Protesting Gender

<p>Drawing on fieldwork conducted in Italy among political activists of the LGBTIQ movement and the traditionalist movement during the “anti-gender” campaign this book provides a dynamic picture of their sustained interactions. Through an analysis of the contentious strategies discourses and performances of both the LGBTIQ and the traditionalist movements from a strategic interactionist perspective it considers the key actors involved in this struggle over normative and social change showing how activists on both sides are confronted with different dilemmas influencing each other’s choices practices and identities at the individual and collective levels. Approaching social movements as interactive processes the author deploys the concepts of social performance and gender performativity to illustrate the ways in which activists interact with and within gender norms and how they reproduce or contest gender hierarchies as they protest thus revealing the centrality of gender to the analysis of processes of recruitment and mobilization strategies frames and forms of organization. As such it will appeal to scholars of sociology and political science with interests in social movements and gender.</p>