Contemporary conspirituality: centering gender in the field of conspiracy theory research

This article calls for a further exploration of how gender is linked to conspiracy theory through discussing the phenomenon of conspirituality, particularly in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Conspirituality, the blending of New Age spiritual themes with conspiratorial thinking, has accelerated in recent years, leading to unexpected developments. Exploring this ideological convergence further highlights the central role of gender in conspiracy theorization. Gender has often been viewed as either one of several factors determining or dissuading conspiracy belief, or as a thematic anxiety that underpins particular conspiratorial expressions. Conspirituality, which has flourished in online spaces such as Instagram and has embraced highly gendered aesthetics, brings these threads together; it highlights the centrality of lived experiences of gender to a number of important questions in conspiracy theory research. These include the importance of online spaces as sites of conspiratorial discourse, how disenchantment and secularism are gendered experiences, and how conspiracy theories both reflect and comment on power dynamics and hierarchies.