Hashtag feminism in a blocked context: The mechanisms of unfolding and disrupting #rape on Persian Twitter

Abstract

Despite the growing body of literature on hashtag feminism in Western contexts, there is still a significant gap in our knowledge of the ways that feminist hashtag movements are developed in authoritarian societies. Moreover, we do not know much about the mechanisms by which a feminist hashtag movement is disrupted, particularly in non-democratic regimes. Drawing on and contributing to the hashtag feminism literature, we undertook a discursive approach to examine #rape on Persian Twitter to address these gaps. Findings showed that #rape was a space for Iranian users to share abusive experiences, but they went further to discuss barriers of disclosing sexual assault as well. Developing resistive strategies and raising awareness about other muted groups such as LGBTQIA+ were other discursive practices in articulating #rape. This article also pushes forward the existing literature on hashtag feminism by providing empirical analyses of the ways that a feminist movement is disrupted.