Anti-feminist Discourses Research Articles

Anti-feminist branding: a case study of #JusticeForJohnnyDepp on Instagram

ABSTRACT Scholars have examined misogynistic and anti-feminist media. Since misogyny manifests in platform-specific ways, we add to this scholarship by discussing Instagram. Using the Depp-Heard trial on Instagram as a case study, we ask: How do misogyny and anti-feminism manifest through the specific branding culture and affordances of Instagram in the context of #JusticeForJohnnyDepp? What can this case study tell scholars about misogynistic and anti-feminist strategies more broadly? We outline five themes that characterized anti-feminist discourse on Instagram. Beyond Instagram, this work contributes by demonstrating how branding, which is often discussed as gendered labor that puts women at disproportionate risk, is also used by anti-feminist and misogynistic collectives. However, anti-feminists are rarely subject to those same risks.

Permanências, rupturas, transformações: os antifeminismos de ontem e de hoje

From the exposition and analysis of a series of anti-feminist manifestations, retrieved from written and iconographic sources dating from the mid-19th century to the present day, I propose a reflection that nuances the historicity of these phenomena, observing their strategies and rhetorics inscribed in a dynamic of continuities, ruptures, and transformations over time. Additionally, the article presents a brief historiographical overview, highlighting specific interpretations of anti-feminism proposed by Susan Faludi (2001), Florence Rochefort (1999), and Rachel Soihet (2013). Thus, the importance of articulating the past and the present to comprehend anti-feminist discourses is emphasized, paying attention to both the contributions made by specialized bibliography on the topic and their limitations in the face of contemporary challenges.

Gendered Ideologies and Authoritarianism in Nicaragua

Although anti-feminist discourses and practices are often associated with “right-wing” governments, self-proclaimed “leftist” regimes can also be organized around patriarchal ideas. In this article, I analyze how the Ortega-Murillo regime in Nicaragua has employed gendered ideologies to consolidate and legitimate its political power. While the Ortega-Murillo regime initially used elite pact-making to gain control of Nicaragua’s legal institutions, their latter strategies, which included alliances with religious conservatives, threats and intimidation, and legal mechanisms, were mainly focused on restructuring and pacifying civil society. Within this process, targeting feminist ideas and feminist organizations has been a central component of their autocratic toolkit.

Cyberfeminist resistance against hegemonic and anti-feminist discourses: the case of Kuwait

ABSTRACT How do Kuwaiti cyberfeminists resist hegemonic and anti-feminist discourses? This article seeks to answer this question by exploring the contestation between Kuwaiti feminists and their Islamist opponents on Twitter. Viewing cyberfeminism as constructive resistance, I argue that feminism is practiced and performed online by a variety of women actors who do not necessarily self-identify as feminists or activists, constructively and continuously producing new discourses and subjectivities, establishing a salient embodied feminist presence that can trigger an anti-feminist counter-mobilization. In a Twitter Space hosted by the Kuwaiti Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs on December 23, 2021, an anti-feminist lecture portrayed Kuwaiti feminists as alienated from religion and society while downplaying the extent of violence against women in the country. In response, Kuwaiti cyberfeminists attempted to reclaim feminism by placing it within local and national frames using a Twitter hashtag. Resorting to a reverse discourse strategy had some shortcomings, including reinforcing hegemonic discourses and the binary of “us” (feminists) versus “them” (Islamists), which may have been an inevitable outcome of an antagonistic narrative. This article adds to the existing literature on cyberfeminism by exploring an understudied domain and offering significant insights into feminists’ online resistance in socially conservative contexts.

“Gender wars” and populist politics in South Korea

The 2022 South Korean presidential election campaign saw populist politicians, especially conservative parties, leverage gender conflicts and misogyny to attract young male swing voters. But there has been limited scholarly attention to the connection between gender and populist politics, particularly in South Korea, with research primarily focused on women's voting patterns, their political party representation, and on populist politics in the US, Europe, and Latin America. Existing research identifies that common strategies employed by populist politicians include anti-feminist discourses, reference to crises in masculinity, and appeals to emotion and affect. This paper examines how South Korean populist politics has utilized gender conflicts since democratization, considering the evolution of ‘gender wars’ in the South Korean context. It specifically delves into the strategies employed by conservative populist politicians from the People Power Party (PPP) during the 2022 election campaigns. These strategies, although similar to those of right-wing populists in Europe and the US, emphasized three key issues unique to South Korea: compulsory military service, low fertility rates, and the dismantling of the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family. This South Korean case contributes significantly to academic discussions about populist politics and gender, contextualized within the local political, social, and cultural context.

#MeToo in the Manosphere: The Formation of a Counter Discourse on the Swedish Online Forum Flashback

ABSTRACT In Sweden, a relative consensus of liberal and feminist values has long been dominant in public discourse. This could be observed in coverage of the #MeToo movement, which was largely presented in a positive light by legacy media, where critical voices were instead found on alternative and social media. This article contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the impact of #MeToo beyond the mainstream discourse by investigating how #MeToo was discussed on the online forum Flashback during the period spanning October—December 2017. Our findings show how the #MeToo debate in this forum reproduced an anti-feminist discourse from the manosphere but also challenged it, as attitudes towards sexual harassment were negotiated and reframed in dialogue with mainstream media. #MeToo thus also contributed to an increased awareness about sexual harassment in this context. However, while a feminist agenda was being strengthened in legacy media, the anti-feminist views on Flashback became more pronounced. Interestingly, while the dominant feminist discourse around Swedish #MeToo avoided the concept “feminism”, it was often used in this counter discourse on Flashback, where it signified a hated, albeit powerful and transformative, force in society.

The privilege of ‘aggrieved entitlement’: exploring the social bases of antifeminist political players mobilising online

Antifeminist groups have made extensive use of online platforms to mobilise and spread their political ideas. Existing studies of online antifeminism tend to focus their analyses primarily on how masculinities are constructed through antifeminist discourses. This article takes a different approach by exploring how the social position of antifeminist political players is related to their effective use of online platforms. Through an empirical study of an influential antifeminist blogosphere that emerged in Sweden in the mid-2000s, it is shown how the mostly anonymous antifeminist bloggers are, in fact, well-resourced activists who, due to their educational resources and communicative skills, could effectively use political blogs to promote their cause. Consequently, despite their claims of being marginalised and victimised, these predominantly male antifeminist activists actually occupy a privileged position in relation to historically marginalised groups, a position that affords them new possibilities to attack feminist achievements and actors through online platforms.

Navigating Faith and Feminism: Islami.co’s Countering-Narrative to Anti-feminism Discourses in Indonesia

Anti-feminism is a movement that is more opposed to reaffirming, maintaining, and increasing the subordination of women by patriarchal forces. For this movement, feminist thinking can lead to deviant actions because these thoughts are not in accordance with religious teachings. The group then uses digital media channels to create anti-feminism narratives which are published on Islamic faith-based information websites. The purpose of this study is to reveal how the representation of feminism in Islami.co media acts as a counter-narrative against anti-feminism discourse echoed by other Islamic groups. This study uses a qualitative descriptive approach. The data collection technique was a literature study of documents from various references and the results of media analysis of Islami.co. The data analysis method used is the framing analysis model of William Gamson and Andre Modgliani which is elaborated with the perspective of Representation Theory by Stuart Hall. The result of the study shows that Islami.co is a digital media counter-narratives against anti-feminist discourse. The representation of feminism in this media is interpreted as part of the struggle of Islam in forming the spirit of justice for all mankind. Islami.co packs facts and clarifies the counter-narrative of anti-feminism discourse through authentic sources such as the Qur’an and hadith as well as various arguments that rely on empirical data. This effort is not just for creating justice and equality, but also as a form of obedience to what is commanded by Islam.

Representation of women in the digital discourse of Spanish far-right female leaders

The Spanish far-right party – Vox – articulates several ideological components in public discourse, among which nativism and anti-feminism stand out. Anti-feminism is being central in the digital discourse of Vox female leaders, Carla Toscano and Rocío de Meer, and of the former Congress deputy, Macarena Olona. With the aim of deepening the analysis of the discursive representation of women in Vox, this research employs the approach and methodology of critical discourse analysis with the corpus, consisting of 6753 tweets from the accounts of these three leaders, taking into account three of the representation that they (re)produce. The results show the imaginary of the Spanish and Catholic-woman. The discourse of racial Spanishness is initiated through mystified historical events. This occurs with the representation of the Mother-woman, which reinforces the device of patriarchal femininity and the frame of the demographic change based on nativism. The representation of the Tormentor-woman is used to deny both the specificity of gender violence and the need for gender equality policies. These three frames are used to justify the anti-feminist discourse and to explain its modulations. The results show that we need to pay attention to gender in order to understand the discursive strategies of the far-right parties, with special care to the femonationalism strategy, as well as to observe its mobilizing and agglutinating capacity.

The manosphere under the microscope: a critical discourse analysis of the news media reporting of Rowan Baxter’s murder of Hannah Clarke and her family

ABSTRACT This qualitative research addresses the question: how do antifeminist narratives emerge from Australian news media reporting of violence against women? Scholarship in this area is limited; however, emerging research reveals that antifeminist online communities are increasing and are becoming more volatile. Most concerning is their use of false and misleading news media reporting on violence against women to legitimise their ideology and promote recruitment. In this article, I will be informed by a Faircloughian critical discourse analysis framework underpinned by Lazar’s conceptualisation of feminist critical discourse analysis praxis methodology. One hundred and eight Australian traditional news media articles concerning Rowan Baxter’s murder of Hannah Clark and their three children Aaliyah, Laianah, and Trey, published between February 19 2020 and July 25 2020 are examined. A linear narrative arc unfolds within the media, beginning at initial reporting, to the story entering the social discourse. Two key antifeminist narrative themes emerged amongst the chaotic assemblage of discourses; incident and perpetrator as aberrant, and men as victims. Findings from this research contribute to the emerging research area of antifeminist discourses in online communities.

Why do some women hate feminists? Social media and the structural limitation of Chinese digital feminism

ABSTRACT This article employs semistructured interviews with 43 Chinese female social media users who openly disapprove of feminist politics to examine what socio-cultural factors have shaped such perceptions and how they might limit the reach of Chinese digital feminism. Three themes of anti-feminist discourses held by respondents are distilled and discussed. These are: feminism as a concealed form of disciplinary normality for women, feminists as accountable for undermining women’s solidarity, and digital feminism as merely a trendy business. A contextual interpretation shows that the technological affordances of Chinese social media platforms and a pro-fertility state discourse have conspired to make such misconceptions. By acknowledging the legacy of the #MeToo movement in spotlighting the role of patriarchy in the subordination of women, this article calls for the exploration of diversified communication channels in the future development of Chinese digital feminism.

What Is “Rural Feminism”? A Computer-Assisted Analysis of Popular Antifeminist Discourses in Chinese Social Media

Along with the popularization of feminism in Chinese social media, an antifeminist wave has become increasingly prominent since 2014, marked most notably by the stigmatization buzzword “rural feminism.” We collected 2,104 texts regarding “rural feminism” on Zhihu (the Chinese Quora) and applied approaches of computer-assisted discourse studies (i.e., topic modeling, collocation, and concordance analyses) as lenses to help us understand the connections and patterns within these fragmented social media texts, to uncover hidden antifeminist strategies. The findings reveal that popular antifeminism adopts strategies that we defined as “double embrace” and “double rejection” to minimize the realistic threat of feminism to men’s vested interests. These deliberate strategies hint at and further exacerbate the complex interplay between current Chinese antifeminism and feminism. On this basis, we argue that the previous framework of understanding this relationship as a simple dichotomy no longer applies and that we need to reconceptualize the current challenges and threats to Chinese feminism in the context of the specific history and reality of Chinese society and the rich interactions between antifeminism and misogyny, neoliberalism, postfeminism, and various versions of feminism active in China.

Anti-Feminism: four strategies for the demonisation and depoliticisation of feminism on Chinese social media

ABSTRACT Anti-feminism and misogyny online have intensified globally over the last decade, bringing substantive challenges to feminist identification and activism. This article explores the strategies for silencing and expelling feminists via the deployment of an anti-feminist discourse online, in response to feminism’s increasing visibility in China. Data was collected via observation of 23 influential feminist accounts on Weibo. This was bolstered by data from 10 semi-structured interviews with feminist Weibo account contributors. By applying critical discourse analysis (CDA), four strategies used to demonise feminists and depoliticise feminism online in China are identified: feminists as deviant women, as betraying the nation, as connected to Islamists, and as “fake-feminists.” The article highlights a kind of intertwined anti-feminism that draws power from distinct features—nationalism and Islamophobia. It argues that by interlocking Chinese historical and structural conditions as well as cultural context, anti-feminism diverts public attention away from systematic gender inequality, and onto antagonisms between feminists and anti-feminists, which further restricts the discussion of intersectional oppressions that affect women’s lives.

Beyond Antifeminist Discourses: Analyzing How Material and Social Factors Shape Online Resistance to Feminist Politics

Abstract Online platforms present new challenges to feminist politics since they provide antifeminist groups with additional possibilities to come together and advocate their claims towards wider publics. This article argues that new analytical perspectives are needed to understand how antifeminist discourses are successfully produced and promulgated online. In particular, it suggests that in addition to analyzing the content of antifeminist discourses we need to pay attention to how the design and governance of online platforms, as well as the resources among antifeminist activists, shape online resistance to feminist politics. Two analytical dimensions are introduced that help to specify how the design and governance of online platforms, as well as the social composition of antifeminist groups, enable these to come together online and influence mainstream publics. To demonstrate the usefulness of this analytical approach, a study of an influential antifeminist blogosphere in the Swedish context is used as an illustrative case.

Un ethos politique féminin ? Le discours de l’extrême droite en Espagne ou la porosité des frontières discursives

"After being considered a kind of weakness for a long time, femininity seems to have reversed. its stigma and has become a positive value in the political discourse due to the stereotypes usually related to it, which allow to define the female political ethos in terms of empathy, affectivity and non-aggressive behaviour. However, the women of the emerging right-wing party in Spain, VOX, contradict this trend by assuming an extremely polarized anti-feminist discourse. Based on a fourhour corpus of public speeches, this paper aims to analyse the topics and the rhetorical strategies used in those speeches, which will show how porous the dichotomy “male-female” can be when it comes to political discourse."

미디어 환경 변화와 혐오 확산: 혐오에 대응하기 위한 연결 윤리 구축에 대한 소고

This article seeks to reveal that the existing legacy media and social media outlets are playing a role in disseminating hate speech, and to explore solutions to this issue. Currently, the media are indiscretely reproducing online community postings and employing them to get more views. The legacy media reduce blatant discriminations to merely controversial issues and the social media continues to circulate hate speech by way of algorithm arrangements. Likewise, users are contributing to the spread of hate discourse through the uses of memes, and through their participation in cyber bulling. There are more instances where negative emotions are shared on social media scenes, and users themselves are creating meme-like forms that allow for the easier sharing of hate and discrimination. Throughout this type of processes, the anti-feminism sentiment emerges through the online space to make feminism a system of thought that must be rejected in Korean society. The media reportings convey hate sentiments produced sub-culturally in the online communities in their rawest forms, and thereby play a role in circulating antifeminist discourse in the public discourse sphere. The legacy media’s adherence to communal journalism, the social media’s voluntary restraint on overcommercialization, and the improvement of media literacy of users are suggested as solutions.

Memes, trolls and the manosphere: mapping the manifold expressions of antifeminism and misogyny online

ABSTRACT Through a number of case studies, this article will conduct an analysis of the sometimes seemingly ubiquitous antifeminism, and even misogyny, in certain anglophone online spaces, and of their roots in older historical antifeminist discourses. It will also discuss how this patriarchal backlash is strategically presented by its proponents as an indicator of a crisis in contemporary masculinity, and to what extent it is part of a wider phenomenon of reaction against progressive advances, in both online and offline spaces.

Networked Struggles: Placards at Pakistan’s Aurat March

Aurat March [Women’s March] is an annual event organised in various cities across Pakistan to observe International Women’s Day. Since its inception in 2018, the March has been condemned by conservative religious and political segments of society for reasons relating to propriety. This commentary explores how placards predominantly form the object of censure in the movement’s backlash. By reflecting on discourses on mainstream and social media, I first assess the use of placards in constructing networks of feminist voices. I then assess the (re)production of anti-feminist discourses, sparked by commentary on (select) placards and doctored images to promote dis/misinformation campaigns through the convergence of networked misogyny. Placards at Aurat March have therefore constructed a space for resistance—both by the movement and in retaliation to it—shifting the placard to a site of networked struggles over feminist and women’s participation in public spaces.

@Indonesiatanpafeminis.id as a Challenge of Feminist Movement in Virtual Space.

The fast-growing social media in Indonesia has opened up opportunities for spreading feminist ideas to a wider and more diverse audience. Various social media accounts especially Instagram that focus on gender advocacy and feminism such as @indonesiafeminis, @lawanpatriarki, and @feminismanis have developed in Indonesia. However, the development of the social media platform also presents groups that oppose feminists. One of the accounts of women’s groups that oppose feminists is @indonesiatanpafeminis.id (@indonesiawithoutfeminist.id). The research objectives are namely to analyze the diversity of issues and reveal the discourse contestation that developed in the @indonesiatanpafeminis.id, and dynamic relationships on the online and offline spaces between groups of feminists and anti-feminists or the other interest. This research employed the digital ethnography method that utilized observation, interview, and literature study as data collection techniques. This study found that the online conversations at @indonesiatanpafeminis.id revealed misconceptions on feminism from a group of women with a religious identity. Furthermore, the conversation also tends to strengthen patriarchal values with religious arguments that are gender-biased. However, the @indonesiatanpafeminis.id serves as a public space for open debates and education on feminist issues. The anti-feminist group behind the @indonesiatanpafeminis.id are women who identify themselves in a certain Muslim circle that has political, cultural, and religious agendas. One of the agendas is to influence the public to reject the Sexual Violence Eradication Bill. This study also noted the Muslim supporters of anti-feminism in Indonesia are less popular compared to progressive religious-based Muslim women organizations such as Aisyiyah (Muhammadiyah), Muslimat NU (Nahdlatul Ulama), and Rahima (Center for Education and Information on Islam and Women’s Rights). The study also evokes discussion on how the feminist and anti-feminist discourses can be utilized to criticize and develop the women’s movement or feminism in a multicultural context.

Academics against Gender Studies

In Germany, knowledge production by gender researchers has been under attack not only from male rights activists, Christian fundamentalists and right-wing parties and movements, but also from scientists in various fi elds. Based on a discourse analysis of their publications (2009-2017) and a media reception analysis, this essay analyses arguments used by ‘gender’-critical scientists and the socio-political backgrounds to where they position themselves. I show that their arguments do not belong to scientifi c discourse, but can be interpreted as a form of science populism which lends ‘scientific’ authority to the formation of authoritarian, anti-feminist discourses that aims to reify ‘secure’ knowledge about ‘gender’. Accordingly, ‘gender-critical’ scientists are read mainly by non-scientific publics, including right-wing and Christian fundamentalist media and actors. As I will show, the phenomenon of scientists taking action against ‘gender’ can be situated in historical antifeminism, as well as contemporary discourses on the crisis-like character of the dynamics regarding gender knowledge and societal conditions.