Can’t just add women and stir.

What Tina Jung (2009) calls “genderism” (149) refers to making use of gender as a mere variable and not as a category of research. It is based on a steadfast belief in gender binarity that takes gender into account if it appears politically opportune, but is unlikely to allow challenges by profound analysis. We encounter it in many places, and this makes it very difficult to insist on feminism as such, let alone raise queerness as an issue of interest. Patriarchal genderism has entered many fields of research and politics without necessarily having anything to do with feminist or queer claims at all. On the contrary, a wide, but superficial post- and anti-feminist genderization of debates may efficiently lead to not having to take sex–gender-based analysis and critique into account. Its proponents – we can think of them as relatives and friends of ¶ “cosmo man” (Agathangelou and Ling 2004, 37) – can be of any gender. The corresponding mode of thinking about gender and sexuality is clearly hetero- normative, binary, top–down and mostly formulated from rather comfortable positions in society, which is why I call it patriarchal in quality. Patriarchal genderism is characterized by potentially benevolent, but preferably moderate, gender charity rather than radical queer or feminist politics. Still, it claims to be aware and supportive of gender issues as benchmarks of liberal democracy. This often amorphous genderism tends to make universal claims, but it can turn into a very specific form when it comes to speaking about other women that come “under western eyes” (Mohanty 1991). With the rise of gender awareness and policies in the relevant domains of so-called international/uni- versal knowledge production, patriarchy has successfully been transferred to distant “Others” in the Global South/East or to its representatives inside global capitalism’s metropoles through a sustainable “ethnicization of sexism” (Ja ̈ger 1999). By way of this procedure, the centers of political and epistemic power in the Global North/West appear as the natural address of progressive gender regimes and sexual policies. In fact, this tradition of sexualized and gendered racism is indeed as old as imperialism (McClintock 1995), and it has taken on many forms. It is very efficient, because “[g]ender operates as a kind of technology of empire enabling the West to make the case for its own modernity and for its civilizational projects around the globe” (Razack 2008, 18). We are about to now decipher the latest forms of existence of this success- ful technology, and we have to modify our instruments of analysis and critique accordingly. The notion of patriarchal genderism and other concepts presented below can help us in this process.