Chapter published in:
Conspiracy Theory Discourses
Edited by Massimiliano Demata, Virginia Zorzi and Angela Zottola
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 98] 2022
► pp. 465–488

Chapter 20
“Gender ideology” and the discursive infrastructure of a transnational conspiracy theory

| University of Turin
| Federal University of Rio de Janeiro

The formula “gender ideology” has recently gained political traction in several countries. This chapter investigates its conspiracist discursive infrastructure by probing two corpora of far-right media from Brazil and the US. Analysis indicates that “gender ideology” is framed within semantic realms of manipulation, puppeteering, falseness, and danger. It also suggests that anti-gender rhetoric acts as an all-encompassing narrative whereby a cohort of inchoate but ideologically interlinked conspiracy theories are lumped together in a seemingly coherent whole. Comparing datasets from two countries empirically illustrates how anti-gender rhetoric crosses transnational borders and adapts to local specifics along the way.

Keywords: gender, ideology, conspiracy theories, Brazil, USA, corpus-based critical discourse analysis, floating signifier
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Anti-gender conspiracy narratives
  • 3.Data and methodology
  • 4.Analysis
  • 5.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.98.20zot
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