Abstract:
Across Europe and the Americas, right-wing populist leaders have mobilized “anti-gender ideology”, embracing patriarchal and heteronormative visions of social order. In parallel, scholars have traced how some illiberal actors strategically incorporate selective support for women’s or gay rights to signal civilisational superiority, particularly where such rights are mobilized against Muslim minorities, often termed “pinkwashing”. The Philippine context - where there are weak LGBT protections and democratic actors are themselves ambivalent or inconsistent on LGBT rights - complicates understandings of pinkwashing, which presumes strategic instrumentalization of gender and sexual rights to deflect from otherwise illiberal policies. While some observers have praised Philippine Vice-President Sara Duterte's LGBT advocacy and occasional self-identification as LGBT, others accuse her of attempting to launder her family dynasty’s illiberal reputation, particularly its deadly "war on drugs", for which her father, former President Rodrigo Duterte, is being tried at the International Criminal Court. The talk posits that Duterte’s pro-LGBT positioning is better understood as a form of imperfect solidarity coexisting with an illiberal, securitized political project rather than as reputational laundering in a “civilisational” sense. By interrogating how Duterte has utilized greater ideological flexibility to articulate limited forms of gender and sexual inclusion in a political field dominated by dynasties rather than political parties, the talk attempts to provide a nuanced analysis of complicity, co-optation, and the uneven terrain of rights-based politics.
Date and time: 19th May 2026, 18:00 / 6 PM CET
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