In most regions around the world, anti-trans politics align with right-wing populism and form part of broader assaults on LGBT+ rights, gender equality, reproductive justice, and sexual freedoms. The global “anti-gender” movement traces back to conservative, Christian, and ultranationalist groups and targets a spectrum of issues such as abortion, contraception, sex education, same-sex marriage, and trans health care—all framed as defenses of “traditional values.” In the United States, for instance, resistance to trans rights sharply follows party lines, with Republicans more likely than Democrats to adopt anti-trans and anti-gender positions.
Similarly across Europe, leaders on the far right, like Viktor Orbán in Hungary and Giorgia Meloni in Italy, have led campaigns against what they term “gender ideology,” weaving anti-trans stances into broader political projects. In Latin America, right-wing figures such as Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and evangelical Christian groups in Peru, Costa Rica, and Colombia have likewise championed anti-trans and anti-gender causes. Across continents, anti-gender campaigning is frequently linked with right-wing nationalism, white supremacist ideology, and assertions of patriarchal authority.
By contrast, the British gender-critical movement concentrates more narrowly on trans issues and traverses left-right political divisions. Although anti-trans sentiment has long existed in Britain, the formal emergence of an organized gender-critical movement is relatively recent. It began within left-wing feminist and lesbian circles that objected to proposals to extend trans rights. Aligning with conservative groups that also resisted gender reform, and amplified by media outlets invested in culture-war confrontations, the gender-critical movement has attracted support from across the political spectrum. Today, gender-critical subgroups exist within all the major British political parties—Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat, Green, and the Scottish National Party—with Plaid Cymru in Wales as the notable exception.
The anti-trans backlash is not only impactful for trans and gender-nonconforming people; it shapes how all people navigate gendered spaces, services, and public life.
While political commentators often lump disparate anti-trans positions in Britain under a single label—calling them all “TERFs” on one side or identifying them as right-wing neo-fascists on the other—the reality is that these campaigners occupy a broad political spectrum. Some gender-critical figures are firmly on the right and anti-feminist, even when they invoke language about women’s rights. Others, including prominent Conservative politicians, advocate gender-critical politics from a conservative-feminist vantage point. A significant number of leading gender-critical voices come from the left. For example, A Woman’s Place UK was launched in 2017 by trade unionists and other left-leaning feminists. Though it ceased operations in 2024, A Woman’s Place UK played a key early role in organizing around gender-critical concerns. It identified itself as left-wing and drew backing from a range of left organizations, including the longstanding anti-violence group Southall Black Sisters. These feminists generally present themselves as “pro-women” rather than “anti-trans.”
Other organisations, such as Fair Play for Women, For Women Scotland, and Sex Matters, position themselves as non-partisan and include members from across the political spectrum. The LGB Alliance and Get The L Out, who also promote gender-critical perspectives via separation from the wider LGBT+ community, likewise claim nonpartisan stances while publicly rejecting alignment with either the left or the right.
Anti-gender conservatives and gender-critical feminists both oppose what they call “gender ideology,” but from different political viewpoints. Conservatives defend “traditional” gender norms and advocate for sex “complementarity” (i.e., distinct roles and identities for men and women). They attribute a range of social ills to shifting gender norms. In contrast, gender-critical feminists argue that “gender identity” reinforces stereotypes about how men and women should behave (i.e., women as “feminine” and men as “masculine”). They worry that rather than accepting a spectrum of expressions and sexualities, “gender ideology” encourages women who are perceived as masculine and girls—especially lesbians—to become men, and pushes men who are seen as feminine to become women.
Gender-critical feminists also contend that using the category of “gender” rather than “sex” obscures biological distinctions and hinders efforts to collect accurate data on equality indicators such as pay gaps, crime rates, and health outcomes, even though both sex and gender classifications face empirical challenges. Fundamentally, gender-critical feminists view trans rights as a threat to women’s equality and to gay rights, whereas conservatives oppose gender and sexual equality altogether.
Although gender-critical feminists and lesbians frequently feature in media coverage and public debates, they represent a minority viewpoint in Britain. Polls indicate that non-trans lesbians and bisexual women are among the more trans-inclusive groups. In fact, many of the newer gender-critical factions emerged specifically to challenge the longer-standing feminist and women’s organizations that had adopted trans-inclusive stances.
The range of anti-trans positions in Britain is also visible in ongoing debates among gender-critical feminists about whether to collaborate with right-wing groups. While some feminists reject such partnerships, others argue for strategic collaboration—evoking past, contentious alliances, including those between feminists and conservatives who aligned to oppose pornography and prostitution during the “sex wars” of the 1980s and 1990s.
British gender-critical campaigning embodies a growing trend of “political diagonalism,” in which unexpected alliances between the left and the right are formed not so much around shared goals as around a common enemy. These coalitions do not require left feminists to embrace conservative ideology, nor conservatives to adopt feminist positions; instead, they position themselves as ideologically diverse and legitimate supporters of a broader cause.
Conspiracy theories have been central to this dynamic, with widespread online misinformation drawing new gender-critical sympathizers from across the political spectrum. Claims online that “big pharma” funds the “trans lobby,” that pornography causes people to become transgender, or that trans women display “male pattern criminality” circulate widely and attract supporters who might otherwise reject anti-trans rhetoric. When repeated by academics, think tanks, and celebrities, these claims gain credibility. Trans historian Jules Gill-Peterson describes this as “the laundering of conspiracy,” whereby fringe theories are repackaged as plausible, “common-sense” arguments.
This diagonalism is further enabled by the flexible use of terms like “gender” and “gender ideology.” Because these terms lack fixed definitions, they can function as empty signs that different groups fill with their own meanings and anxieties—from concerns about social change to opposition to feminism—enabling alliances across disparate political agendas.
Many British gender-critical feminists also present their politics as arising from disillusionment with the left. They describe feeling abandoned by left-wing parties, trade unions, and women’s organizations, or displaced by younger generations who embrace trans-inclusive feminism. Many recount feeling “politically homeless” due to their trans-issues stance, which they interpret as justification for turning to right-wing media platforms or forming unconventional alliances. Gender-critical feminists have created a sense of shared identity through their perceived marginalization while claiming to represent the views of a majority of ordinary people.
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So how did these gender-critical groups in Britain, with such divergent ideologies, come into alignment? Who or what is the “shared enemy” that binds these strands in diagonal configurations? And why are these alliances so powerful?
This book argues that safety concerns—and the specific cultivation of fears around gender-based violence, sexual danger, and harm to women and children—have provided a central frame for uniting disparate anti-trans forces. Gender-critical campaigners across the left and right, from conservative to feminist corners, gained momentum by presenting trans rights and “gender ideology” as an acute threat to non-trans women and to children. These safety concerns are integral to the story of how gender-critical campaigners built cross-political support in Britain.
While newly formed gender-critical groups such as Fair Play for Women began by raising questions of “fairness,” “dignity,” and “women’s rights,” they soon discovered that portraying trans rights as a safety threat to women and children was a far more effective strategy. These “trans danger” arguments gained prominence during debates about reforming the Gender Recognition Act. Opponents of gender-recognition reform argued that self-identification would enable predatory men to access women-only spaces and to harm women. Campaigners began to link gender self-identification with sexual danger and risk. Excluding trans women from women’s spaces thus became a central objective for gender-critical campaigners and a key tactic for mobilizing fear.
By drawing on concerns about gender-based violence and highlighting women’s shared vulnerability, gender-critical groups redirected broader anxieties about harm into anti-trans positions. Their emotionally charged appeals drew on longstanding cultural tropes that cast trans and gender-diverse people as deviant or dangerous, amplifying public anxieties about trans rights even in the absence of solid evidence for such claims.
The moral panic that followed has become a defining feature of the contemporary British gender wars. Yet the political underpinnings of that panic are rarely identified or challenged. At its center lies carceral safety politics—a logic that converts fears of violence into justifications for punitive responses. These dynamics have given transphobic claims a veneer of legitimacy under the pretense of protecting women and children. They appear repeatedly in debates: splitting the world into innocent victims and dangerous others, treating harm as an external threat from dangerous others, pathologizing individuals and groups rather than addressing structural conditions of harm, and seeking safety through policing, surveillance, and exclusion based on identity.
Carceral safety politics in Britain are not limited to the gender-critical side. They are often mirrored by trans rights advocates. Because trans rights are framed as a danger to women and children, with trans women depicted as “sexual threats,” some trans advocates reply that they are the real victims, not perpetrators. Trans advocates rightly highlight the high levels of discrimination, harassment, and violence faced by trans communities to push for stronger protections from harm. These claims are valid, but within the broader frame of safety politics, they can also contribute to carceral dynamics.
We are witnessing how anti-trans feminists are increasingly intertwined with the acceleration of right-wing and reactionary politics more broadly.
For instance, in response to widespread hostility, many trans organizations backed Scotland’s 2021 Hate Crime and Public Order Act, which created new offenses for threats or abusive conduct intended to inflame hatred on the basis of transgender identity, age, disability, religion, and sexual orientation. Although the government framed the law as providing “greater protection for victims and communities,” in practice the legislation enables longer prison terms (up to seven years) for “inciting” or “stirring up hate.” Such provisions rely on the carceral premise that harsher penalties deter violence, despite robust evidence to the contrary. After the law took effect in 2024, a flood of vexatious complaints emerged in protest, and both gender-critical and trans campaigners debated which side most required the law’s protection.
Both gender-critical feminists and trans activists have become locked in ongoing clashes about safety and danger, with sides locked into victim-versus-perpetrator narratives. These disputes pivot on questions of who deserves support and protection and who is most dangerous and must be excluded. Identity becomes the basis for protection, while surveillance, control, and exclusion are proposed as remedies for danger. In doing so, these conflicts obscure deeper structural conditions of harm and divert attention and resources from more effective strategies to prevent violence.
These clashes are, in effect, a trap because carceral politics do not guarantee safety. They pit marginalized groups against one another and channel fear into demonization, surveillance, and punishment. What is needed is a vision of safety that does not rely on dividing the “deserving” from the “undeserving,” but on creating conditions in which safety is possible for everyone.
What has unfolded in Britain’s gender wars should not be mistaken for a debate limited to trans rights or identity politics. At stake are broader questions about which social norms and moral values should steer public policy. These conflicts—and the increasing resort to litigation to resolve them—have major implications for law, policy, and culture in Britain and beyond. The anti-trans backlash affects not only trans and gender-nonconforming people; it shapes how all people move through gendered spaces, access services, and participate in public life. These issues touch us all.
Equally troubling is the overseas spread of Britain’s gender-critical politics and techniques. Gender-critical groups formed in the UK are establishing international chapters, forging global networks, and sharing resources. The LGB Alliance, created in 2019 to separate lesbian, gay, and bisexual interests from trans rights, now claims chapters in sixteen countries around the world. Similarly, the Women’s Declaration International (WDI), which also originated in the UK, has expanded to more than forty international chapters with supporters across 160 countries. As trans organizer Nim Ralph notes, a “British version of anti-trans feminism is spreading worldwide, primarily in settler-colonial nations like the United States, Australia, and Canada.”
This transnational anti-trans and anti-gender organizing is reinforced by international funding flows. U.S.-based Christian groups, already backing anti-LGBT and anti-abortion campaigns domestically, are now supporting anti-gender initiatives abroad. Anti-gender funding from the United States to Europe has risen markedly in recent years. These international collaborations increasingly bring together liberal and left-wing feminists with far-right figures, all under the banner of shielding women and children from “gender ideology.”
Across different global contexts, the consequences of the expanding anti-trans backlash are clear. The United States, for example, has seen a dramatic surge in bills aimed at restricting trans people from accessing health care, education, sports, and legal recognition. In 2015 there were nineteen anti-trans bills introduced in the United States, in 2020 there were sixty-six, and by 2025 the tally had jumped to 1,020 anti-trans bills across forty-nine states. While initially spearheaded by right-wing religious groups, these campaigns now receive active backing from gender-critical feminists. We are witnessing how anti-trans feminists are increasingly intertwined with the acceleration of right-wing and reactionary politics more broadly.
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Excerpted from Unsafe: The Carceral Roots of the Anti-Trans Backlash by S. Lamble. Copyright © 2026. Published by Haymarket Books.
