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ISS0010.1177/0268580919856488International SociologyMorán Faúndes

Article
International Sociology
2019, Vol. 34(4) 402­–417
The geopolitics of moral © The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/0268580919856488
https://doi.org/10.1177/0268580919856488
Argentinian neo-conservatism journals.sagepub.com/home/iss

in the genesis of the discourse

of ‘gender ideology’

José Manuel Morán Faúndes

Universidad Nacional de Cordoba, Argentina

Abstract
‘Gender ideology’ discourse has been one of the most recurrent strategies of neo-conservative
activism at a global level. Through this syntagma, a variety of moral panics have been mobilized
against feminist agendas and LGBTI rights, accusing them of promoting the destruction of natural
order, the spread of Marxism and global conspiracy. The academic literature has highlighted
that the genesis of this strategic discourse was an intellectual production in the mid-1990s;
we can trace back texts written in conjunction by secular neo-conservative intellectuals in the
United States and members of the Catholic hierarchy. However, the tendency has been to
ignore the strong intellectual production that neo-conservative activists developed at that time
in Argentina, particularly in Córdoba and Buenos Aires, which helped to lay the foundations
of the present ‘gender ideology’ discourse. The intention of this work is to draw attention to
that local production and its connection with the ideas that were being developed in parallel
in the global North. In order to do this, the article analyzes a series of texts produced by neo-
conservatives in Argentina in the 1990s.

Keywords
Argentina, conservatism, gender, ideology, neo-conservatism

The existence of opponents to sexual and reproductive (SR) rights and those related to
sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) is not new in Latin America (González
Ruiz, 2006; Vassallo, 2005). For more than 30 years, their ways of collective action have

Corresponding author:
José Manuel Morán Faúndes, Universidad Nacional de Cordoba, Caseros 301, Piso 1, Cordoba, 5000,
Argentina.
Email: jmfmoran@gmail.com
Morán Faúndes 403

increased in complexity, incorporating new actors, and renewing their repertoire of strat-
egies (Morán Faúndes and Peñas Defago, 2016). The Catholic hierarchy, some evangeli-
cal churches, ‘pro-life’ and ‘pro-family’ NGOs, conservative think tanks, among others,
have converged at this point (Vaggione, 2011). However, the visibility of this opposition
has intensified, thanks to a new discursive strategy developed by almost the entire region:
the so-called ‘gender ideology’.
Through the mobilization of this discourse, traditional opponents of SR and SOGI
rights have managed to establish the idea that feminist and LGBTI agendas are based on
ideological constructions, at odds with objective reality (Diniz Junqueira, 2017). This
strategy has been built at a global level, found in Europe, the United States, Africa and,
recently, in Latin America (Cornejo-Valley and Pichardo, 2017; Serrano Amaya, 2017;
Viveros Vigoya and Rodríguez Rondón, 2017).
In Colombia, the opposition to signing the peace agreements between the government
of President Santos and the FARC mobilized a vigorous campaign claiming that the agree-
ments contained ‘gender ideology’ among other ideas. On 2 October 2016, the peace
agreements were rejected by 50.2% against in the historic referendum called by the gov-
ernment. In Paraguay, on 5 October 2017 the Parliamentary Group for Childhood and
Adolescence exposed the Minister of Education Enrique Riera in a public hearing, stating
that the materials promoted by the Ministry of Education and Science taught ‘gender ide-
ology’. That very same day, the Ministry published Resolution No. 29,664, prohibiting the
distribution and use of printed and digital materials containing ‘gender ideology’ in edu-
cational institutions.1 In Brazil, an important part of the political platform of the far-right
candidate Jair Bolsonaro was based on his rejection of the so-called ‘gender ideology’,
accusing it as cultural Marxism. On 28 October 2018, Bolsonaro was elected president.
Recent academic literature has reconstructed the intellectual history of this discourse,
tracking the early sources that began to question the theory of gender approach, which
was later called ‘gender ideology’ by its opponents (Anić, 2015; Case, 2016; Cornejo-
Valle and Pichardo, 2017; Diniz Junqueira, 2017; Garbagnoli, 2016; Paternotte, 2015).
These genealogical reconstructions have shown that the questioning of the gender per-
spective was developed thanks to the ideas developed by American activists and intel-
lectuals, afterwards taken up by the Catholic hierarchy. ‘Gender ideology’ was a reaction
to the feminist and LGBTI agenda mobilized in international human rights spaces in the
mid-1990s. However, specialized literature tends to ignore the strong intellectual pro-
duction that opposition activists to SR and SOGI rights developed at that time from the
global South. In particular, Argentina was an important generator of reactionary thinkers
against LGBTI and feminist agendas of the time. Such production directly influenced
American intellectuals, whose ideas were then recovered by the Vatican.
Argentina–US relations operated as a route for trafficking ideas aimed to block the
rights demanded by feminist and LGBTI movements. Therefore, the objective of this
article is to give an account of the Argentine production of neo-conservative ideas in the
mid-1990s and its connection with the ideas and interpretations that were being devel-
oped in the global North simultaneously. The intention of this work is to write about the
history of the discourse of ‘gender ideology’, from another perspective – not only by
simply exporting the ‘cultural wars’ of the global North or focusing on the imposition of
the Vatican and the American religious right over the South. Of course, the transnational
404 International Sociology 34(4)

trafficking of neo-conservative ideas and strategies from the North to the global South
does exist (see Kaoma, 2012); however, if we understand how Argentine neo-conserva-
tives contributed to the production of this new global discourse of opposition to SR and
SOGI rights, we may see the complexity of transnational geopolitics of narratives that
today threaten women and LGBTI communities all over the world. The intention of this
work is not to show the truth or untruth of the ideas that feed that discourse, but the way
in which a transnational circuit of ideas was structured geopolitically in the mid-1990s,
which resulted in what is now called ‘gender ideology’.

Neo-conservative activism
Historically, the sexed body constituted an arena of constant dispute. Since the second
half of the 20th century these conflicts have been intensified globally, as a result of
movements that established gender and sexuality as the center of political dispute
(Vaggione, 2005). On the one hand, the mobilization of feminist and LGBTI movements
made a number of claims to broaden the scope of sexual practices, bodies and desires
(Pecheny and La Dehesa, 2011). On the other hand, an activism that reacted against the
processes of expansion and recognition of SR and SOGI rights also appeared. Between
the 1960s and 1970s, traditional conservatism reoriented its attention, focusing more
strongly on the topics associated with body and sexuality (Vaggione, 2005).
The new temporality in which sexuality entered the political agenda established an
updated conservative agenda, known as ‘neo-conservative’ activism. Although the con-
cept ‘neo-conservatism’ is not devoid of problems, labeling this movement enables bring-
ing into focus two central aspects. On the one hand, there was the innovation of an activism
whose agenda was mainly focused on keeping a sexual order that was threatened by the
political agenda of the second wave of feminism and the emerging LGBTI movements.
As a matter of fact, the prefix ‘neo’ highlights the way in which the reaction to the politi-
cization of gender and sexuality opened a new temporality in which some sectors took
collective action to fight against the expansion of SR and SOGI rights (Vaggione, 2011).
On the other hand, the ‘conservative’ nature highlights the continuity of these sectors
with actors and processes dating back to earlier times and to the prioritization of sexual-
ity in the field of political contest. Marked by the influence of Christianity, the conserva-
tive agenda has historically focused on problems associated with the conservation of the
political and civil roles of the Catholic church responding to the projects of secular states,
anticlericalism, liberalism, etc. While sexual issues were not ignored, today we can
notice that they have been included within the list of priority topics. The strength of this
contemporary shift toward sexual issues represents the innovation of actions taking
place, set against the continued moral and religious background. However, attention has
been redirected principally toward the sexed body as a reaction to feminist agendas and
LGBTI movements.
This neo-conservative change of direction cannot be understood without understanding
the influence of religion in the contemporary political field, particularly as regards sexual-
ity. Far from fulfillment of the omens of traditional theories of secularization that predicted
privatization, and even the disappearance of religion in modernity (Casanova, 1994), we
can now witness an effervescent renewal of transcendental beliefs (Berger, 2005).
Morán Faúndes 405

This political presence of religion is stronger in the field of the body and sexuality
(Vaggione, 2011). When sexual issues entered the political agenda, they affected reli-
gions in various ways. In some cases, they enabled a pluralization of certain religious
systems and actors. In recent decades, there has emerged a multicolored mosaic of femi-
nist and queer theologies, progressive churches, religious LGBTI and feminist organiza-
tions, among others. All these actors challenge the ideas that religious matters should be
coupled with contemporary sexual politics under binary schemes, where the secular is
associated with advances of SR and SOGI rights, and religion with inevitable conserva-
tive positions (Vaggione, 2005). But, on the other hand, the politicization of sexual mat-
ters also meant a ‘reactive politicization’ (Vaggione, 2005) of religion against feminist
claims and LGBTI rights. Several churches became more dogmatic since they consid-
ered these movements to be a threat to sexual morality and the order of the world they
protect. This reaction gave rise to the creation of a neo-conservative movement.
In Latin America, neo-conservative activism began to develop strongly in the 1980s
(González Ruiz, 2006; Mujica, 2007; Vassallo, 2005). In a context influenced by strong
Catholic colonial heritage, the policies issued by the Vatican were very influential in the
region. The Vatican turned toward sexual issues as a response to the feminist agenda
(Case, 2016), together with the strong opposition initiated by Pope John Paul II against
the liberation theology movement, which was very significant in Latin America. All this
meant the reunification of the local Catholic structures around the neo-conservative
agenda (Htun, 2003).
In the 1980s, in parallel to this reorganization in the Vatican hierarchy, similar pro-
cesses occurred in civil society. On one hand, old Catholic organizations led by parish-
ioners, whose institutional objectives had not necessarily been focused on issues related
to sexual morality, began to be concerned by these issues. Organizations such as the
Consortium of Catholic Doctors and the Corporation of Catholic Lawyers, founded in
the city of Buenos Aires in 1929 and 1935 respectively, and the organization Tradition,
Family and Property, founded in São Paulo in 1960, began to adhere strongly to the neo-
conservative agenda in the 1980s (Morán Faúndes, 2017). On the other hand, a series of
new NGOs also began to settle in the region. Their agenda focused almost exclusively on
the defense of a reproductive, heterosexual, conjugal and monogamous sexuality model
(González Ruiz, 2006; Vassallo, 2005). We can trace the origins of some of these in
international Catholic organizations that began to operate in the region in the 1980s
(Gudiño and Bessone, 2017). Human Life International, founded in 1981 in the US, was
one of the most important ones in this sense. Supported by this organization, various
local NGOs emerged in different Latin American countries: Ceprofarena in Peru (1981),
the Anonymous Movement for Life in Chile (1985), ‘Pro-Familia’ in Argentina (1983),
among others (González Ruiz, 2006; Mujica, 2007; Vassallo, 2005).
In this way, in Latin America a neo-conservative activism began to take shape in the
1980s, operating as a clerical and civil network which first resisted the use of modern con-
traceptive methods and abortion, and then expanding its agenda to issues such as civil
unions, same-sex marriage, gender identity laws, comprehensive sex education, etc. This
entire mosaic of actors began to converge under the label of ‘pro-life’ or ‘pro-family’
(Morán Faúndes and Peñas Defago, 2016). Today, neo-conservative activism has taken up
more complex actions. While in the 1980s Catholicism was the driving force that
406 International Sociology 34(4)

articulated collective actions, today evangelical sectors have been strongly integrated
(Campos Machado, 2006). In addition, many ‘pro-life’ or ‘pro-family’ NGOs have gone
through a process of religious disidentification. They relegated their confessional elements
to a second level in order to prioritize their neo-conservative agenda as a center of articula-
tion and mobilization (Morán Faúndes and Peñas Defago, 2016). Think tanks, confessional
universities, bioethicists, etc. have joined this now transnational movement, in reaction to
the politicization of new demands mobilized by feminist and LGBTI movements.

‘Gender ideology’ as a new discursive strategy

Throughout its history, neo-conservative activism has resorted to multiple discursive
strategies. Many originated in texts produced by the Catholic hierarchy. The last Supreme
Pontiffs concentrated a large part of their agenda on responding to the growing feminist
and LGBTI movements which became globally dynamic in the second half of the 20th
century (Case, 2016). Through institutions such as the Pontifical Council for the Family,
the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Pontifical Academy for Life, or offi-
cial instruments such as papal encyclicals, the Vatican has become a powerful propa-
ganda machine (Peñas Defago, 2010). One of the Vatican’s repeated narrative strategies
has been the construction of a series of syntagmas that encapsulate its patriarchal and
heteronormative positions. Thus, for example, in 1991 John Paul II’s encyclical
Centesimus Annus expressed the need to build up a ‘human ecology’ to protect human
beings from the threat of extinction posed by SR rights. In 1995, the Pope’s encyclical
Evangelium Vitae promoted a ‘culture of life’ against the threat of the ‘culture of death’
posed by feminist and LGBTI agendas. The Vatican’s discursive production machinery
has enabled a global expansion of the neo-conservative narrative.
‘Gender ideology’, not unrelated to these previous constructions, is one of the most
recent discursive inventions of neo-conservative activism (Viveros Vigoya and Rodríguez
Rondón, 2017). The academic and intellectual field should not take this concept as a merely
descriptive, neutral or consensual term. On the contrary, since it is a concept with specific
ideological and political responsibility, only the sectors that share these ideological beliefs
agree to use the term as if it were just descriptive and neutral (Paternotte, 2015).
Fernando Serrano Amaya (2017) defines ‘gender ideology’ as the assembly of ideas
and interpretations of texts produced in the mid-1990s as a reaction to the gender agenda
promoted by feminism, especially at the Conference on Population and Development in
Cairo (1994) and at the Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing (1995).
‘Gender ideology’ was the name used by neo-conservative activism to synthesize its
questioning of the gender approach that was beginning to impact all over the world
(Cornejo-Valle and Pichardo, 2017; Kováts, 2017; Viveros Vigoya and Rodríguez
Rondón, 2017). Although this concept emerged as a reaction to the transnational actions
of the feminist movements in the 1990s, from the beginning it was a combination of
ideas that mix and confuse feminist agendas with LGBTI politics without nuance. The
threat of gender to neo-conservatism consists in its capacity not only to question the
traditional roles between men and women, but also the stability of heterosexuality and
the man/woman binary. Thus, although the neo-conservatives in the 1990s generally
connected the concept of ‘gender’ with feminist ideas, all the contestation they opened
Morán Faúndes 407

up against ‘gender’ was directed not only to feminist agendas, but also to LGBTIs as
well. As a matter of fact, part of the term’s effectiveness consists in its ability to simplify
the complex and unify the diverse. Through this umbrella concept (Grzebalska and Soós,
2016), neo-conservative activism eliminates the internal divisions as well as the debates
that exist within both feminist and LGBTI movements, beyond alliances and solidarity.
Both movements are included in the concept of ‘gender ideology’.
Unlike other neo-conservative concepts, such as the culture of life/death, which was
mainly a Vatican production, ‘gender ideology’ was the result of a broader intellectual
output. Neo-conservative intellectual activists (mostly parishioners) in collaboration
with the discursive system of the Holy See gave rise to this production (Paternotte,
2015). Academic literature usually uses a linear narrative to tell the history of this gender
questioning. The book Who Stole Feminism?, written by the American academic
Christina Hoff Sommers (1994), tends to be considered the precursor to this period. She
did not use the term ‘gender ideology’ in her book. However, she proposed a categoriza-
tion that became a key point for the further development of this concept: the difference
between what she called liberal or equality feminism (first-wave feminism) and gender
feminism (the second wave of feminism). According to her, equality feminism obtained
significant achievements in the area of rights, such as women’s suffrage and formal
equality before the law. However, she believed the new ‘gender feminism’ had been radi-
calized, by considering that women’s oppression went beyond the boundaries of legal
inequality. The category ‘gender’ used by this new feminism believes that the roots of
women’s oppression are not only legal issues but also cultural structures (responding to
a patriarchal society). But according to Hoff Sommers, such cultural oppression is not
real, since women enjoy unprecedented equal rights nowadays. According to the author;
the term ‘gender’ belongs to an ideological category, not to an objective one.
After Hoff Sommers published her book, Dale O’Leary (researcher at the Catholic
Medical Association of the United States) wrote the position paper: ‘Gender: The decon-
struction of women’ in 1995. This document is often considered to be the main text of
neo-conservative questioning of gender.2 The report was issued at the NGO Forum cel-
ebrated in parallel with the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. According
to Sara Garbagnoli (2016), reviews of it were presented that same year to Cardinal Joseph
Ratzinger. Going back to the ideas of Hoff Sommers, O’Leary accused ‘gender femi-
nists’ of restoring the ideas of classical Marxism, but updating them from a cultural
perspective. According to the author, feminists criticized Marxists theorists for focusing
their revolution on class conflict, ignoring the gender conflict originated by the patriar-
chal family that presupposes class inequality.
By quoting authors such as Shulamith Firestone or Heidi Hartman, O’Leary noted that
for contemporary feminists gender oppression was interlocked with class oppression, and
nowadays, the revolutionary discourse was not only limited to economics, but to culture
as well (O’Leary, 1995, 1997). The concept of ‘gender’ revealed a false antagonism
between men and women, but at the same time it highlighted the possibility of overcom-
ing it, since masculine roles of power and feminine roles of subordination would be cul-
tural constructs that could be modified. O’Leary was infuriated by the idea that ‘gender’
was a category which could break up the stability of binary sexual difference, of hetero-
sexuality as a ‘natural’ orientation, and therefore, of the heterosexual and conjugal family.
408 International Sociology 34(4)

By deconstructing the perceived naturalness of women’s sexed bodies, authors such as

Judith Butler and Anne Fausto-Sterling disturbed O’Leary. Thus, ‘gender feminists’ (a
category that mixed radical feminists, Marxists, LGBTI and queer people) represented a
threat to the ‘natural’ order of things or, in other words, a threat to biology itself. To illus-
trate the extent of that threat, O’Leary claimed these beliefs were global conspiracies
(Baden and Goetz, 1997), emphasizing that ‘gender feminism is an imperialist ideology’
(O’Leary, 1995: 28).
One must consider Hoff Sommers and, mainly, O’Leary to be the first neo-conserva-
tive intellectuals who tried to attack the theoretical and conceptual bases of gender as a
‘socially constructed category’. Their ideas were gradually incorporated by the Catholic
hierarchy (see Ratzinger, 1996), who renamed the gender agenda: ‘gender ideology’. We
can see the first record of the use of this syntagma in the book L’Evangile faceau désor-
dre mondial (prologue by Benedict XVI) by the Belgian priest Michel Schooyans (1997).
Later, in 1998, the Catholic hierarchy published the first official text that explicitly used
the concept of ‘gender ideology’ to synthesize the neo-conservative questioning of gen-
der. Written by the Peruvian Episcopal Conference (Conferencia Episcopal Peruana,
1998), the document was called ‘Gender ideology: Its dangers and scope’. Republished
in 2003 in the book Lexicon: Ambiguous and Debatable Terms Regarding Family, Life
and Ethical Questions by the Catholic Church (Pontificio Consejo para la Familia, 2003),
the text contained a synthesis of the report ‘Gender: The deconstruction of women’ writ-
ten by O’Leary in 1995. The document restored the main aspects that neo-conservatism
attributed to the gender agenda: an assumed anti-scientific (and, therefore, ideological)
character, its relation with Marxism, and its conspiratorial nature. From that point on,
there was a global increase in the production of neo-conservative texts about ‘gender
ideology’. The new texts replicated the elements assigned to the feminist agenda by Hoff
Sommers and O’Leary. While some issues are emphasized more than others, the texts
always follow the same pattern (Cornejo-Valle and Pichardo, 2017).
What are these elements? According to Elżbieta Korolczuk and Agnieszka Graff
(2018), who studied this discourse from a critical academic approach, ‘gender ideology’
discourse is composed of three broad dimensions. First, the effectiveness of this term is
based on its capacity to appropriate objectivity: neo-conservatives affirm that sex, gender
identities and sexual desire are biological attributes. Therefore ‘gender ideology’ dis-
course considers neo-conservative sexual politics in terms of objective and neutral evi-
dence, whereas their detractors follow purely ideological rules. It is clear that ‘ideology’
is used as a synonym for ‘false ideas’, versus the ‘true ideas’ stood for by neo-conserva-
tive activism (Cornejo-Valle and Pichardo, 2017). ‘Gender ideology’ discourse seeks to
re-naturalize gender and sexuality under binary and unquestionable ideas (Garbagnoli,
2016).
The second point highlighted by Korolczuk and Graff regarding ‘gender ideology’ is
the way in which this concept has attributed a neo-Marxist character to feminist and
LGBTI political theories and demands (Anić, 2015; Hankivsky and Skoryk, 2014;
Maďarová, 2015). According to O’Leary (1995), the claims of these movements are a
sort of cultural Marxism, intended to abolish the systems of class and gender division,
sexual hierarchies and, ultimately, the ‘traditional family’. Summing up, neo-conservatives
mobilize the concept of ‘gender ideology’ to show that Marxism is not an outdated ideology.
Morán Faúndes 409

On the contrary, it has an new battlefront, focusing on the body and sexuality. Through
the discourse of ‘gender ideology’, neo-conservatives establish that we are witnessing a
kind of cultural battle where left-wing movements consider gender and sexuality more
important than economy and class. They use the concept of ‘gender ideology’ to encour-
age moral panic (Miskolci and Campana, 2017) bundling together Marxism, feminism
and LGBTI movements (Anić, 2015).
Finally, the third element highlighted by Korolczuk and Graff is the global conspiracy,
ideological totalitarianism and cultural neo-colonialism narrative mobilized under the
umbrella of ‘gender ideology’ (Korolczuk and Graff, 2018; Paternotte, 2015; Paternotte
and Kuhar, 2017). Indeed, neo-conservatives assume the existence of a global scenario
where feminist and LGBTI agendas are supported by large corporations, human rights
agencies and international donors, among others. Their intention may be to spread this
‘gender ideology’ to every corner of the world by using the international human rights
agenda as a tool (Cornejo-Valle and Pichardo, 2017) and rallying the interests of global
capital markets to their cause (Korolczuk and Graff, 2018). Neo-conservatives believe
that all this ‘cultural neocolonialism’ is being mobilized by global conspiracies and alli-
ances: ‘This sinister global force, supposedly funded by transnational corporations such
as Amazon and Google, is described as a new form of colonialism, the most vulnerable
targets of which are developing nations in Africa’ (Korolczuk and Graff, 2018: 807).
‘Gender ideology’ is an empty signifier that functions as a mobilizing tool against
same-sex marriage, access to abortion, sexual education, etc. It concentrates multiple and
even contradictory agendas and actors (Marxism, feminism, LGBTI, United Nations,
global capital, etc.) under the same conceptual umbrella (Kováts and Põim, 2015; Kuhar
and Zobec, 2017; Mayer and Sauer, 2017). This strategic discourse has allowed neo-
conservative activism to attract wide audiences from beyond the mainstream (Korolczuk
and Graff, 2018; Kováts and Põim, 2015; Paternotte and Kuhar, 2017; Pető, 2016). It
serves as the ‘symbolic glue’ (Grzebalska and Pető, 2018) for agenda setting between
traditional neo-conservatives and other forces, such as neo-fascist movements and far-
right paramilitary groups that believe that feminist and LGBTI agendas are updates of
Marxist philosophies. What is more, some anti-globalization actors interpret these agen-
das as the forces of new imperialism (Anić, 2015; Korolczuk and Graff, 2018). Thus, SR
and SOGI rights are being threatened by new neo-conservative alliances.

Revising the genealogy of ‘gender ideology’ in Argentina

As we have noted, the literature tends to trace the origins of ‘gender ideology’ discourse to
the United States, in the texts of Hoff Sommers and O’Leary, and later found at the heart of
the Catholic hierarchy. However, literature in this respect has not considered the intellec-
tual influence of Latin American neo-conservative activism in this network. The intellec-
tual theories developed here were later taken up by the global North neo-conservatives and
the Catholic hierarchy. Namely, Argentine neo-conservatives, particularly those located in
the city of Buenos Aires and the province of Córdoba, were crucial in this process.
In order to illustrate this, we will refer again to the abovementioned report: ‘Gender:
The deconstruction of women’ by Dale O’Leary, foundational for the neo-conservative
‘gender ideology’ discourse. O’Leary reviewed a large number of papers and books
410 International Sociology 34(4)

written by feminist and queer theorists in order to question gender theory. In her report
she quoted Simone de Beauvoir, Alison Jagger, Shulamith Firestone, Adrienne Rich,
Judith Butler, Anne Fausto-Sterling, among others. However, O’Leary only referred to
two authors, who both belong to her same line of thought, to support her neo-conserv-
ative position. One was Christina Hoff Sommers, who set the difference between
equality and gender feminism. The other was the Catholic activist Cristina González
de Delgado,3 from Córdoba, Argentina. O’Leary quoted a report written by González
de Delgado that warned of the threat represented by the gender perspective being
mobilized in human rights spaces. This report was written after González de Delgado’s
participation in the Sixth Regional Conference on the Integration of Women in the
Economic and Social Development of Latin America and the Caribbean, held in
September 1994 in the city of Mar del Plata, Argentina. This conference was a prelimi-
nary to the NGO Forum to be held a year later alongside the Fourth World Conference
on Women in Beijing.
From that moment, González de Delgado was concerned about the feminist approach’s
gender agenda which declared ‘that there exists no natural man or natural woman, that
there is no conjunction of characteristics or conduct exclusive to one sex, even in the
psychic life. … The non-existence of a feminine or masculine essence allows us to reject
the supposed “superiority” of one sex or the other and to question as far as possible
whether there is a “natural” form of human sexuality’ (González de Delgado, 1994,
quoted in O’Leary, 1995: 4).
In Córdoba, the name Cristina González de Delgado became known in 1997 when she
worked in conjunction with many parents of students and filed a writ of amparo against
co-education in the traditional Montserrat boys’ school.4 A few years later, during 2002
and 2003, her name became well-known again, but this time countrywide. In Córdoba,
the NGO she directed, Mujeres por la Vida (Women for Life), filed writs of amparo
against the recently created National Program for Sexual Health and Responsible
Procreation and against the Responsible Motherhood and Fatherhood Program of the
province of Córdoba (Peñas Defago, 2018).
Argentina’s neo-conservative activism was not only a credible informant for the neo-
conservatives in the global North (nor was González de Delgado the only voice in these
parts of the world) but also, at one and the same time, Argentina was in fact a generator
of neo-conservative thought bent on questioning the gender agenda. Some of these ques-
tionings, in particular those originating in Buenos Aires and Córdoba, were summarized
in the book La mujer hoy. Después de Pekín (1995) (The woman today. After Beijing),
co-written by priests and neo-conservative civil society activists. This book condensed a
number of reactions of neo-conservative activists to the conference held in Mar del Plata
in 1994. Several articles included in the publication featured what the authors thought
were the theoretical-ideological bases and the political intentions of gender theory,
resulting in a local production later to be called ‘gender ideology’.5 Articles such as ‘La
perspectiva de género’ (‘Gender perspective’) and ‘Hacia un feminismo femenino’
(‘Towards a feminine feminism’) by Jorge Scala (1995a, 1995b),6 ‘Feminismo y edu-
cación’ (‘Feminism and education’) by Cristina González de Delgado (1995) and ‘La
teoría de género’ (‘Gender theory’) by Marta Siebert (1995),7 among others, analyzed
these ideas with scrupulous attention.
Morán Faúndes 411

Each of these authors questioned the gender agenda in different ways. Yet, all of them
had the same line of thought, i.e. they focused on the idea that gender theory threatened
the model of ‘traditional family’, heterosexuality and procreation. In general, all the texts
presumed that gender was not a theory, but an ideological construct that aimed to pro-
duce cultural changes by manipulating the language (Bergonzo de Arcagni, 1995;
González de Delgado, 1995; Sanahuja, 1995; Scala, 1995a; Siebert, 1995). The authors
explained how the concept of ‘gender’ shapes the ‘semantic war’ (Siebert, 1995: 23) by
reversing the semiotics of the real essence of the body, the family, sex, life, etc., in order
to create a sexual order devoid of what neo-conservatism considers normal and natural:
heterosexuality, procreation, marriage and monogamy.
Thus, Marta Siebert, in her attempt to trace the origins of this process, concluded that
the sectors that promote gender theory came from a long process of ‘regression of the
human spirit’ (1995: 23). Such regression began in the 14th century with the rise of
nominalism, and was intensified by the critical, empiricist and rational spirit of moder-
nity. According to her, it is clear that feminism and LGBTI movements inherited these
ideas, focusing their attention on the production of a new sexual order thanks to the influ-
ence of authors such as Sigmund Freud and Michel Foucault. Indeed, it was argued, the
principle that there is no universal reality and all positivity is based on a discursive
framework which classifies objects led feminists to undermine the supposed naturalness
of our sexed bodies and to merge with LGBTI theoretical perspectives.
According to the authors of this book, this was the origin of a new era of mobilizations
oriented towards the construction of new subjects based on sexual desires and identities
far from what would be the essence and nature of human beings (Pascual, 1995; Scala,
1995a; Siebert, 1995). The theory of gender supposed an attack against biology itself
(Scala, 1995a), through the adoption of a series of anti-scientific, strictly ideological
ideas (González de Delgado, 1995; Scala, 1995a; Siebert, 1995).
One of the strongest reasons why the authors showed special concern about the
concept ‘gender’ is because it not only questions the naturalness of conventional mas-
culine/feminine roles, but also disapproves of heterosexuality and the anatomical dif-
ference between men and women by confronting cultural and biological aspects. The
gender theory invalidates the objective nature of the body and sexuality explained in
biology, shifting the sexual differences from a physiological to a cultural level in
order to empower women (González de Delgado, 1995) and ‘destroy the family,
women and the vulnerable’ (Bergonzo de Arcagni, 1995: 82). Neo-conservative activ-
ism in Argentina warned of the three threats inherent in the mobilization of the gender
agenda: first, to the traditional masculine and feminine roles; second, to heterosexual-
ity as a ‘natural’ orientation; and third, to sexual difference, i.e. the physiological
division between men and women.
This concern about the repercussions of the ‘gender’ category in the stability of sex
differences should be highlighted. In the mid-1990s, in most of the feminist movement
the idea that sex was biological-natural and gender culture-related was still strong (Baden
and Goetz, 1997). Likewise, in various Latin American contexts, many of the transgen-
der demands and perspectives were competing to gain visibility, even within the LGBTI
movements. The emergent theories, which criticized the unquestionable nature of the
binary category of male or female, such as queer theory, unleashed moral panic among
412 International Sociology 34(4)

the neo-conservatives long before they made a significant impact on various progressive
sectors. A key moment was the text by the Mexican feminist scholar Marta Lamas (1994)
presented at the regional conference in Mar del Plata in 1994, which struck fear in the
neo-conservative community. The text questioned, among other issues, the ‘naturalness’
of the man/woman binary and gender identities by analyzing intersex corporeality. Neo-
conservative authors such as González de Delgado (1995), Scala (1995a, 2001, 2003),
Siebert (1996), presbyter Lorenzo Pascual (1995) and O’Leary (1997) were obsessive in
their analysis of Lama’s document. Her ideas were disturbing to the Argentine intellec-
tual neo-conservatives.
Consequently, neo-conservatives began to track the origins of the gender agenda.
Although some of them found its roots in liberal culture (Scala, 1995b), others saw in
feminist theory echoes of Marx:

The Marxist ideology disapproved of private property of the means of production. He believed
it was the root of all the evils of mankind; as if the only problem of human beings were of an
economic nature. He was wrong. Yesterday: economy; today: sexuality. Yesterday: the
bourgeois-proletarian dialectic; today: the male-female dialectic. Yesterday: the socialization
of the means of production; today: gender equality. (Pascual, 1995: 51)

Just like O’Leary, Pascual overstated the impact of the Marxist branch of feminism in
order to cause confusion about all gender theory production. The neo-conservative dis-
cursive system ignored the numerous divisions and internal debates of the gender theo-
rists, among the Marxist, poststructuralist, liberal, postcolonial currents, etc., in order to
persuade people that the ideological root of the whole spectrum was Marxism.
The Argentine neo-conservatives believed that this reorganization of the classic
Marxist economic theory now oriented towards a new gender-focused cultural Marxism
represented both a local and a global threat. According to these authors, the expansion of
these ideas was developed in conjunction with local and transnational parties who oper-
ated in a sort of worldwide conspiracy against the natural order of things: ‘The national
and provincial government, in conjunction with universities, NGOs, and the economic
sponsorship of United Nations Agencies, are now implementing new legal frameworks
regarding female equality’ (González de Delgado, 1995: 111). The gender agenda ‘will
reach its goals after much planning. This plan will be perfectly outlined, step by step in
order to achieve each and every aim’ (Siebert, 1995: 30). Conspiracy theories are com-
mon among these early neo-conservative works.
Thus, in the mid-1990s, the discourse of Catholic activists and intellectuals in
Argentina was opposed to the concept of ‘gender’ and, consequently, against the the-
ory and approach of feminism and LGBTI movements. Their ideas were in line with
the aforementioned analytical approach developed by Korolczuk and Graff (2018), in
which the concept of ‘gender ideology’ includes three basic ideas: the existence of a
natural sexual order, the neo-Marxist threat to that sexual order and the global con-
spiracy promoted by that ideology. These three elements appear in texts developed by
Argentine neo-conservative activism in 1995. This neo-conservative intellectual out-
put in Argentina, and mainly in Buenos Aires and Córdoba, became well-known on a
global scale.
Morán Faúndes 413

Conclusions
The intellectual production of Argentine neo-conservatives in the mid-1990s has not been
explored. However, several of the ideas developed in this part of the world fully coincide
with those produced in the global North, where scholars have tracked the origins of ‘gender
ideology’. In exactly the same year, in reaction to the same global juncture (Cairo and
Beijing conferences), Argentine and American neo-conservatism produced a matching col-
lection of analyses. This does not mean that their intellectual proposals were strictly coher-
ent, or accurate in their interpretations of theories and policies. The present concept of
‘gender ideology’ emerged from a rather lax and biased interpretation of the feminist the-
ory and LGBTI agenda in the last 60 years (Baden and Goetz, 1997). As a result, important
feminist and LGBTI intellectuals were urged to respond to the controversy surrounding the
concept of ‘gender ideology’. Judith Butler wrote a text in response to the verbal attacks in
public she suffered in her visit to Brazil in 2017. The neo-conservatives reproached her for
being a ‘gender ideologist’.8 In addition to re-explaining her theoretical perspective on
gender and differentiating it from an ‘ideology’, she responded directly to the statements of
neo-conservative intellectuals such as Jorge Scala, claiming that his ideas were nothing
more than a ‘caricature’ seeking to frame gender theory as a moral threat.9
Nevertheless, the purpose of this work has not been to confirm the truthfulness or false-
ness of each neo-conservative idea, but to highlight the geopolitics of that intellectual pro-
duction. By presenting numerous neo-conservative ideas which originated in the global
South, we can understand the complex nature of their geopolitics. Undoubtedly, there are
many neo-conservative strategies developed in the United States and Europe which have
been exported to the global South. However, one must consider the way in which local
neo-conservatives have played a fundamental role in the production of the globally prolif-
erating hate speeches against women’s rights, gender equality and LGBTI rights. Learning
about the central concepts of the historical and intellectual background to neo-conservative
activism is essential to understand the sources that allow the circulation of ideas and mes-
sages that may prevent some people from having a proper existence in the future.

Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or
not-for-profit sectors.

ORCID iD
José Manuel Morán Faúndes https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5601-1014

Notes
1. See: www.mec.gov.py/cms_v4/documentos/ver_documento/?titulo=29664-2017-RIERA1
2. Her book The Gender Agenda: Redefining Equality’, published in 1997, was based on this
paper.
3. In that report, O’Leary incorrectly cited Cristina González de Delgado as ‘Cristine Delgado’,
but in her later book (O’Leary, 1997) she corrected it.
4. See: www.defensoria.org.ar/gonzalez-de-delgado-cristina-y-otros-c-universidad-nac-de-cor
doba-aamparo/
414 International Sociology 34(4)

5. Surprisingly, one of the texts by Jorge Scala (1995b) included in this book speaks about the
concept of ‘gender ideology’, but not in any depth.
6. Jorge Scala, who was a lawyer for the NGO Mujeres por la Vida directed by González de
Delgado, is one of the founders of the NGO in Córdoba, Portal de Belén. Since the 1990s,
this latter NGO has opposed SR rights at local and national levels. Scala worked for Human
Life International, and has written a number of books and articles questioning the concept of
gender to the present day. One of his most influential books is La ideología de género o el
género como herramienta de poder (2003).
7. Marta Siebert was a teacher at the National School of Montserrat, which is linked to the
National University of Córdoba. In the late 1990s, Siebert together with González de Delgado,
filed a writ of amparo to the court against the school admitting women since it had historically
been a boys only school (see: www.lavoz.com.ar/ciudadanos/presidir-centro-de-estudiantes-
marco-mi-vida). Siebert also published the book La mujer en la problemática actual (1996)
(The woman in current affairs), where she extended her ideas against the concept of ‘gender’
put forward by feminists.
8. See: https://verne.elpais.com/verne/2017/11/09/articulo/1510238549_627489.html
9. See: www.pagina12.com.ar/77673-el-fantasma-del-genero

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Author biography
José Manuel Morán Faúndes, PhD in Latin American Social Studies, is a researcher at the National
Council of Scientific and Technical Research of Argentina (CONICET), Professor of Sociology of
Law at the National University of Córdoba, Argentina and researcher on the Sexual and
Reproductive Rights Program at the National University of Córdoba.

Résumé
Le discours sur « l’idéologie du genre » figure parmi l’une des stratégies les plus récurrentes de
l’activisme néoconservateur à l’échelle mondiale. À travers cette expression, diverses paniques
Morán Faúndes 417

morales sont mobilisées pour s’opposer aux agendas féministes et LGBTI, accusés de favoriser
la destruction de l’ordre naturel, la propagation du marxisme et la conspiration internationale.
La littérature scientifique a identifié la genèse de ce discours stratégique dans des écrits datant
du milieu des années 1990, nés d’une collaboration entre des intellectuels néoconservateurs
laïcs aux États-Unis et des membres de la hiérarchie catholique. Cependant, on a eu tendance
à négliger l’importante production intellectuelle des activistes néoconservateurs de l’époque
en Argentine, en particulier à Córdoba et Buenos Aires, qui a contribué à jeter les bases du
discours actuel sur « l’idéologie du genre ». L’intention de ce travail est d’attirer l’attention sur
cette production locale et son lien avec les idées qui se développaient en parallèle dans le Nord
global. Pour ce faire, nous analyserons une série de textes produits dans les années 1990 par des
néoconservateurs en Argentine.

Mots-clés
Argentine, conservatisme, genre, idéologie, néoconservatisme

Resumen
El discurso de la ‘ideología de género’ viene siendo una de las estrategias más recurrentes del
activismo neoconservador a nivel global. Mediante este sintagma, movilizan una serie de pánicos
morales contra las agendas feministas y LGBTI, acusándolas de por promover la destrucción
del orden natural, propagar el marxismo y conspirar globalmente. La literatura académica ha
destacado que la génesis de este discurso estratégico fue una producción intelectual de mediados
de los noventa, signada por una colaboración entre intelectuales laicas neoconservadoras de
Estados Unidos y miembros de la jerarquía católica. Sin embargo, se ha tendido a soslayar la fuerte
producción intelectual que activistas neoconservadores/as desarrollaron en aquella época desde
Argentina, en especial desde Córdoba y Buenos Aires, y que coadyuvaron a sentar las bases de lo
que hoy denominan ‘ideología de género’. Este trabajo busca visibilizar esa producción local y su
conexión con las ideas que se estaban desarrollando paralelamente en el norte global. Para ello, se
analizan una serie de textos producidos por el neoconservadurismo argentino en los años noventa.

Palabras clave
Argentina, conservadurismo, género, ideología, neoconservadurismo