The Global Fight Against LGBTI Rights

Some scholars of sexual politics like simple stories —there are "good guys" and "bad guys" and in the end, the good guys triumph. Not Ayoub and Stoekl! In their profound new book, they excavate the complex interactions between the pro- and anti-LGBTIQ movements and their embedding in broader secular/liberal and religious/conservative networks at both the domestic and transnational levels. What results is a "double helix" of movement/ countermovement interactions embedded in both states and international institutions, a complex which the authors describe and analyze with immense expertise and profound wisdom. (Sidney Tarrow, author of Power in Movement) This important book stands as one of the finest contributions to the ever-growing research on neoconservative anti-gender opposition to equality politics. Based on extensive empirical work, Phillip M. Ayoub and Kristina Stoeckl guide us through an eye-opening exploration of the rapidly expanding and increasingly effective transnational moral conservative movements. It is a must-read for anyone seeking to grasp the complex dynamics of contemporary resistance to what seemed like an unstoppable march towards full equality. (Roman Kuhar, author of Anti-Gender Campaigns in Europe: Mobilizing Against Equality) This important book draws upon a decade of fieldwork to offer a sober assessment of the impact that transnational movements for and against LGBTQI rights have had in making gender, sexuality, and gender identity central to world politics. The authors provide compelling evidence that the movement's targets and campaigns–whether over reproductive rights, women's roles, sexual orientation, same-sex marriage, or drag performances–are almost always intertwined with panic around the destabilization of masculinity and femininity and challenges to patriarchy. (Verta Taylor, co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of U. S. Women's Social Movement Activism)