‘The loved home’ and other exclusionary care discourses. A multi-scalar and transnational analysis of heteroactivist resistances to gender and sexual rights in Sweden.

Summary, in English

Based in a conceptualization of heteroactivism as a transnational phenomenon which manifest in local contexts, this article aims to illuminate new dimensions of heteroactivism beyond a more limited focus on gender and sexuality, by bringing the specificities of heteroactivism in a Swedish context to the fore. Drawing on digital ethnography with members of the neo-conservative, far-right think tank Oikos and the ethno-nationalist political party the Sweden Democrats, the article shows how heteroactivist forms of resistance seek to reshape the state and the nation through the gender-sexuality nexus, and how these resistances enter into negotiation with spatio-historically established notions of gender equality and sexual rights. Through a multi-scalar transnational approach, the article brings forth how heteroactivism connects several levels horizontally – from the local, to the national and the transnational – as well as vertically and establish linkages between gender-sexuality-the state-the nation. The analysis reveals how care, love and gratitude for the shared home are core elements used in heteroactivist negotiations with contextually established notions of gender equality and sexual rights as national values, and demonstrates how the home, which these actors seek to cherish and protect, takes shape as an exclusive and exclusionary space.