Insights
The Alliance We Cannot Afford to Lose
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Commentary
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Publish Date
April 16, 2026
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Last month at the 70th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) — the United Nations body where governments set global standards on gender equality — something unprecedented happened. The session's outcome document was put to a vote rather than adopted by consensus. The United States cast the only vote against. Its eight proposed amendments — targeting language on reproductive health, intersectionality (the recognition that people face overlapping forms of discrimination), and gender identity — were rejected. Then, when the U.S. introduced a separate, unnegotiated resolution attempting to redefine "gender" in purely binary terms, a clear majority of states voted to block it from even being considered.
The applause in the General Assembly Hall was immediate. People stood. For a moment, it felt like a win.
It was. But it was also a warning.
The U.S. was not acting as a defender of women's rights at the CSW. It had withdrawn from UN Women just weeks earlier and opposed virtually every feminist gain on the table. But the broader dynamic the session exposed is something many of us have been tracking for years: the deliberate, transnational effort to pit feminist and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer (LGBTIQ) movements against each other. That effort is gaining traction across regions and political contexts, including within parts of feminist movements themselves. This is not simply a disagreement within movements. It is a political strategy designed to weaken the broader human rights framework itself.
A shared history under pressure
Feminist and LGBTIQ movements have been intertwined for decades. At their core, both movements are rooted in the same principles: bodily autonomy, freedom from gender-based control, and the right to live free from discrimination. Lesbian organizers were at the historic World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, pushing governments to recognize that women's rights must include the freedom to love and live beyond heterosexual norms. Many of the legal frameworks LGBTIQ people depend on today were built on foundations that feminist movements laid.
In Latin America, the Green Wave (a massive grassroots campaign for abortion rights that swept from Argentina across the region) and Ni Una Menos (or "Not One Less", the continent-wide movement against gender-based violence), have explicitly embraced queer and trans participation. In Europe, feminist networks defending the Istanbul Convention, a landmark treaty on preventing violence against women, have worked alongside LGBTIQ organizations to resist anti-gender coalitions that target both movements. This collaboration is the foundation upon which our joint success rests. That is precisely why the opposition has targeted it.
Trans people's rights as the wedge
Here is what we need to say plainly: anti-trans messages are the primary tool being used to fracture the alliance between feminist and LGBTIQ movements. The strategy sometimes works not because it is persuasive, but because it is designed to exploit fear and uncertainty within feminist spaces.
The playbook is not complicated. Anti-gender actors — many of them from networks that have spent decades opposing abortion, contraception, and comprehensive sexuality education — have identified opposition to trans people's rights as a uniquely effective entry point into feminist spaces. By framing trans inclusion as a threat to women's safety, they recruit feminists into coalitions whose actual agenda includes no genuine concern for women. Once inside, they use that foothold to roll back protections for all women and LGBTIQ people alike, advancing a broader agenda that extends far beyond trans issues.
The so-called "gender-critical" movement — which asserts that sex is immutable and binary, and rejects trans women as women — has gained ground in the United Kingdom, other English-speaking countries, and parts of continental Europe. While not identical, many of these actors have become increasingly aligned with broader anti-gender movements, particularly in efforts to oppose trans inclusion.
In Latin America, similar arguments rooted in biological essentialism are circulating in some feminist circles, including in Colombia, even though the terminology differs from that in the Anglophone context. What was once a fringe position now has media platforms, political allies, and institutional support. Gender-critical actors have formed alliances with right-wing and far-right organizations. Both the Council of Europe and UN Women have identified these currents as part of broader attacks on human rights.
In Spain, long seen as a leader in feminist mobilization, divisions over a 2023 transgender people's rights law have led to separate feminist marches on International Women's Day — a pattern that repeated in 2026. In South Korea, segments of the country's digital feminist movement — particularly online communities rooted in biological essentialism — have adopted trans-exclusionary positions, and self-proclaimed radical feminist groups have led campaigns against trans women's access to women's universities and military service. These splits are cultivated by actors who need to divide feminists in order to advance an agenda that harms all of us.
We saw this clearly at the Commission on the Status of Women. The same actors who opposed trans inclusion also sought to strip out protections on reproductive health, intersectionality, and gender-based violence. The opposition to trans people's rights was a door ,not the endgame. And once that door opens, everyone's rights are called into question.
The UN architecture is shifting, and that should concern us
While the CSW held the line, the broader institutional landscape is moving quickly. The UN Secretary-General’s office has proposed a merger between the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and UN Women — the two primary UN entities working on gender equality and reproductive health.
In our view, the recently released strategic assessment does not make a convincing case for such a merger. Institutional reform is necessary, but at this moment the risks are significant. With U.S. funding withdrawn, anti-rights actors gaining ground, and the multilateral system under strain, consolidation could weaken rather than strengthen the global gender equality architecture.
Outright is engaged in the Feminist UN80 Cross-Coalition, a broad civil society alliance shaping the UN’s 80th anniversary reform process. The coalition has raised concerns about the financial assumptions underpinning the proposal, insufficient risk mitigation, the potential reopening of contested gender equality language in the General Assembly, and limited civil society inclusion. It is calling for full transparency and serious consideration of alternatives.
What we know from the ground
While these institutional battles play out in UN rooms, our work on the ground tells a consistent story: feminist and LGBTIQ movements are strongest together, and weakened when forced apart.
Our LBQ Connect program — supporting lesbian, bisexual, and queer (LBQ) women and activists — funded 63 projects in 44 countries over three years, reaching 300 activists with $726,000 in grants. LBQ activists operate at the intersection of feminist and LGBTIQ movements. They work on gender-based violence, reproductive health, economic empowerment, and family recognition. Their work does not fit neatly into one movement or another, because their lives do not.
Yet only five percent of global LGBTIQ funding goes to LBQ issues. Many organizations we work with have never received external funding before. When U.S. government funding was abruptly withdrawn in early 2025, the LBQ Connect program was forced to pause — a direct consequence of the same political forces reshaping the global policy debates at forums like the CSW. Outright continues to work with LBQ activists and organizations, but the gap remains.
What comes next
Later this month, I will be at Women Deliver in Melbourne where more than 6,500 advocates from feminist, grassroots, First Nations, youth-led, and LGBTIQ movements will be gathering. I intend to bring a clear message: the attempt to separate women's rights from LGBTIQ rights is an attack on both.
The task ahead is not to convince each other that our movements belong together — decades of shared struggle have established that. The task is to refuse the frame that pits us against each other. When that frame takes hold, rights do not erode in isolation — they are rolled back together.
Feminist movements have been among the LGBTIQ movement's strongest allies. That alliance is not a courtesy. It is a strategic necessity. And in this moment — with institutions under reform, funding under threat, and rights under attack — it is an alliance we cannot afford to lose.
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