Gender Hate Online Understanding the New Anti-Feminism: Understanding the New Anti-Feminism
Abstract
Gender Hate Online addresses the dynamic nature of misogyny: how it travels, what technological and cultural affordances support or obstruct this and what impact reappropriated expressions of misogyny have in other cultures. It adds significantly to an emergent body of scholarship on this topic by bringing together a variety of theoretical approaches, while also including reflections on the past, present, and future of feminism and its interconnections with technologies and media. It also addresses the fact that most work on this area has been focused on the Global North, by including perspectives from Pakistan, India and Russia as well as intersectional and transcultural analyses. Finally, it addresses ways in which women fight back and reclaim online spaces, offering practical applications as well as critical analyses.
This edited collection therefore addresses a substantial gap in scholarship by bringing together a body of work exclusively devoted to this topic. With perspectives from a variety of disciplines and geographic bases, the volume will be of major interest to scholars and students in the fields of gender, new media and hate speech.
Debbie Ging is Associate Professor of Media Studies in the School of Communications at Dublin City University, Ireland.
Eugenia Siapera is Associate Professor of Digital and Social Media and Deputy Director of the Institute for Future Media and Journalism in the School of Communications at Dublin City University, Ireland.
... Entre estos nuevos aspectos cabe destacar el espacio en el que se desenvuelve, la red. El propio funcionamiento de la red ha permitido la articulación de fuertes alianzas a nivel internacional, así como una mayor agresividad al calor del anonimato (Ging y Siapera, 2019). ...
... presentar la lectura reaccionaria del espíritu de Mayo de 1968 que sustenta la estructura ideológica de los grupos masculinistas en la contemporaneidad, donde encontramos un peso creciente de la comunidad incel y la filosofía de la píldora negra. Con la pastilla roja (Bratich y Banet-Weiser, 2019;Ging, 2017;Ging y Siapera, 2019;Nagle, 2018) se alude al momento en el que el conjunto de las comunidades de la manosfera comparte su victimismo, su odio a las mujeres y la posibilidad de desembarazarse del embrujo del feminismo. La mención a la pastilla roja se explica mediante la película Matrix y se refiere al momento en el que Morfeo, uno de los protagonistas de la película, le ofrece a Neo que elija entre dos pastillas: por un lado, la pastilla azul con la que continuar viviendo una vida ficticia creada por las máquinas o, por otro lado, la pastilla roja, que, al tomarla, le permite despertarse de la ficción y observar la realidad sin trampantojos. ...
... No son pocas las personalidades que en los últimos años vienen advirtiendo que el espacio cultural de la derecha radical mantiene una mirada reaccionaria hacia la transgresión vinculada a Mayo de 1968 (Brown, 2021;Fraser, 2020;Ging, 2017;Ging y Siapera, 2019;Kimmel, 2019;Nagle, 2018;Stefanoni, 2021). El objetivo de esta lectura reaccionaria consiste en hegemonizar el discurso y los marcos contraculturales de la crítica al fordismo, pero dirigiéndolos contra las élites globales y los braceros del neoliberalismo progresista: «En otras palabras, estamos ante derechas que le disputan a la izquierda la capacidad de indignarse frente a la realidad y de proponer vías para transformarla» (Stefanoni, 2021, p. 15). ...
En los últimos años se ha producido un aumento de grupos masculinistas críticos y desafectos con la agenda de avances que ha propuesto el movimiento feminista. De este modo, el objetivo principal de esta investigación consiste en analizar las bases culturales reaccionarias que comparten los movimientos masculinistas contemporáneos. Para ello, se llevará a cabo tanto un acercamiento a las implicaciones que ha tenido el desmoronamiento del sistema fordista y la imposición del neoliberalismo como una exposición de las características de cada uno de los grupos masculinistas en la red. Entre otras conclusiones, se insiste en la importancia que tiene la lectura tergiversada del pensamiento de Nietzsche y el acontecimiento histórico de Mayo de 1968 para la recomposición ideológica de estos grupos antifeministas.
... Mulheres com visibilidade pública são alvos preferenciais de atitudes e comportamentos abusivos e misóginos online . A interação mútua entre misoginia e antifeminismo é frequentemente a base estrutural para o abuso de género online (Ging & Siapera, 2019). Assim, além de ajudar a superar a discriminação de género sistémica, o ambiente digital também apoia formas específicas de subordinação de género, reforçando padrões de desigualdade de género (Wajcman, 2006). ...
Este capítulo explora as perceções de stakeholders portugueses sobre a natureza, a prevalência e os impactos da violência online contra as mulheres, bem como as respostas sociais e institucionais adequadas para abordar esta questão. Adotando uma abordagem qualitativa, o estudo baseou-se em entrevistas semiestruturadas com ativistas, agentes do sistema jurídico e representantes de associações de apoio a vítimas e organizações não governamentais. Durante a pandemia de COVID-19, o aumento da atividade online intensificou o problema da violência contra as mulheres com recurso às tecnologias digitais, evidenciando a necessidade urgente de atualizar os quadros legais e promover a literacia digital. Os stakeholders sublinharam a importância de reconhecer a violência online como uma extensão da violência offline e de desenvolver respostas que considerem a complexidade das dinâmicas digitais. Os resultados enfatizam a importância da sensibilização para questões de género e do uso da tecnologia como ferramenta de mudança sistémica. As perceções dos stakeholders sugerem que uma abordagem multifacetada, envolvendo educação, regulamentação e inovação tecnológica, é essencial para enfrentar a violência online contra as mulheres.
... Therefore, it is important to engage with how bodies exist differently within power structures that, in turn, may have shaped how emotions are expressed and received [43]. Feminist movements, communities of queer activists, and coalitions of civil rights advocates have been (and are still) attacked using emotion-centered rhetoric that constitutes those who voice injustice as "angry", "unreasonable", or even "dangerous" [1,35,58]. As Ahmed writes; those ". . . ...
Soma design is intimately entangled with the politics, not only of design itself, but of bodies. We combine perspectives from soma design, political theory, and Sara Ahmed's work The Cultural Politics of Emotions, to develop five political provocations that reflect on the politics of soma design and the possibilities and frictions therein. Inspired by soma design's roots in somaesthetic philosophy, our five provocations are (i) Knowledge and Ways of Knowing; (ii) The Self and Self-Knowledge; (iii) Felt Ethics and Right Action; (iv) The Pursuit of Happiness; and (v) Justice and the Emotional Labour of Transformation. Our contribution intends to foster reflection on the politics implicit within soma design practice.
... It seems that misogynist incelism is rooted in male supremacism that date back to earlier patriarchal ideologies. Hostility towards women is not confined to online spaces but has generally been exacerbated by digital technologies, leading to continuous development of hostility fueled by the anonymity and de-inhibiting effect of the internet (Ging & Siapera, 2019;Kelly et al., 2021;Sugiura, 2021). ...
Hostility towards women is a type of prejudice that can have adverse effects on women and society, but research on predictors of men's hostility towards women is limited. The present study primarily introduced predictors associated with misogynist involuntary celibates (incels), and then investigated whether loneliness, rejection, attractiveness, number of romantic and sexual partners, right‐wing authoritarianism, and gaming predicted hostility towards women among a more general sample of men. A total of 473 men (aged 18–35, single, heterosexual, UK residents) recruited via Prolific answered the hostile sexism subscale, the misogyny scale, the self‐perceived sexual attractiveness scale, the right‐wing authoritarianism scale, the game addiction scale for adolescents, the adult rejection‐sensitivity scale, the UCLA loneliness scale, and self‐developed questions regarding number of sexual and romantic partners, and time spent gaming. We found a strong positive relationship between right‐wing authoritarianism and hostility towards women, as well as a strong convex curvilinear relationship between attractiveness and hostility towards women. The number of sexual partners showed a moderate concave relationship with hostility towards women. We did not find sufficient support for a relationship between gaming and hostility towards women, and there was no support that loneliness, rejection, or romantic partners predicted hostility towards women among a general sample of men. Our study supports right‐wing authoritarianism and self‐perceived attractiveness as potential strong predictors in understanding men's hostility towards women in the wider community.
Pre‐registration: https://osf.io/ms3a4 .
... Within the realm of hate circulating in the digital sphere, numerous studies have pointed to a highly gendered and sexualized type of hate, defined as online misogyny. It can be explained as the harassment of women on the Internet, mostly on Twitter, through abusive and sexist language or imagery, as well as threats of violence (Ging & Siapera 2019;Massanari 2017). Common expressions of online misogyny include body shaming, sexualization, objectification, the use of harmful stereotypes such as the weak nature of women (Jones 2016), infantilizing and patronizing language, rape threats, and dehumanization (Akbar & Safdar 2023). ...
Social media has led to a redefinition of the journalist’s role. Specifically on Twitter, these professionals assume an influential position and their discourse is dominated by personal opinions. Taking into consideration that this platform has proven to be a breeding ground for polarization, digital harassment and hate speech, notably against women politicians, this research aims to analyze journalists’ involvement in this complex scenario. The investigation aims to determine whether, immersed in online and gender defamation campaigns, journalists enhance the quality of public debate or, on the contrary, they reinforce the visibility of this hostile content. To this end, we examined a sample of 63,926 tweets published from 23 to 25 November 2022 related to a campaign of political violence against the Spanish Minister of Equality using Natural Language Processing tools and qualitative content analysis. Results show that during those three days, at least half of the tweets contained hate speech and improper language. In this climate of hostility, journalists participating in the debate not only have an ability to attract likes and retweets but also exhibit polarization and use hate speech. Each ideological position—for and against the Minister—is also reflected in their own uncivil strategies. Under the umbrella of free speech and regardless of argumentative discourses, those journalists who lean towards ideological progressivism tend to insult their opponents, and those on the political right use divisive constructions, stereotyping and irony as attack techniques.
... Si las primeras ciberfeministas esperaban que características de la red como su liminalidad y anonimato tuviesen un impacto empoderador en la participación pública y autoexpresión de las mujeres (Basu, 2022), pronto se definiría como un nuevo territorio del patriarcado con tendencia a la invisibilización y acoso de las mujeres (Ging & Siapera, 2019 ...
En la sociedad pospandémica actual, las redes sociales desempeñan un papel crucial como principales espacios de socialización, facilitando la circulación de ideas y comportamientos. No obstante, el internet no ha supuesto la creación de una esfera pública digital más libre y democrática, sino que se observa más bien una transposición de las dinámicas de poder y desigualdades de la esfera pública convencional. El anonimato en línea, en lugar de subvertir las relaciones de género, ha propiciado la desinhibición negativa, normalizando discursos sexistas y misóginos. Una revisión de la literatura científica pone de manifiesto que el troleo de género, especialmente visible en temas como igualdad, violencia de género y feminismo, contribuye a crear y mantener un entorno hostil para las mujeres, limitando su participación y expresión. La misoginia y la reactividad ante las mujeres en roles políticos las convierte en víctimas especialmente propicias de este tipo de conductas, considerándose parte de las violencias contra las mujeres en política. Las redes sociales, al difundir y normalizar estos comportamientos, pueden tener un impacto negativo en la participación de las mujeres en la esfera pública y la política. Los gestores de plataformas en línea juegan un papel esencial en abordar este fenómeno, ya que cuentas falsas, trolls y ataques de odio persisten con impunidad.
... Antifeminism can be understood as a response to a distinct set of genderpolitical values that are not espoused exclusively by women (Ging & Siapera, 2019). ...
Anti-feminism is a movement that is more opposed to reaffirming, maintaining, and increasing the subordination of women by patriarchal forces. For this movement, feminist thinking can lead to deviant actions because these thoughts are not in accordance with religious teachings. The group then uses digital media channels to create anti-feminism narratives which are published on Islamic faith-based information websites. The purpose of this study is to reveal how the representation of feminism in Islami.co media acts as a counter-narrative against anti-feminism discourse echoed by other Islamic groups. This study uses a qualitative descriptive approach. The data collection technique was a literature study of documents from various references and the results of media analysis of Islami.co. The data analysis method used is the framing analysis model of William Gamson and Andre Modgliani which is elaborated with the perspective of Representation Theory by Stuart Hall. The result of the study shows that Islami.co is a digital media counter-narratives against anti-feminist discourse. The representation of feminism in this media is interpreted as part of the struggle of Islam in forming the spirit of justice for all mankind. Islami.co packs facts and clarifies the counter-narrative of anti-feminism discourse through authentic sources such as the Qur’an and hadith as well as various arguments that rely on empirical data. This effort is not just for creating justice and equality, but also as a form of obedience to what is commanded by Islam.
El antifeminismo contemporáneo se expresa fuertemente en línea, oponiéndose al feminismo tal como lo ha hecho desde la irrupción del movimiento en el escenario histórico, pero con la particularidad de utilizar ahora la comunicación digital y las redes como nuevos espacios para legitimar posiciones de género patriarcales y reaccionar contra las movilizaciones feministas. A partir de un proceso de observación no participante, se seleccionaron dos páginas antifeministas en Facebook para hacer un análisis de discurso con guías de observación, en torno a un corpus de publicaciones del 8 y 9 de marzo, y 25 de noviembre de 2020, con el fin de rastrear las principales estrategias discursivas con las que el antifeminismo se expresa en línea. Los resultados arrojaron una tendencia a alejarse de la misoginia expresa, en favor de una presencia importante de discursos de reacción y conservadurismo, así como expresiones que victimizan a los hombres y justifican las violencias machistas.
This chapter argues that to assess the adequacy of the current regulatory responses, the key question is whether or not there has been a sufficient response to online violence against women (OVAW). It explores the increasing recognition that online forms of violence are receiving, sounding a cautionary note about the expectations we can have of any regulatory framework before outlining some selective developments in the legal and policy landscape at regional and national levels surrounding OVAW to illustrate the shifting ecosystem before evaluating whether we are in a realistic place to combat online and digital forms of violence against women and whether we have realistic hopes of developing a regulatory framework suited to doing so. This chapter offers a contemporary assessment of the (in)adequacy of the regulatory responses concerning online safety and their applicability to OVAW to date.
This comprehensive study delves into the complex interplay between gender-based violence (GBV), privacy, visibility, and transparency within contemporary societal and legal contexts. It examines the dual nature of visibility—its power to advocate for GBV awareness while risking survivor/victim privacy—and the issues arising from the invisibility of such violence. The work emphasizes the necessity for nuanced approaches that honor privacy yet advocate for transparency and accountability. It calls for intersectional and inclusive strategies, integrating technology, legal reforms, and societal engagement to address the multifaceted challenges of GBV.
Reaction GIFs and reaction images appear as common multimodal linguistic objects in digitally mediated communication. While past research has tended to focus on the paralinguistic functions of these communicative devices, less attention has been paid to how these digital tools enable their users to strategically enact and embody particular social identities on social media. This article offers a stance-based computer-mediated discourse analysis of a small, gay UK- and Ireland-based Twitter community of practice. Through qualitative analyses of the eight members’ tweets containing reaction GIFs and images (n = 991), as well as their responses to an online survey, this article demonstrates how these self-identified gay men construct four distinct feminine-coded personae: the Sassy Queen, the Hun, the Battle-Axe and the Flamboyant Queer. Each persona exhibits linguistic (e.g., features from British English or African American Language) or stance-based collocations. This analysis identifies common qualities or traits that all four personae possess that these Twitter users may identify with or value, potentially motivating their recurrent constructions. The ability of these non-traditional linguistic resources to conduct identity work is discussed. More broadly, this study foregrounds the significance of social media as a series of digital platforms where online identities are continually developed, (co-)constructed and negotiated.
This research discusses legal solutions and obstacles in law enforcement against sexual harassment on social media, especially WhatsApp. With the aim of understanding the existing legal mechanisms and the challenges faced in these cases, this research uses the legal system theory framework by Lawrence M. Friedman, which includes legal structure, legal substance, and legal culture. The research method applied is normative juridical with a statutory and conceptual approach, and relies on primary and secondary data sources. The research results show that sexual harassment on social media can take the form of sending obscene messages, defamation and stalking, which have a negative impact on the victim's life. Even though there are regulations such as the ITE Law and the Criminal Code, law enforcement still faces various obstacles, including difficulties in collecting evidence and the use of fake accounts by perpetrators. This research emphasizes the importance of legal protection for victims, community support, and collaboration between various institutions to create a safer and more effective environment in handling cases of sexual harassment on social media. With a comprehensive approach and public education, it is hoped that awareness and protection for social media users can increase, and justice for victims can be realized.
Zusammenfassung
Am Beispiel einer Podcastepisode von Feminist Shelf Control in Reaktion auf die ARD-Entscheidung, Thilo Mischke zum Moderator des Kulturmagazins ttt zu machen, wird in die Diskussion über (Gegen)Öffentlichkeiten eingeführt: Diese Auseinandersetzung zeigt, wie zivilgesellschaftliche Akteur:innen in digitalen Öffentlichkeiten gegen die etablierten Medieninstitutionen opponieren, um Demokratie und Debattenkultur zu fördern. Während lange Zeit in der Forschung emanzipatorische Gegenöffentlichkeiten als Korrektiv zur herrschenden Öffentlichkeit diskutiert wurden, stellt sich gegenwärtig dringlicher die Frage nach der Bedeutung und Bezeichnung reaktionärer Öffentlichkeiten, die in sozialen Medien aktiv sind. Der Beitrag fordert eine kritische Reflexion über diese dynamischen, auch gesellschaftlich verankerten Machtverschiebungen und verwendeten Begriffe. Abschließend liefert er einige Impulse, um die Debatte über eine gemeinwohlorientierte Medienpolitik anzuregen, die digitale Räume und Gegen-Öffentlichkeiten im Dialog für demokratische Diskurse stärkt.
O ile przemoc wobec kobiet i jej ideologiczne uzasadnienia istnieją od zawsze, utrwalając i reprodukując wiekowe nierówności płci, o tyle w ostatnich dziesięcioleciach pojawiło się nowe zjawisko w postaci organizacji mężczyzn, które domagają się reakcji na to, co postrzegają jako erozję statusu mężczyzn i ich rosnącą dyskryminację. Ruchy te mają różne cele i promują rozmaite narzędzia wpływu, począwszy od perswazji i argumentacji na rzecz praw mężczyzn, aż po akceptację, a nawet wezwania do przemocy wobec kobiet i niektórych mężczyzn. Artykuł ten przedstawia podstawowe idee oraz główne grupy składające się na „manosferę” – rozdrobniony i wewnętrznie zróżnicowany zbiór społeczności internetowych komunikujących się głównie na forach oraz czatach, dyskutujących kwestie tożsamości współczesnych mężczyzn i ich praw w odniesieniu do wyobrażeń na temat pozycji i zachowań współczesnych kobiet.
En el contexto del capitalismo de plataformas, en el que cada vez más la ciudadanía se relaciona socialmente a través del espacio online, la presente investigación examina cómo las mujeres streamers autoperciben su experiencia en Twitch en relación con las violencias machistas que sufren en línea. A partir de veintiséis entrevistas en profundidad, se revela que Twitch es una plataforma masculinizada que no se pude concebir como un espacio seguro para las streamers. En ella, se despliegan sistemáticamente violencias machistas ante las que se ponen en práctica estrategias ciberfeministas. Estas acciones permiten paliar las insuficientes medidas tomadas por la plataforma para frenar las situaciones de violencia machista que se producen dentro de sus canales.
Social media platforms can be effective tools for mainstreaming and transnationalization of radical positions. Anti-gender ideas have particularly gained traction transnationally in recent years. Despite extensive research on the anti-gender movement, the specific role of social media remains underexplored. How do anti-gender organizations use social media to strategically mainstream and transnationalize their agenda? This study addresses this overarching question by focusing on CitizenGO, a digital advocacy organization that holds a key position within the anti-gender transnational advocacy network. We examine its multilingual social media network and activities over a decade (2013-2022) using computational and digital methods. The findings indicate that CitizenGO uses a sophisticated network of social media accounts to coordinate and amplify anti-gender messages across different languages and regions. The study suggests that CitizenGO's strategic use of social media is aimed at mainstreaming and globalizing anti-gender agendas, contributing new insights into the mechanisms of digital advocacy and the transnational expansion of anti-gender networks.
Ciertas comunidades online atacan a las mujeres individualmente, en grupos o a personas por su género, orientación sexual o identidad de género a través de contenidos claramente misóginos. Estas actuaciones suponen un conflicto entre el derecho a la libertad de expresión y otros derechos fundamentales, entre ellos, el derecho a la igualdad. El Derecho tradicionalmente se ha ocupado de los posibles conflictos de la libertad de expresión con otros derechos humanos, pero no tanto del derecho a la igualdad. Además, estos ataques se producen en el contexto virtual que escapa de los marcos legales tradicionales limitados a territorios nacionales. La respuesta penal es insuficiente, ya que castiga únicamente los comportamientos más graves constitutivos de discurso de odio. Como alternativa sería necesario aplicar y desarrollar el derecho antidiscriminatorio de tutela del derecho a la igualdad y reparación de las víctimas.
Género, violência e ódio online: conceitos e representações; mapeia um conjunto de conceitos e apresenta uma série de estudos qualitativos contextualmente situados na pandemia de Covid-19, colocando a descoberto as relações intrincadas entre as práticas de comunicação online e as experiências de abuso vividas em diferentes tipos de plataformas digitais. Sem deixar de identificar o potencial das tecnologias digitais na superação do sexismo e da violência estrutural sobre as mulheres, o volume explora evidências do ódio digital e dos comportamentos ofensivos perpetrados em ambiente online, envolvendo a imposição intencional de sofrimento substancial e perpetuando as desigualdades de género. Além de fazer avançar o conhecimento sobre uma problemática ainda pouco estudada em Portugal, o livro oferece importantes contributos para que a investigação académica seja um espaço abrangente de luta pela realização da justiça.
Cette recherche examine la prolifération du discours d’extrême droite sur les médias sociaux, spécifiquement dans le contexte français, en analysant le contenu produit par sept vidéastes français d’extrême droite dans 55 vidéos. L’étude vise à comprendre comment les messages suprémacistes blancs sont rendus plus acceptables pour le grand public, malgré les interdictions juridiques et réglementaires des plateformes. L’analyse révèle que l’essentialisation du genre des individus crée les conditions d’une essentialisation de la race, conduisant à un renforcement mutuel entre masculinisme et suprémacisme, qui permet un cadrage plus acceptable du message suprémaciste blanc. L’étude identifie également des phénomènes tels que les emprunts idéologiques et rhétoriques inspirés de la métapolitique d’Alain de Benoist. L’article contribue à une meilleure caractérisation des aspects spécifiques de l’extrême droite en ligne dans le contexte français.
The online harassment of female politicians who focus on climate change and environmental policy has become a major problem in Canada and other democratic nations. Despite growing awareness of the problem, there is little agreement among scholars on how to measure these nuanced forms of harassment. This study develops an original seven-point scale to measure the severity of harassment three Canadian female politicians receive when Tweeting about climate change and a six-point schema to categorize the types of accounts behind the replies. My results reveal that 86% of replies contained some form of harassment, most often name-calling or questioning the authority of the female politicians, and come from users with spam or anonymous accounts. Further results from my Bayesian hierarchical model suggest that despite differences in status and political affiliation across the three politicians, they are almost equally impacted by harassment when Tweeting about climate change. These findings contribute to understanding the intersection between climate change denialism and the gendered nature of online harassment. This article contains language and themes that some readers may find offensive.
Introducción: Se investiga la estructura ideológica de la networking masculina en la que afloran discursos de odio y violencia contra las mujeres. Objetivos y metodología: mediante una metodología de naturaleza teórica, desde la hermenéutica y crítica de textos científicos, se identifica la lógica política, histórica y cultural que está detrás de emplear una retórica contracultural dentro de las subculturas masculinas que componen la manosfera. Asimismo, se profundiza en la crisis del ideal de la masculinidad como telón de fondo de la creciente reacción antifeminista en la red. Resultados: el uso de un lenguaje políticamente incorrecto, el empleo de una retórica contracultural, el odio visceral contra las mujeres y la crisis del ideal de la masculinidad domina la estructura ideológica de la networking masculina. Conclusiones: la evolución de la networking masculina presenta las características de una crisis del ideal de la masculinidad en consonancia con las transformaciones estructurales y superestructurales de las últimas décadas. El paso de la subcultura Pick Up Artist (PUA) a la hegemonía de los Incels muestra claramente este tránsito.
Ageist language discriminates against older people, infantilising, depersonalising and dehumanising them. Through a longitudinal study of tweets written in Spain between 2019 and 2023, this study investigates the evolution of ageism in the Spanish language. Using a mixed methodology based on Twitter public data mining, 27,971 tweets were analysed. Of these, 3555 tweets (19.31%) used ageist language. The analysis revealed a significant increase in ageist language after COVID-19, with the number of ageist tweets almost doubling compared to the pre-pandemic period. The results of the study suggest that ageist language on Twitter in Spain is mainly characterised by depersonalisation, portraying older people as a homogeneous and passive group. The study also highlights the double discrimination faced by older women on Twitter, where the language is not only ageist but also sexist, limiting their privacy and denying their rights in relation to their sexuality and physical appearance.
Although increasingly prevalent in Singapore, campus sexual assault and harassment and technology-facilitated sexual violence (TFSV) remain underresearched. Conducted by scholars across social work, gender studies, policy studies, communication, and computer science, this interdisciplinary study explores the impact of technologies such as social media and online platforms on the digital well-being of university students in Singapore who experience TFSV and campus sexual misconduct. We conducted online surveys with 314 students and interviews with 28 students, the majority of whom were women and identified as victim-survivors. Our analysis revealed participants did not perceive technologies as entirely detrimental and possessed limited awareness of digital well-being. These findings contribute to understanding young victim-survivors’ digital well-being and relationship to technology in Singapore by highlighting the experiences of college students.
This exploratory study presents the main results from the analysis of the tracking of mobile application use by 342 young adults (18-30 years old) in Portugal considering the gendered power relations that may be reflected in those uses. The results indicate that Social Media and Messaging apps are predominant, while the tracking of the self categories (Health and Well-being, Fitness and Self-tracking) are the least used (with greater weight in privileged socioeconomic classes). Although there are more women than men using these apps, thus preserving gendered structures, these digital platforms may also be conceived as venues for the growth of male self-tracking and self-care.
How do Kuwaiti cyberfeminists resist hegemonic and anti-feminist discourses? This article seeks to answer this question by exploring the contestation between Kuwaiti feminists and their Islamist opponents on Twitter. Viewing cyberfeminism as constructive resistance, I argue that feminism is practiced and performed online by a variety of women actors who do not necessarily self-identify as feminists or activists, constructively and continuously producing new discourses and subjectivities, establishing a salient embodied feminist presence that can trigger an anti-feminist counter-mobilization. In a Twitter Space hosted by the Kuwaiti Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs on December 23, 2021, an anti-feminist lecture portrayed Kuwaiti feminists as alienated from religion and society while downplaying the extent of violence against women in the country. In response, Kuwaiti cyberfeminists attempted to reclaim feminism by placing it within local and national frames using a Twitter hashtag. Resorting to a reverse discourse strategy had some shortcomings, including reinforcing hegemonic discourses and the binary of “us” (feminists) versus “them” (Islamists), which may have been an inevitable outcome of an antagonistic narrative. This article adds to the existing literature on cyberfeminism by exploring an understudied domain and offering significant insights into feminists’ online resistance in socially conservative contexts.
A pesar de su abrumadora presencia, las violencias de género digitales distan de ser debidamente abordadas por los análisis y las regulaciones vigentes. En este artículo se hace una propuesta tentativa para el desarrollo de un nuevo enfoque de investigación sociológico interdisciplinar, que permita ensamblar el modo en que opera la lingüística forense y los estudios acerca de los diseños de los entornos digitales. Planteamos que las arquitecturas de estos entornos pre/disponen a determinadas interacciones violentas de género, ya presentes en nuestras culturas, que quedan plasmadas en usos y recursos lingüísticos. Además, ilustramos esta relación con un breve ejercicio aplicado a un videojuego (Valorant). A pesar del carácter preliminar de este ensayo, consideramos que puede contribuir a la creación de herramientas para la detección y análisis de las violencias de género en Internet.
Alors que les podcasts comme nouveau mode d’expression journalistique connaît un essor important depuis le début des années 2000, il a été investi par des militant·e·s politiques notamment féministes, mais également plus récemment, par des antiféministes. Le cas du podcast “10 000 pas” produit par Ismaïl Ouslimani sera ici étudié en détail, du point de vue de la production et du fond du discours, tant que du point de vue de la réception, via les commentaires et des entretiens menés avec ses auditeurs. On verra alors que ce podcast présenté comme orienté sur le développement personnel soutient en réalité la construction d’un contre-public antiféministe au travers d’une vision traditionnelle de la masculinité prétendument attaquée.
Introducción: El estudio aborda la problemática de los deepfakes y su efecto en la percepción pública, destacando su evolución desde prácticas antiguas de manipulación visual hasta convertirse en herramientas avanzadas de construcción de realidades alternativas, especialmente lesivas para las mujeres. El uso de la manipulación de imágenes como una forma ataque o represión va a llevar a considerar esta práctica como parte de las violencias contra las mujeres en política. Metodología: Este estudio de carácter exploratorio va a adentrarse en el uso de las imágenes manipuladas contra las políticas. Un objetivo para el que se diseñó una metodología múltiple: entrevistas con mujeres políticas, análisis de imágenes falsas auditadas por verificadores de información y búsqueda simple en plataformas de contenidos para adultos. Resultados: Se pone de manifiesto un empleo de imágenes fake como forma de atacar y desprestigiar a las mujeres política. Dichas imágenes son fundamentalmente cheapfakes. Discusión: La limitada sofisticación en la manipulación de imágenes de mujeres políticas permite la detección de falsificaciones por una audiencia crítica. Conclusiones: Las conclusiones resaltan la necesidad de educación mediática para combatir la desinformación y el sesgo de confirmación. La investigación enfatiza la violencia de género en la política, donde los deepfakes se utilizan para silenciar y desacreditar a las mujeres, perpetuando así la misoginia y el mantenimiento de estructuras de poder existentes.
This article examines women’s dissonance and refusal of gender hate on LIHKG, a platform converged with local and Global North manospheres that gained prominence for political communication during Hong Kong’s Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill movement. Despite criticism for its misogyny, LIHKG witnessed women’s participation during the movement. However, women’s agencies are underexplored by its critics and studies on the manosphere. This study argues that acknowledging dissonance within manospheres redirects focus on the targets of gender hate, specifically women, accentuating the possibilities of feminist intervention within gender hate networks. Employing a digital ethnographic approach, this study contributes by: (1) providing a relational and contextualized understanding of the convergence between manospheres beyond the notion of homogenization; (2) redressing the injustice in hate which obliterates the hated bodies; and (3) breaking the unintended repetition of such injustice in the literature on the manosphere, which has paid little attention on the repugnant women’s agencies.
This paper situates contemporary manospheric culture within archaic forms of masculine identity formation foundational to patriarchal political orders and fascism. What happens when 21st century emergent masculinity is also what Deleuze and Guattari call a neo-archaism? Drawing from Celia Amoros’ understanding of patriarchy as being primarily composed of masculine pacts and packs, I analyse the manosphere as an neo-archaic space for the formation of brotherhoods. Moreover, these fratriarchal groupings are warbands, reviving the Männerbund as fascist patriarchal pact. An analysis that takes seriously the neo-archaic elements of the manosphere sees the archaic not as past imaginary but a revived force that erupts in the present. We can see the manosphere less as one part of the internet than a transnationally spreading zone that expands this archaic war. Finally, the paper argues that the conjuncture is riven by the revival of a patriarchal power that is primordial, defined as a first order in which gender is foundational to its mythical establishment
Los actuales debates de género en redes socio-digitales han detonado la emergencia de posturas antifeministas que, a diferencia de expresiones misóginas, sexistas y/o machistas, se caracterizan por una mayor sofisticación argumental y cognitiva. Bajo dicho contexto, este artículo, por medio de una perspectiva teórico-metodológica que incluye dos modelos cualitativos de análisis, explora las maneras en que cuatro youtubers varones articulan una retórica “objetiva” antifeminista para convencer a sus seguidores, en nombre de la evidencia, sobre la supuesta falacia que representa el feminismo. Esta retórica no es producto de una fidelidad a la realidad social como defienden los youtubers en sus contenidos, sino de un ensamble entre elementos discursivos y tecnológicos que les posibilita adjudicarse una especie de autoridad empírica, mediante la cual rechazan los saberes y experiencias de sujetos feministas debido a su falta de “objetividad”. A partir de ello, se concluye que la autoridad empírica que se arrogan los youtubers les posibilita articular ideologías masculinas a través del valor de la prueba, apelando a la racionalidad y la objetividad que implica “ser hombre”, en contraste con la representación que crean en sus canales de las mujeres feministas como irracionales, carentes de “objetividad” y portadoras de un discurso falso.
Los comportamientos relacionados con el discurso del odio en Internet entre adolescentes y jóvenes están causando preocupación en la comunidad internacional. Este trabajo recoge los resultados de una encuesta a 600 jóvenes sobre la experiencia de ser víctima de comentarios desagradables en redes sociales. Los resultados se analizan descriptivamente por sexo y grupos de edad, según el motivo de haber recibido estos comentarios ofensivos o de odio. Los motivos más frecuentes fueron opiniones sociopolíticas, seguidas de las opiniones sobre el feminismo. Se encontraron diferencias asociadas, por un lado, al género solo para las opiniones sobre el feminismo y, por otro, a la edad, la nacionalidad o el origen y las opiniones sobre el feminismo. Las principales causas de ser víctima de comentarios ofensivos o de odio están relacionadas con las opiniones sobre el feminismo y el género, más entre las mujeres que entre los hombres, y más entre los adolescentes.
In this study, we investigate the practice of feminism among young South Korean women in the era of backlash. Drawing on interviews with 40 female college students in South Korea, we found that most of the participants self-identify as feminists who engage in feminist activities primarily in private offline settings on their college campuses. To understand this phenomenon of quiet feminism, which contradicts the global trend of postfeminist attitudes and online feminism, we link the students’ offline practice of everyday feminism with what we term everyday backlash. Our findings reveal that these young women have encountered widespread antifeminist sentiments in both online and offline everyday contexts since the rapid popularization of feminism in South Korea in the late 2010s. We argue that this pervasive everyday backlash not only motivates the students to create safe spaces within their college campuses but also discourages them from publicly disclosing their feminist identities. Through this research, we contribute to the literature on contemporary feminist practice and its relationship with backlash by offering a nuanced understanding of the local context in South Korea.
The surveillant capacities of smart phones have generated an array of safety apps targeting cis female users. Current feminist scholarship studies these apps from a variety of disciplinary perspectives that stress their detractors, namely, that they are largely ineffective and that they instead burden the user with the labor of continuous assessment of oneself and one’s surroundings. This article acknowledges the apps’ numerous failings while at the same time turning attention to the surveilled, responsible, projected user they reproduce in order to tease out some of the internal contradictions and nuances of this figure and its place in digital culture. The study samples a number of safety apps that focus on gender violence in public spaces and finds that the apps solicit a form of gendered labor which asks largely cis women users to work towards ‘feelings’ of safety.
One example of proxy failure is current antisexist and antiracist policies. One of the most popular proxy in them is the number of representatives of marginalized groups – women and non-white people – in power structures. Here I show that such measures do not lead to combating sexism and racism, which flourish despite their application.
El creciente número de youtubers críticos con el movimiento feminista ha supuesto un verdadero acontecimiento en los últimos años coincidiendo con la consolidación de la cuarta ola feminista a partir de 2018. El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar la estructura ideológica del conocido youtuber Roma Gallardo. A este fin, se emplea tanto un análisis cuantitativo a través de la herramienta Social Blade, como de un análisis cualitativo mediante la técnica de análisis del discurso sobre una muestra de 20 vídeos entre 2019 y 2022. Los resultados demuestran que el discurso de Roma Gallardo se articula en torno a tres ejes ideológicos: la ridiculización del feminismo, la recomposición del espacio social masculino y la banalización y burla de la violencia que sufren las mujeres. Finalmente, la estrategia discursiva del youtuber busca imponer una mirada de la realidad social sin imposiciones ideológicas.
This article explores how British secondary school students responded to and made sense of the rising public awareness of sexual violence in British society that emerged during lockdowns for COVID-19. Based on the findings from a 2021–2022 study conducted in five secondary schools, the article explores the gendered discrepancies in girls’ and boys’ awareness of violence against girls and women. In particular, it examines how the youth participants in this study responded to two related media stories during lockdown: the news of Sarah Everard’s kidnapping and murder by a police officer and the viral spread of sexual abuse testimonies on the ‘Everyone’s Invited’ Instagram page and website. The article demonstrates how girls were more likely to experience, recognize, and discuss sexual violence, in part due to feminist consciousness raising during lockdown via digital technologies like Instagram and TikTok. Although some boys did recognize the problem of violence against women, in general, they were much less aware of Sarah Everard’s murder and Everyone’s Invited and were prone to absorbing manosphere-like discourses around false rape accusations In focus groups, some boys deployed a defensive masculinity and adopted a discourse of male victimhood, which denied the scale and scope of violence against girls and women. However, through involving boys in focus group discussion with both us and their male peers about power and privilege, progress was made in challenging and counteracting rape myths and anti-feminist male victimization narratives.
In recent years, the global women’s rights movement has flourished, with groups from all over the world making increasing use of the internet and social media as instruments of social change. What is now known as the fourth wave of feminism is undoubtedly influenced by the new communication technologies of our digital era (Looft, 2017; Munro, 2013; Parry, 2018; Rivers, 2017). The relative ease with which women who share a joint agenda use these platforms to connect across geographic, national, cultural, and political boundaries facilitates the global diffusion of women’s activism and supports their struggles to protect their human rights, their bodies, their status, and their identities. Through digital media, women are unapologetically and fearlessly placing the full force of female power behind their demands for rights as they directly challenge patriarchal conventions and hegemony. This book showcases the online activism of women’s groups around the world in the post-#MeToo era and presents an overview of the diversity of its current expressions.
Internet y las redes sociales se han consolidado como principales espacios de interacción y socialización. Sin embargo, su uso reproduce relaciones de poder y patrones patriarcales, amplificados por el anonimato y la desinhibición que caracterizan a estos medios. Estas desigualdades se hacen particularmente evidentes en la política, donde las mujeres líderes y representantes se enfrentan desafíos adicionales para el ejercicio de sus funciones. Aunque la investigación en comunicación política digital ha crecido notablemente en la última década, el estudio de la violencia contra las mujeres no ha tenido una proyección similar. El presente artículo efectúa aproximación a la investigación sobre la violencia contra las mujeres en política, con particular atención al medio digital. Para ello se ha efectuado un análisis bibliométrico de las contribuciones sobre este ámbito registradas en Web of Science (61 documentos), su evolución en el tiempo, principales áreas de conocimiento desde las que se aborda (y cita), así como autoría, plataformas de difusión y textos de referencia. Se concluye que el estudio violencia contra las mujeres en política se sitúa en una etapa incipiente de desarrollo, especialmente en lo que respecta a las e-violencias, aunque se aprecia un importante impulso en su desarrollo en los últimos tres años.
24 hours" in order to foreground the relevance of caste in the discourse of harassment in academic spaces. It argues that rendering caste irrelevant feeds into everyday casteism that makes the Savarna an anonymous/casteless subject and the Dalit, a bearer of caste. After the initial condemnation and sharp criticism of the list which named and accused some of the luminaries of South Asian academia, there has been a steady flow of assertive and enthusiastic articles by women students, activists and academicians. Many of them have offered accounts and testimonies of a long condoned and pervasive culture of sexual harassment of female and gender non-conforming students in academic institutions. This is an unprecedented moment of liberation in the lives of many women students, as they are finally able to break the silence around sexism and misogyny, a moment, no doubt made possible by the notorious list. However, a certain strand of the debate, which ironically dominated the debate at the moment of the publication of the list, has now taken a back seat. I am talking about the question of the relevance of caste and its unexamined presence/absence in the discourse of harassment, a question that got misrecognised as a "Dalit versus Savarna feminists" problem. This article traces an instance of this misrecognition in the article, "From Feminazi to Savarna Rape Apologist in 24 hours" (Menon 2017), which displaces and misreads the Dalit critique of the university space. Consider these two excerpts from Menon's article:
Focusing primarily on the European and “Western” context, this chapter addresses the question of online misogyny and anti-feminism from a materialist perspective. The chapter includes a brief overview of the culture wars and the liberal consensus alongside a discussion of the spread, forms and potential impact of online misogyny. Misogyny appears in spectacular attacks and banal everyday repetitions of misogynistic tropes, in the manosphere and in alt-right spaces. The chapter posits that misogyny is the methodology of female subjugation and exploitation, and that its re-emergence in the current historical conjuncture is symptomatic of changes in the social-political and economic order. It therefore proposes an understanding of online misogyny as a question of distribution of material resources. Building on the work of Federici (Caliban and the Witch, Autonomedia, 2004), it is proposed that online misogyny has a function similar to that of witch hunting. While witch hunts were used to violently and systematically coerce women to conform with the requirements of the emerging industrial capitalism, online misogyny is using digital violence to prohibit women from participating in building the forthcoming technological future. Any resolution of the digital violence to which women are subjected is likely to necessitate radical ways of redistributing power and resources rather than mere policy changes by social media corporations.
Misogyny Online explores the worldwide phenomenon of gendered cyberhate as a significant discourse which has been overlooked and marginalised. The rapid growth of the internet has led to numerous opportunities and benefits; however, the architecture of the cybersphere offers users unprecedented opportunities to engage in hate speech. This book weaves together data and theory from multiple disciplines. Its data sources include a meticulously archived collection of cyberhate that I received over the course of two decades working as a journalist – has already been recognised by scholars and public figures as providing a powerful, original, and timely statement about the rapidly escalating international gendered cyberhate problem and its harms. It has also been commended for offering a major contribution to the interdisciplinary study of emerging communication technologies, contemporary manifestations of hate speech, digital citizenship, internet governance, and digital divides.
This essay explores what the “alt-right” (White ethnonationalist, fascist, misogynistic, and anti-intellectual communities) means for social media researchers in terms of research ethics, risk, and visibility. First, it outlines how #Gamergate and #OperationDiggingDiGRA indicated that academic researchers could be targets of their hostility. This essay then draws on the work of Foucault and Mulvey to theorize how far-right groups have a kind of “gaze.” Then, it discusses how far-right extremism requires rethinking ethical questions around researchers and participants. Finally, some thoughts are offered as to what this means for how individuals, organizations, disciplines, and institutions can support research into these spaces.
This article describes domestic violence as a key context of online misogyny, foregrounding the role of digital media in mediating, coordinating, and regulating it; and proposing an agenda for future research. Scholars and anti-violence advocates have documented the ways digital media exacerbate existing patterns of gendered violence and introduce new modes of abuse, a trend highlighted by this special issue. We propose the term "technology facilitated coercive control" (TFCC) to encompass the technological and relational aspects of patterns of abuse against intimate partners. Our definition of TFCC is grounded in the understanding of domestic violence (DV) as coercive, controlling, and profoundly contextualised in relationship dynamics, cultural norms, and structural inequality. We situate TFCC within the multiple affordances and modes of governance of digital media platforms for amplifying and ameliorating abuse. In addition to investigating TFCC, scholars are beginning to document the ways platforms can engender counter-misogynistic discourse, and are powerful actors for positive change via the regulation and governance of online abuse. Accordingly, we propose four key directions for a TFCC research agenda that recognises and asks new questions about the role of digital media platforms as both facilitators of abuse and potential partners in TFCC prevention and intervention.
Research into the proliferation of abuse and harassment currently being directed towards women online is in its early stages and could arguably benefit from: (1) the provision of more case studies for discussion; and (2) a focus on specific dimensions of the gendered cyberhate problem rather than on the issue as a whole. This article responds to these research gaps by providing 15 new Australian case studies focusing on one particular ramification of cyber abuse and harassment abuse: the adverse impact on women’s livelihoods. These show that women workers who receive gendered cyberhate in forms that constitute a form of workplace harassment and/or economic vandalism have few to no means of obtaining support or redress. This is due to a combination of: “precarious” work circumstances; a blurring of personal and professional contexts; and the fact that emerging, electronic iterations of workplace abuse and harassment tend to slip between the cracks of existing laws and policies (which are already barely adequate).
A Senate inquiry into “revenge porn” is due to report next week. This will put this important social and legal issue back on the news and policy reform agenda.
The Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee defines “revenge porn” as involving:
… sharing private sexual images and recordings of a person without their consent, with the intention to cause that person harm.
The practice has emerged so rapidly that it is inevitable the law is playing catch-up. Yet in the absence of adequate laws specifically criminalising these wrongs, victims have limited access to justice.
Does social media enable forming networks of solidarity between different marginalised groups? Is there a space for non-normative discourses such as the discourse on pleasure? Does digital technology aid in the construction of feminist counter-publics? These are some of the questions explored in this paper. Power relations that operate through social media, including forms of gendered and sexualised violence, are also discussed.
In the last few years, many countries have introduced laws combating the phenomenon colloquially known as ‘revenge porn’. While new laws criminalising this practice represent a positive step forwards, the legislative response has been piecemeal and typically focuses only on the practices of vengeful ex-partners. Drawing on Liz Kelly’s (1988) pioneering work, we suggest that ‘revenge porn’ should be understood as just one form of a range of gendered, sexualised forms of abuse which have common characteristics, forming what we are conceptualising as the ‘continuum of image-based sexual abuse’. Further, we argue that image-based sexual abuse is on a continuum with other forms of sexual violence. We suggest that this twin approach may enable a more comprehensive legislative and policy response that, in turn, will better reflect the harms to victim-survivors and leads to more appropriate and effective educative and preventative strategies.
Academics are increasingly expected to use social media to disseminate their work and knowledge to public audiences. Although this has various advantages, particularly for alternative forms of dissemination, the web can also be an unsafe space for typically oppressed or subordinated groups. This article presents two auto-ethnographic accounts of the abuse and hate academics researching oppressed groups, namely, women and people of Muslim faith, experienced online. In doing so, this article falls into four parts. The first section provides an overview of existing literature, particularly focusing on work which explores the violence and abuse of women and people of Muslim faith online. The second section considers the auto-ethnographic methodological approach adopted in this article. The third section provides the auto-ethnographic accounts of the author’s experiences of hate and abuse online. The final section locates these experiences within broader theoretical concepts, such as silencing, and considers possible implications of such online hate in both an academic context and beyond.
This paper examines the ways in which girls and women are using digital media platforms to challenge the rape culture they experience in their everyday lives; including street harassment, sexual assault, and the policing of the body and clothing in school settings. Focusing on three international cases, including the anti-street harassment site Hollaback!, the hashtag #BeenRapedNeverReported, and interviews with teenage Twitter activists, the paper asks: What experiences of harassment, misogyny and rape culture are girls and women responding to? How are girls and women using digital media technologies to document experiences of sexual violence, harassment, and sexism? And, why are girls and women choosing to mobilize digital media technologies in such a way? Employing an approach that includes ethnographic methods such as semi-structured interviews, content analysis, discursive textual analysis, and affect theories, we detail a range of ways that women and girls are using social media platforms to speak about, and thus make visible, experiences of rape culture. We argue that this digital mediation enables new connections previously unavailable to girls and women, allowing them to redraw the boundaries between themselves and others.
How do men respond to feminist movements and to shifts in the gender order? In this paper, I introduce the concept of historical gender formation to show how shifting social conditions over the past forty years shaped a range of men's organized responses to feminism. Focusing on the US, I show how progressive men reacted to feminism in the 1970s by forming an internally contradictory 'men's liberation' movement that soon split into opposing anti‐ feminist and pro‐feminist factions. Three large transformations of the 1980s and 1990s – the professional institutionalization of feminism, the rise of a postfeminist sensibility, and shifts in the political economy (especially deindustrialization and the rise of the neoliberal state) – generated new possibilities. I end by pointing to an emergent moderate men's rights discourse that appeals to a postfeminist sensibility, and to an increasingly diverse base for men's work to prevent violence against women.
Although the majority of elected members of Parliament in India now come from subaltern categories, they belong to parties that are dominated by the Hindu upper castes.
This article presents a constitutive approach to the study of organizational contradictions, dialectics, paradoxes, and tensions. In particular, it highlights five constitutive dimensions (i.e., discourse, developmental actions, socio-historical conditions, presence in multiples, and praxis) that appear across the literature in five metatheoretical traditions—process-based systems, structuration, critical, postmodern, and relational dialectics. In exploring these dimensions, it defines and distinguishes among key constructs, links research to process outcomes, and sets forth a typology of alternative ways of responding to organizational tensions. It concludes by challenging researchers to sharpen their focus on time in process studies, privilege emotion in relation to rationality, and explore the dialectic between order and disorder.
Gendertrolling arises out of the same misogyny that fuels other "real life" forms of harassment and abuse of women. This book explains this phenomenon, the way it can impact women's lives, and how it can be stopped.
Designed to educate the general public on a popular and brutal form of harassment against women, Gendertrolling: How Misogyny Went Viral provides key insight into this Internet phenomenon. The book not only differentiates this violent form of trolling from others but also discusses the legal parameters surrounding the issue, such as privacy, anonymity, and free speech online as well as offering legal and policy recommendations for improving the climate for women online.
The analysis of social media and legal aspects of the book make it highly suitable as a reliable source to many modern classes. Additionally, increased awareness among the general and scholarly public of the phenomenon of gendertrolling would help galvanize widespread support for laws, policies, new online content provider protocols, and positive social pressure.
Although an extensive literature has explored the effects of race, socioeconomic status, and attractiveness on perceptions of rape defendants, few studies have considered the influence of celebrity status (and its potential interaction with race) on people's perceptions of events related to rape. As part of a 2 × 2 between-subjects design, 71 undergraduates (32 men, 39 women) read a fictitious newspaper account of an alleged rape that varied the defendant's race (Black or White) and celebrity status (famous or nonfamous), and they were then asked to make judgments in response to the event. As predicted, being a celebrity had distinct advantages for White defendants, whereas for Black defendants, being a celebrity was a liability. This apparent backlash against Black celebrities is consistent with aversive racism theory (Gaertner & Dovidio, 1986), which proposes that although most people today are not openly racist, a subtle form of prejudice appears when people feel safe to express it and when they can justify their feelings.
Online abuse has become an everyday occurrence for women politicians. Asmina Dhrodia explores the 2017 General Election campaign and argues that failure to tackle this urgent problem will have serious consequences both for women now, and in generations to come.
In 2006, the Guardian opened many of its articles to readers’ comments to encourage a “conversation” between journalists and their readers. Readers responded enthusiastically, and by 2016 they had posted 70 million comments on the site. However, from the outset many journalists complained about the quality and tone of comments. Female and BAME (Black, Asian and minority ethnic) journalists in particular complained that they were subject to more abuse than their male, white counterparts. This study finds prima facie evidence to support the journalists’ claims. Using comments that had been blocked by moderators as a proxy for abuse and dismissive trolling, it was found that articles written by women did attract a higher percentage of blocked comments than those written by men, regardless of the subject of the article; this effect was heightened when the articles ran in a particularly male-dominated section of the site. There was also evidence that articles written by BAME writers attracted disproportionate levels of blocked comments, even though the research was not designed to reveal this. Preliminary research findings were published in the Guardian and readers were invited to comment on them. Guardian journalists’ experiences of comments were also surveyed. Both sets of responses are analysed here, in order to explore the contested nature of online abuse in an online news media environment, and to evaluate the potential of comments to “democratise” journalism.
This essay considers the origin and meaning of “social justice warrior” (SJW) memes. Despite each term within the phrase suggesting potentially positive connotations, we argue that as deployed within “alt-right” communities, it implies a kind of monstrous feminine: a woman who is unwieldy and out of control. We catalogue and analyze this meme using a visual discourse analysis of texts gathered through Google Images and Reddit. Our findings suggest that the SJW meme is deployed to emphasize opponents as having non-normative, problematic bodies, different brains (ones ruled by emotion rather than logic), and monstrous characteristics. We argue that such discourse is potentially dangerous, but that feminists may have the tools to recreate the SJW as an image of power.
C+= (pronounced “C plus equality” or “see equality”) is an anti-feminist programming language hoax that provides one example of the hostility experienced all too often by nonmale, nonnormative identities online. As a case study, this programming language demonstrates how misogyny happens in digital contexts through claims to space. This “digital manspreading”—a concept I develop through this case—happens because online interactions are unavoidably embodied, material, and spatial. This case study and concept argue that feminist scholarship must move beyond studying online discourse or interfaces to interrogating how digital infrastructures themselves, especially as built and represented in code, participate in misogyny.
Neoliberalism--the doctrine that market exchange is an ethic in itself, capable of acting as a guide for all human action--has become dominant in both thought and practice throughout much of the world since 1970 or so. Writing for a wide audience, David Harvey, author of The New Imperialism and The Condition of Postmodernity, here tells the political-economic story of where neoliberalization came from and how it proliferated on the world stage. Through critical engagement with this history, he constructs a framework, not only for analyzing the political and economic dangers that now surround us, but also for assessing the prospects for the more socially just alternatives being advocated by many oppositional movements.
The debate about the power and influence of networked publics often focuses on large-scale political events, activist campaigns and protest activity – the more visible forms of political engagement. On the other hand, digitally mediated activism is often questioned and sometimes derided as a lesser form of dissent, as it is easier to engage in, highly affective, and offers few assurances of sustainability of the change it calls for. But what about everyday political speech online, where social media platforms can contribute to a personalisation of politics? Can social media users express their views online and make a difference? This paper analyses around 3500 Facebook posts stemming from the #ЯНеБоюсьСказати (Ukrainian for #IAmNotAfraidToSayIt) online campaign that was started in the Ukrainian segment of Facebook in July 2016 by a local activist to raise awareness of how widespread sexual violence and sexual harassment are in the Ukrainian society. The paper argues that networked conversations about everyday rights and affective stories about shared experiences of injustice, underpinned by the affordances of social media platforms for sharing and discussing information and participating in everyday politics, can emerge as viable forms of networked feminist activism and can have real impact on the discursive status quo of an issue, both in the digital sphere and beyond it.
This article revisits the notion of ‘postfeminism’ 10 years after its formulation in critical terms as a sensibility characterizing cultural life. The article has two broad aims: first to reflect upon postfeminism as a critical term – as part of the lexicon of feminist scholarship – and second to discuss the current features of postfeminism as a sensibility. The first part of the article discusses the extraordinary uptake of the term and considers its continuing relevance in a changed context marked by deeply contradictory trends, including the resurgence of interest in feminism, alongside the spectacular visibility of misogyny, racism, homophobia and nationalism. I document a growing attention to the specificities of postfeminism, including attempts to map its temporal phases, its relevance to place, and intersectional developments of the term. The second part of the article examines the contours of the contemporary postfeminist sensibility. I argue that postfeminism has tightened its hold upon contemporary life and become hegemonic. Compared with a decade ago, it is much more difficult to recognize as a novel and distinctive sensibility, as it instantiates a common sense that operates as a kind of gendered neoliberalism. It has both spread out and intensified across contemporary culture and is becoming increasingly dependent upon a psychological register built around cultivating the ‘right’ kinds of dispositions for surviving in neoliberal society: confidence, resilience and positive mental attitude. Together these affective, cultural and psychic features of postfeminism exert a powerful regulatory force. This article forms part of ‘On the Move’, a special issue marking the twentieth anniversary of the journal. It also heads up a special online dossier on ‘Postfeminism in the European Journal of Cultural Studies’.
This chapter examines the role of women within the family as a source of social productivity, that is, of surplus value making. In pre-capitalist patriarchal society the home and the family were central to agricultural and artisan production. Women, children and the aged lost the relative power that derived from the family's dependence on their labor, which was seen to be social and necessary. In order to see the housewife as central, it was first of all necessary to analyze briefly how capitalism has created the modern family and the housewife's role in it, by destroying the types of family group or community which previously existed. The “unreliability” of women in the home and out of it has grown rapidly since then, and runs directly against the factory as regimentation organized in time and space, and against the social factory as organization of the reproduction of labor power.
This article analyses the features of LGBT-related discourse in the Russian media in the period covering 2012 to 2014. The aim of the study is to reveal the relationship between socio-political reality and categorical application of the language in Russian mass media coverage of LGBT-related issues. Nowadays the civil status of LGBT communities is topic of serious discussion in different societies across the world. Homosexuality has become a matter subject to administrative and legal regulation in Russia. Control over sexuality is exerted not only by law, but also through meanings that are produced and distributed in the public sphere. The study of discourse allows us to understand how relationships of social dominance are realised and particular normative practices become fixed. Discursive practices forming around the phenomena of sexuality and homosexuality in particular are determined by their cultural and historical contexts. The main research question is to define the structure of this discourse in Russian media, especially within the context of these discussions on legal regulations. In this study, the stigmatised and victimised discursive elements are defined, the latter of which is related to the view to LGBT as a social minority that has emerged in the 20th century. Victimised discursive elements have gradually moved discussions about the LGBT community away from that of stigmatisation. However the concept of "minority" on its own does not stop the stigmatisation of this group. This study focuses on publications in Russian online media over the period of 2012 to 2014. This particular period is characterised by a large number of news stories instigating debates regarding the LGBT-related issues. Discourse analysis and content analysis have been employed as the primary research methods. The idea is to look into the basic elements of a language? lexicon, trace how meanings are produced on the nominative level and incorporate them into the wider discursive context. This analysis has demonstrated that the structure of the discursive model employed for sexual minorities is complex and controversial, since it is a result of mixing notions of the LGBT community that present them as stigmatised and victimised.
Under communicative capitalism, should feminists be radical democrats? If radical democracy entails an emphasis on the multiplicity of political identities engaging in agonistic struggle within a framework of liberal democratic norms and institutions, as it does for Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe (1985), then the answer is no. The changing conditions of signification accelerated by networked information and communication technologies decrease the viability of the production of symbolic identities as a means of left political struggle. At the same time, the tenacity of neoliberalism as an economic project renders allegedly democratic institutions barriers to significant political change. Together, these two aspects of communicative capitalism indicate the limits radical democracy places on left political thought and point to the importance of reinvigorating socialism as a left political project.
Equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people have increasingly been flagged up as the ‘main story’ in current western debates about sexual citizenzhip.1 Gay marriage in particular has emerged as the central civil rights cause for western and international LGBT lobbying groups and organisations.2 Strategies based on claims to rights and visibility for gay people have assumed an international dimension, and their increasing deployment on a global scale has been seen as evidence of ‘queer globalisation’.3 This chapter interrogates notions of sexual citizenship politics from a non-western perspective by looking at debates over sexual citizenship rights and visibility in the Russian Federation.
This study examines the emotional and mental health effects revenge porn has on female survivors. To date, no other academic studies have exclusively focused on mental health effects in revenge porn cases. In-depth qualitative interviews were conducted between February 2014 and January 2015 with 18 female revenge porn survivors, and inductive analysis revealed participants’ experiences of trust issues, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, and several other mental health effects. These findings reveal the seriousness of revenge porn, the devastating impacts it has on survivors’ mental health, and similarities between revenge porn and sexual assault.
Previous studies of intimidation and harassment of journalists have (rightly) focused on non-democratic and authoritarian nations and/or transitional/emerging democracies. In this article, we examine the situation in Sweden, a country with strong de facto and de jure safeguards of journalistic freedom and autonomy. We report the findings from a representative survey of Swedish journalists where three themes are analysed: the extent of harassment, the forms of harassment, and the consequences of intimidation and harassment. The results show that a third of the respondents had experienced threats at work in the past year, and an overwhelming majority said they had received offensive and insulting comments. Intimidation and harassment also had consequences, both professionally and personally, such as fear and self-censorship. We therefore argue that it is time to add the dimension of external pressure and threats to the discussion of journalistic autonomy—including in countries like Sweden.
This article examines contemporary feminist ‘digilante’ responses to the increasing problem of misogyny online. In particular, it focuses on female gamers and a recent incident in which the Australian gamer Alanah Pearce responded to threats of sexual violence from young male Internet users by alerting their mothers. Pearce’s move was celebrated in international media commentary as the ‘perfect’ solution to the problem of online rape threats. This article, however, argues that while ‘do-it-yourself’ strategies such as Pearce’s have some benefits, unsupplemented, they do not constitute an adequate solution to the broader problem of gendered vitriol online. Further, they comport with a wider trend which shifts the burden of responsibility for the problem of gendered cyber-hate from perpetrators to targets, and from the public to the private sphere. Over the course of this article, I will show that the contemporary problem of gendered ‘e-bile’ has parallels with some key social issues addressed by second-wave feminism. As such, I argue that a hybrid of feminist activist efforts – including a recalibrated approach to collectivism – is required to achieve the legislative and corporate reforms necessary to address the significant social problem of gendered hate on the Internet.
This article introduces and discusses bot-based collective blocklists (or blockbots) in Twitter, which have been developed by volunteers to combat harassment in the social networking site. Blockbots support the curation of a shared blocklist of accounts, where subscribers to a blockbot will not receive any notifications or messages from accounts on the blocklist. Blockbots support counterpublic communities, helping people moderate their own experiences of a site. This article provides an introduction and overview of blockbots and the issues that they raise about networked publics and platform governance, extending an intersecting literature on online harassment, platform governance, and the politics of algorithms. Such projects involve a more reflective, intentional, transparent, collaborative, and decentralized way of using algorithmic systems to respond to issues of platform governance like harassment. I argue that blockbots are not just technical solutions but social ones as well, a notable exception to common technologically determinist solutions that often push responsibility for issues like harassment to the individual user. Beyond the case of Twitter, blockbots call our attention to collective, bottom-up modes of computationally assisted moderation that can be deployed by counterpublic groups who want to participate in networked publics where hegemonic and exclusionary practices are increasingly prevalent.
This book draws on feminist publishing, post-modern theory and feminist autobiography. Liberal feminism and scholarship on the women's movement are critiqued, with the argument that they both ignore feminism's unique contributions to social analysis and politics. The theme of the book is focussed the power of discourse, the diversity of women's experiences, and the importance of changing the world through changing consciousness. Feminist publishing as discursive politics, autotheoretical texts, social sciences studies of the women's movement in terms of theory and methods, social movement theory are all covered in the core part of this work. Issues of race, sexuality, class, and ethnicity are addressed and the uniqueness of feminst activism is discussed. This approach explores feminist publishing and autobiographical writing as examples of discursive activism with broadly subversive potential.
Sexism thrives in the present because it appears to dwell in the past. Shielded by the claim that we have successfully dispatched it, contemporary sexism flourishes as 'retro', 'hipster' or 'ironic', or else passes unnoticed.
Accusations of sexism sound amusingly out-dated and those speaking seriously of sexism may be dismissed as out-of-date themselves - or else as unreasonable and oversensitive. Under these conditions, the persistent presence of sexism has appeared virtually 'unspeakable'. In this essay I examine this dynamic at close quarters, asking how sexism is performed and resisted in young people's everyday interactions. Drawing from interviews with twenty secondary school students aged sixteen to eighteen, I develop an account of the 'choreography' of sexism: the organising patterns through which sexism is communicated in interaction. This choreography shapes what is said, but also what is felt: how bodies are hailed by sexist communication and recruited into particular patterns of feeling and response. I focus my attention on the moves those I interviewed made to challenge sexism, and the possibilities these manoeuvres hold for unravelling sexism in interaction.