This introductory chapter argues for a renewed import of the area of post-socialist eastern and central Europe—a crossing of not only multiple new ‘anti-gender’ mobilizations but also of distinct trajectories of feminist thought, activism and social struggle—in understanding the circulation of gender discourses within concerning global developments today. Across this space, gender has taken on a specific symbolic role in sociopolitical life, with the very semantics and terminologies of gender being an object of continued negotiation, established via forms of linguistic resignification that appear distinctly amplified since the start of post-socialist transformation. Yet, in sociolinguistic work this area remains greatly homogenized, and has yet received comparatively little systematic attention in the mainstream international gender and language field. Against this backdrop, the chapter introduces the book’s themes and contexts, and provides a brief geohistorical discussion of events in the region, with regard to developments in gender studies and gender linguistic scholarship in particular. This is followed by a discussion of the key theory and concepts as expanded in the volume, and an outline of the four main thematic sections of the book.