“The Loved Home” and Other Exclusionary Care Discourses

A Multiscalar and Transnational Analysis of Heteroactivist Resistances to Gender and Sexual Rights in Sweden

Abstract

Based on a conceptualization of heteroactivism as a transnational phenomenon manifesting in local contexts to spread and express resistance to gender and sexual rights, this article aims to illuminate new dimensions of heteroactivism beyond a sole focus on gender and sexuality by bringing its specificities in the Swedish context to the fore. Drawing on digital ethnography with members of the neo-conservative, far-right thinktank Oikos and the ethnonationalist political party the Sweden Democrats (SD), 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 spatiohistorically established notions of gender equality and sexual rights. Through a multiscalar transnational approach, the article brings forth how heteroactivism connects several levels horizontally—from the local to the national and the transnational—and vertically and establishes linkages among gender, sexuality, the state and 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. It also demonstrates how the home, which these actors seek to cherish and protect, takes shape as an exclusive and exclusionary space.