Gender-Based Violence in Contemporary Hungary: Progress in Recognition and Backlash in Policies

Abstract

Thirty-five years after the Hungarian government ordered the removal of the barbed wire fence on the Western border, marking the beginning of the Eastern Bloc’s dismantling, the country has transformed from a stalwart of democracy to one of its opponents. One of the important signs of a failing democracy in contemporary Hungary has been the government’s emphatic rejection of the concept of gender, which includes further marginalizing sexual and gender minorities and a pattern of casting women in the role of mythical motherhood while systematically disregarding violence against both groups. This article analyzes how governmental complacency with discrimination and its persistent lack of concern regarding violence against women, queer, and trans people have been part of a broad ideological framework to pressure conformity to patriarchal control and exclusively heterosexual reproductive expectations.