“The Slovenian Word For These People is ‘Degenerates’!”: Examining Negative Attitudes Toward Non-Normative Sexual and Gender Identities in Slovenian Online Comments

Abstract

ABSTRACT Numerous reports have documented the discrimination, physical, and verbal attacks on LGBTQIA+ people throughout the world and the situation in Slovenia, a Central European country, is similar, albeit with its own national and historic specifics. Therefore, we see it as crucial to identify the prevailing negative discourses about the LGBTQIA+ community within this country. In this paper, we identify different negative discourses about non-normative sexual and gender identities in Slovenia by analyzing hateful online comments posted under different LGBTQIA-related articles on the most frequented Slovenian news websites. We identified seven different themes within anti-LGBTQIA+ discourses with the current article focusing on themes of the Hegemonic binary and Non-normative identities. The anti-LGBTQIA+ discourses identified in this article often denigrate the non-normative LGBTQIA+ identity and discursively construct it as inferior to the prevailing cis-heterosexual identity. We argue that identified discourses are linked with the resurgence of the anti-gender movement and the retraditionalization of society and also constitute a form of violence, which is especially true for violence directed at subjects constituted as dispensable, whose life is seen as not worth valuing and not worth living, which are often members of the LGBTQIA+ community.