"Feminine, Not Feminist": Trad Truth-making on Social Media

Abstract

This article investigates the truth-making practices of networks of antifeminist women on social media who identify as “traditional” or “trad” for short. Demonstrating how trad truth-making emerges in response both to the tensions inherent in right-wing nationalism and neoliberal postfeminism, it argues that the potential solution trad women pose depends on the ways they harness social media to limb public and private spaces and personal and political concerns. Paying particular attention to the entanglement of emotions and technical affordances, I use instances from my fieldwork in trad networks to frame their outreach as a form of truth management equally invested in carving out a space for their own (semi)public presence as in combatting the perceived dangers of feminism.