Nobody cares for men anymore: Affective-discursive practices around men’s victimisation across online and offline contexts

Satu Venäläinen

doi:10.1177/13675494211021097

Abstract

Men’s victimisation is a central topic in online discussions, particularly in the manosphere, where its emphasis is often combined with a strong anti-feminist stance. This article examines the interplay of affects and discourse in meaning-making around men’s victimisation both in online discussions and among social and crisis workers asked to comment upon meanings circulating online. By using the concept of affective-discursive practice, the analysis shows how this meaning-making reiterates socially shared interpretative repertoires and positionings that mobilise affects based on sympathy, anger and hate. Furthermore, the article demonstrates how the practitioners respond to these affective meanings by adopting positions of responsibility, while also redirecting and neutralising online affect. The article contributes to knowledge on the interaction between online and offline meaning-making around men’s victimisation, and to building an understanding of affects and discourse in seemingly moderate meaning-making around this topic that however resonates and links with the more extreme anti-feminism of the manosphere.

Highlights

The digitalised manifestation of extreme men’s rights advocacy known as the manosphere has gained increasing visibility in recent years
The analysis is based on the following two separate datasets: online discussion threads focusing on violence committed by women against men in heterosexual intimate relations, and focus group interviews conducted with social and crisis workers who were asked to comment on online discussions
The analysis presented in this article discussed the uses of interpretative repertoires of neglect and prejudice, and illustrated how both of these structure the meaning-making around men’s victimisation both in online discussions and among practitioners

Summary

Introduction

The digitalised manifestation of extreme men’s rights advocacy known as the manosphere has gained increasing visibility in recent years. Ging et al, 2019). The manosphere has its roots in the men’s rights movement (Marwick and Caplan, 2018), which has gained significant momentum in the last few decades due to the technological affordances of the Internet and social media (Ging, 2017). The manosphere has evolved into a loosely knit collection of communities dispersed across various Internet sites, which are fundamentally tied together by a misogynous and anti-feminist orientation. One of the central tenets of the manosphere is the notion of men as victims of various forms of societal discrimination. Men are frequently portrayed as the forgotten victims of violence, in the context of intimate partner relations

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