Confronting "Anti-Gender" Mobilizations across Ukraine, Poland, Belarus, and Russia: Challenges and Queer-Feminist Resistances
Date: Monday, March 3, 2025; 9:30–16:30 CET (Warsaw time); Online & In-person: Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Staszic Palace (Pałac Staszica), Nowy Świat 72, 00-330 Warsaw, Poland
Registration link (for both online and in-person participation): Click here
https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/253ecaa8-ddf1-45bc-a765-f82099fcc299@99e0dc58-9c4b-4820-8617-04c386c254c6
Agenda (PL time zone)
09:30–10:00
Arrival, coffee, informal networking
10:00–11:00
Presentation of RESIST Project Findings from the Case Studies in Poland and Belarus. Panel discussion (hybrid, online transmission). The RESIST team members will introduce the project and speak about the effects of, and resistances against “anti-gender” politics in Belarus and Poland in 15-minute presentations followed by a Q&A.
Adrianna Zabrzewska (RESIST Project, Edinburgh Napier University), Understanding ‘Anti-gender’ Politics Across Europe: An Overview of the RESIST Project.
Ekaterina Filep (RESIST Project, Université de Fribourg), Lived Experiences and Resistances to the ‘Anti-gender’ Mobilisations in Belarus.
Roberto Kulpa (RESIST Project, Edinburgh Napier University), Lived Experiences and Resistances to the ‘Anti-gender’ Mobilisations in Poland.
11:00–11:15
COFFEE BREAK
11:15–12:30
Feedback session and idea exchange workshop. This workshop (in-person only) aims to facilitate engagement with the project findings and share insights. We invite everyone to reflect on the following questions:
How do “anti-gender” politics manifest differently in Ukraine, Poland, Belarus, and Russia and what factors contribute to these variations?
In what ways do queer-feminist movements in these countries collaborate or support one another?
What barriers (both external and internal) do they encounter in building solidarity?
What role does intersectionality play in shaping the experiences of individuals affected by “anti-gender” politics in Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia?
12:30–13:45
LUNCH BREAK
13:45–15:00
Gender, Sexuality, Migration: Intersectional Identities, Competing Priorities, and Queer-Feminist Resistances Against “Anti-Gender” Politics. Panel discussion (hybrid, online transmission). In this session, our guest speakers will deliver 15-minute presentations on their respective research, followed by Q&A. Chaired by Dorota Hall, IFiS PAN.
Olga Sasunkevich (University of Gothenburg), The frames of war: state-led homophobia in Russia and the war against Ukraine and the West in the context of transnational anti-gender mobilisation.
Olga Plakhotnik (University of Greifswald), Maria Mayerchyk (Rhine-Waal University), Between “Gender” and “Anti-Gender”: (Trans) Necropolitics at the Buffer Periphery.
Sarian Jarski (Migration Consortium/ Queer Without Borders), ‘Queer’ and at the ‘green border’: LGBTQI+ displacement and intersectional solidarity at Polish borders with Belarus and Ukraine after 2021.
15:00–15:20
COFFEE BREAK
15:20–16:30
Anti-Gender Violence across Migration Routes. Personal Experiences, Theoretical Approaches, Academic Trials and Tribulations. Experience-sharing session (in-person only). In this session, we invite all in-person attendees to reflect on the questions below. Moderated by: Anna Cze Czerwińska HerStory Archivist and Independent Expert.
How do experiences of “anti-gender” violence differ among individuals navigating various migration routes?
What coping mechanisms and strategies of resistance are employed?
How does the experience of migration impact one’s academic and/or activist engagements?
Do queer-feminist scholars in these four national contexts experience the limitation of academic freedoms due to “anti-gender” mobilizations? In what ways?
How can theories of post-colonialism and peripheralization be applied to understand the unique challenges faced by queer-feminist movements in Ukraine, Poland, Belarus, and Russia and across these national contexts?
Reminder: Please note that both in-person and online attendees need to register for the event by following this link. We will not be able to admit unregistered participants.
Presentation Abstracts:
Olga Sasunkevich
The frames of war: state-led homophobia in Russia and the war against Ukraine and the West in the context of transnational anti-gender mobilisation
This presentation is based on a forthcoming book chapter that analyses how state-led homophobia in Russia served as a discursive framing of country’s decision to launch the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The argument is built on theoretical concepts of (un)grievable life and queer necropolitics to illuminate how questions of gender equality and sexual rights increasingly become the question of life and death in the contemporary geopolitical climate. Applied to the Russian context, these concepts reveal the potential of state-led homophobia to incite affective violence and economies of hate. The presentation analyses Russia’s case at the transnational background of anti-gender mobilization where struggles around gender and sexuality become a central field of contestation in contemporary (geo)politics. Thus, the cruelty of Russia in relation to “ungrievable” segments of its own population and the citizens of Ukraine should be seen as a warning suggesting that the boundary between symbolic and outright violence of anti-gender mobilization is fragile.
Olga Plakhotnik and Maria Mayerchyk
Between “Gender” and “Anti-Gender”: (Trans) Necropolitics at the Buffer Periphery
We use the concept of necropolitics (Mbembe 2003) in two dimensions. First, we zoom in on the situation of transgender people in Ukraine. On the one hand, they are vulnerable to transphobic hatred fuelled by transnational “anti-gender” movements. On the other hand, opposing “anti-gender” discourse, feminist activists and academics might rely on the grammar of binary gender, thus producing overt or covert transphobia. In addition to many levels of human insecurity caused by the full-scale Russian war on Ukraine, the condition of martial law and militarization of feminist and LGBT+ activisms in Ukraine practically delegitimize transgender lives. In the second part, we employ the analytics of the “buffer periphery” to decipher how “progressive” gender and sexual politics are being instrumentalized in the context of EU- and NATO aspirations of the Ukrainian state and Western financial and military aid. Zooming out to a global scale, we apply the concept of necropolitics to examine how both Western and Russian imperial powers project the Ukrainian population as marked by colonial difference, and what queer feminist responses to this projection might look like.
Sarian Jarosz
‘Queer’ and at the ‘green border’. LGBTQI+ displacement and intersectional solidarity at Polish borders with Belarus and Ukraine after 2021
The sudden intensification of mobility on Poland's eastern borders - first in 2021 on the border with Belarus, then in 2022 on the border with Ukraine - has forced Polish informal border solidarity infrastructures to develop ad hoc intersectional response to LGBTQI+ displacement. Based on the framework of engaged ethnography and the in-depth work of the cross-border research collective Queer Without Borders, I aim to present the different forms of queer humanitarianism and risks of its criminalization during humanitarian crises after 2021. This analysis exposes how both the experience of minority stress and state criminalization of queer/border solidarity in Poland in 2017-2023, shapes the methods and data collection regarding LGBTQI+ individuals on the move, conducted by the informal border activists at both Polish borders (Guyan 2022; Sandberg 2018). The emphasis is on testimonies of those engaged in queer migration research or humanitarian and legal data collection, who directly apply such data into cross-border work in Poland and Ukraine (Queer Without Borders 2022).
Participant bios:
Anna Cze Czerwińska is a longstanding feminist activist, past member of the Manifa 8go Marca, OŚKa, co-founder of Feminoteka and STER. She is a leading expert and organiser of herstory archives of Polish activist women in politics.
Dorota Hall is an Assoc. Prof. at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences, interested in religion, new spiritualities, gender, sexualities, minoritization and various forms of marginalization. She was a member of expert networks, such as the Network of Socio-economic Experts in the Anti-discrimination Field (SEN) established by the European Commission.
Sarian Jarosz is a Research Coordinator at Migration Consortium, Humanitarian LGBTQI+ Advisor at Save the Children Poland and co-founder of Queer Without Borders, non-formal coalition of organizations assisting LGBTQI+ refugees in Poland. With Save the Children and Plan International he published two reports on humanitarian response to LGBTQI+ displacement in Poland. Formerly Investigator on LGBTQI+ rights and migration at Amnesty International Poland. His focus is on criminalization of LGBTQI+ solidarity after 2017, research conducted in Poland, Belarus, Russia and Uganda.
Maria Mayerchyk is a Deputy Professor at the Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences and, together with Olga Plakhotnik, a joint editor-in-chief of Feminist Critique: East European Journal of Feminist and Queer Studies. Maria’s research interests include a decolonial perspective on gender, sexuality and body, queer and feminist movements and epistemologies of Eastern Europe, diaspora and migration studies, and folklore.
Olga Plakhotnik is a Chair for Ukrainian Cultural Studies at the University of Greifswald and a PI of the project "(Un)Disciplined: Pluralizing Ukrainian Studies—Understanding the War in Ukraine” . As a scholar-activist and educator, Olga works in the area of feminist/queer epistemologies, critical citizenship studies, and feminist/queer pedagogies.
Volha/Olga Sasunkevich is an Associate Professor in Gender Studies at the University of Gothenburg. She is a PI for EU Horizon Project MAGnituDe. Migration, Affective Geopolitics and European Democracy in Times of Military Conflicts and Research School FUDEM – Future of Democracy: Cultural Analyses of Illiberal Populism in Times of Crises. Olga's research interests revolve around the questions of gender, sexuality, migration and ethnicity in Eastern Europe.
RESIST Project Team Members:
Katya Filep (Université de Fribourg) is a social geographer specialising in gender, with a regional focus on Central Asia and Eastern Europe. She has a professional background in research, project management, translation and interpreting. Katya coordinates the RESIST Project's case study of Belarus and Hungary.
Roberto Kulpa (Edinburgh Napier University) is a social scientist interested in transnational sexual politics, especially dynamics between Central-Eastern Europe and ‘the West’, as well as in critical epistemologies. He coordinates the RESIST Project’s case study on Poland and leads on Stage 5: Communication and Dissemination.
Adrianna Zabrzewska (Edinburgh Napier University) is a feminist philosopher and co-editor of Gender, Voice, and Violence in Poland (2021). Adrianna combines a professional background in content marketing with interdisciplinary research expertise to implement RESIST’s impact plan and contribute to the case study on Poland.
3 March 2025