rights, this course will map the new terrain of gender conservatism, and trace its intellectual origins in previous cycles of social progress and retrenchment. Taught by Clayman Writer-in-Residence and columnist for The Guardian, Moira Donegan.