Abstract
This article draws from research on feminism, politics, social media and everyday sexism in Cyprus to examine the power dynamics between discourses of misogyny and feminism as produced in the public sphere. It focuses on how Facebook was utilised as both a digital space for feminist resistance and misogyny in two case studies which involve one female and two male MPs. At the crossroads of emancipatory and hegemonic particularities, we discuss how feminisms and social media operate in the socio-temporal context of the public and political sphere of Cyprus.
Highlights
Still permeating multiple facets of everyday life, sexism continues to saturate the social fabric of most societies with a number of shocking cases emerging in public, social, political and even academic life
While the case studies stimulate the discussion of the interplay between gender and social media, we aim to understand and map the impact of public and political performativities on contemporary feminisms and how such feminisms can be enacted to create a platform for empowering publics on issues of sexisms, gendered violence and social justice
In the Charalambidou-Themistokleous case, Charalambidou has been attacked by the misogynistic discourse produced by Themistokleous who used Facebook at the moment when feminist discourse appeared in the mainstream Cypriot public sphere
Summary
Still permeating multiple facets of everyday life, sexism continues to saturate the social fabric of most societies with a number of shocking cases emerging in public, social, political and even academic life. The aim of this article is to examine the use of social media in specific case studies that involve issues of sexism and misogyny in order to analyse the way feminisms, gender and social media operate, unfold, are negotiated, shaped and positioned in and through the public sphere in Cyprus today. It is this need that points towards a gender conscious writing that develops awareness of how women act in contemporary male-dominated societies, where female leadership in decision-making capacities continues to be curtailed and marginalised by patriarchal and masculine hegemonies Such struggles cannot be viewed in isolation from wider regional and global women’s struggles (Hadjipavlou, 2010) and require sharper public attention.
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