Article published in:
Critical perspectives on gender, politics and violence
Edited by Eleonora Esposito
[Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 9:1] 2021
► pp. 76–99

Xenophobia, misogyny and rape culture

Targeting women in cyberspace

| University of Lodz , Poland
The present article explores the interface between online misogyny and xenophobia in the context of both socio-cultural factors which are conducive to verbal aggression against women and cyberspace’s technological affordances. The former, as will be argued, can be linked to “rape culture”, where the notions of rape and sexual violence are used not only as instruments of subjugation and domination, but also as tools to legitimize racial, ethnic, or religious hatred. In the case of the latter, anonymity, interactivity and connectivity will be discussed as factors which facilitate generating, amplifying and perpetuating hateful and aggressive content online. Applying the Media Proximization Approach (Kopytowska 2013, 2015a, 2018a, 2018b, 2020) and drawing on previous research examining online xenophobic discourses and hate speech, the article scrutinizes hate speech targeting female politicians, namely Angela Merkel, current Chancellor of Germany, and Ewa Kopacz, former Polish Prime Minister, for their pro-refugee stance and migration policy. Data-wise, the examples analyzed will be taken from the corpora comprising comments following online articles in niezalezna​.pl (a Polish conservative news portal) and YouTube videos on migrants and refugees.
Keywords: misogyny, xenophobia, Media Proximization Approach, cyberspace, refugees, rape culture
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Technological affordances and networked aggression
  • 3.Protecting the nation: Heteronormativity, femonationalism and care racism
  • 4.Rape culture and its manifestations in mediatized world
  • 5.Xenophobia and violence against female politicians: A case study
    • 5.1Data and methodology
    • 5.2Results and discussion: Merkel and Kopacz – Between demeaning sexualized comments and incitement to violence
    • 5.3Rape and the Other
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 04 March 2021
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlac.00054.kop
References
AFP
. “Merkel: From Austerity Queen to ‘Leader of Free World’.” Times of Israel, December 3 2016 Last accessed 15 April 2020 at http://​www​.timesofisrael​.com​/merkel​-from​-austerity​-queen​-to​-leader​-of​-free​-world/
Ahmed, Leila
1992 Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Alam, Zainab
2021 “Violence against Women in Politics: The Case of Pakistani Women’s Activism.” Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict: Special Issue on Critical Perspectives on Gender, Politics and Violence. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Baider, Fabienne
2018 “ ‘Go To Hell Fucking Faggots, May You Die!’. Framing the LGBT Subject in Online Comments.” Lodz Papers in Pragmatics 14(1): 69–92. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Baider, Fabienne, and Monika Kopytowska
2017 “Conceptualising the Other: Online Discourses on the Current Refugee Crisis in Cyprus and in Poland.” Lodz Papers in Pragmatics 13(2): 203–233. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2018 “Narrating Hostility, Challenging Hostile Narratives.” Lodz Papers in Pragmatics 14(1): 1–24. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Banet-Weiser, Sarah, and Kate Miltner
2016 “#MasculinitySoFragile: Culture, Structure and Networked Misogyny.” Feminist Media Studies 16(1): 171–174. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Barker, Kim, and Olga Jurasz
2019 “Online Misogyny: A Challenge for Digital Feminism?” Journal of International Affairs 72(2): 95–113.Google Scholar
Brownmiller, Susan
1975 Against our Will. Men, Women and Rape. New York: Simon and Schuster.Google Scholar
Buchwald, Emilie, Pamela R. Fletcher, and Martha Roth
1993 Transforming a Rape Culture. Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith
2009 “Performativity, Precarity and Sexual Politics.” AIBR. Revista de Antropología Iberoamericana 4(3): i–xiii. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Chouliaraki, Lilie
2008 The Spectatorship of Suffering. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Citron, Danielle Keats
2009 “Law’s Expressive Value in Combating Cyber Gender Harassment.” Michigan Law Review 108(3): 373–415.Google Scholar
Cole, Kirsti K.
2015 “ ‘It’s like she’s Eager to be Verbally Abused’: Twitter, Trolls, and (En)Gendering Disciplinary Rhetoric.” Feminist Media Studies 15(2): 356–358. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Connell, Raewyn W.
2005 Masculinities (2nd ed.). Berkeley, California: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Connell, Raewyn W., and James Messerschmidt
2005 “Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept.” Gender & Society 19(6): 829–859. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Dibbell, Julian
1993 “A Rape in Cyberspace.” The Village Voice, December 21.Google Scholar
Dragotto, Francesca, Elisa Giomi, and Sonia M. Melchiorre
2020 “Putting Women back in their Place: Reflections on Slut-Shaming, the Case Asia Argento and Twitter in Italy.” International Review of Sociology 30(1): 46–70. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Eriksson Baaz, Maria, and Maria Stern
2013 Sexual Violence as a Weapon of War? Perceptions, Prescriptions, Problems in the Congo and Beyond. London: Zed Books. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2018 “Curious Erasures: The Sexual in Wartime Sexual Violence.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 20(3): 295–314. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Esposito, Eleonora, and Sole Alba Zollo
2021 “ ‘How dare you call her a pig, I know several pigs who would be upset if they knew’: A Multimodal Critical Discursive Approach to Online Misogyny against UK MPs on YouTube.” Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict: Special Issue on Critical Perspectives on Gender, Politics and Violence. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Esposito, Eleonora
2021 “Introduction: Critical Perspectives on Gender, Politics and Violence.” Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict: Special Issue on Critical Perspectives on Gender, Politics and Violence. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Farris, Sara R.
2017 In the Name of Women’s Rights: The Rise of Femonationalism. Durham: Duke University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Forbes
2019 “The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women.” Last Accessed 17 May 2020 at https://​www​.forbes​.com​/power​-women​/list​/#tab:overall
Foucault, Michel
1977 Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Fox, Jesse, and Tang Wai Yen
2014 “Sexism in Online Video Games: The Role of Conformity to Masculine Norms and Social Dominance Orientation.” Computers in Human Behavior 331: 314–320. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hardaker, Claire, and Mark McGlashan
2015 “ ‘Real Men don’t Hate Women’: Twitter Rape Threats and Group Identity.” Journal of Pragmatics 911: 81–93.Google Scholar
Harduf, Asaf
. (October 2019) “Virtually Rape: Should Cyber Sexual Offensiveness Constitute Rape?” Last accessed 17 May 2020 at https://​ssrn​.com​/abstract​=3473826
Hoogensen, Gynhild, and Kirsti Stuvøy
2006 “Gender, Resistance and Human Security.” Security Dialogue 37(2): 207–228. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hutchby, Ian
2001 “Technologies, Texts, and Affordances.” Sociology 35(2): 441–456. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
IPU
2018 “Sexism, Harassment and Violence against Women in Parliaments in Europe.” Inter-Parliamentary Union. Last accessed 20 May 2020 at https://​www​.ipu​.org​/resources​/publications​/issue​-briefs​/2018​-10​/sexism​-harassment​-and​-violence​-against​-women​-in​-parliaments​-in​-europe
Jakubowicz, Andrew
2017 “Alt_Right White Lite: Trolling, Hate Speech and Cyber Racism on Social Media.” Cosmopolitan Civil Societies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 9(3): 41–60. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Jakubowicz, Andrew, Kevin Dunn, Gail Mason, Yin Paradies, Ana-Maria Bliuc, Nasya Bahfen, Andre Oboler, Rosalie Atie, and Karen Connelly
2017 Cyber Racism and Community Resilience: Strategies for Combating Online Race Hate. London: Palgrave Macmillan. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Jane, Emma
2016 “Online Misogyny and Feminist Digilantism.” Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 30(3): 284–297. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2017 Misogyny Online: A Short (and Brutish) History. London: Sage. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kalra, Gurvinder, and Dinesh Bhugra
2013 “Sexual Violence against Women: Understanding Cross-Cultural Intersections.” Indian Journal of Psychiatry 551: 244–249. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
KhosraviNik, Majid
2014 “Critical Discourse Analysis, Power and New Media Discourse.” In Why Discourse Matters: Negotiating Identity in the Mediatized World, edited by Yusuf Kalyango and Monika Kopytowska, 287–306. New York: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
2017a “Right Wing Populism in the West: Social Media Discourse and Echo Chambers.” Insight Turkey 19(3): 53–68. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2017b “Social Media Critical Discourse Studies (SM-CDS).” In The Handbook of Critical Discourse Analysis, edited by John Flowerdew and John E. Richardson, 583–596. London: Routledge. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2018 “Social Media Techno-Discursive Design, Affective Communication and Contemporary Politics.” Fudan Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences 111: 427–442. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
KhosraviNik, Majid, and Eleonora Esposito
2018 “Online Hate, Digital Discourse and Critique: Exploring Digitally-Mediated Discursive Practices of Gender-Based Hostility.” Lodz Papers in Pragmatics 14(1): 45–58. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kiesler, Sara, Jane Siegel, and Timothy McGuire
1984 “Social Psychological Aspects of Computer-Mediated Communication.” American Psychologist 391: 1123–1134. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kilgarriff, Adam, Vit Baisa, Jan Bušta, Milos Jakubícek, Vojtech Kovář, Jan Michelfeit, Pavel Rychlý, and Vit Suchomel
2014 “The Sketch Engine: Ten Years on”. Lexicography 1(1): 7–36. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kimmel, Michael S.
2013 Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era. New York: Nation Books.Google Scholar
Kimmel, Michael S., and Matthew Mahler
2003 “Adolescent Masculinity, Homophobia, and Violence: Random School Shootings, 1982–2001.” American Behavioral Scientist 46(10): 1439–1458. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kopytowska, Monika
2013 “Blogging as the Mediatization of Politics and a New Form of Social Interaction. A Case Study of Polish and British Political Blogs.” In Analyzing Genres in Political Communication, edited by Piotr Cap and Urszula Okulska, 379–421. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2014 “Pictures in our Heads: Crisis, Conflict, and Drama.” In Why Discourse Matters: Negotiating Identity in the Mediatized World, edited by Yusuf Kalyango and Monika Kopytowska, 89–109. New York: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
2015a “Mediating Identity, Ideology and Values in the Public Sphere: Towards a New Model of (Constructed) Social Reality.” Lodz Papers in Pragmatics 11(2): 133–156. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(ed.) 2015b “Introduction: Discourse of Hate and Radicalism in Action.” [Special Issue on Discourses of Hate and Radicalism across Space and Genres]. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 3(1): 1–11. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2015c “Ideology of ‘Here’ and ‘Now’”. Critical Discourse Studies 12(3): 347–365. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2017 “Introduction: Discourses of Hate and Radicalism in Action.” In Contemporary Discourses of Hate and Radicalism across Space and Genres, edited by Monika Kopytowska, 1–12. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2018a “The Televisualization of Ritual: Spirituality, Spatiality and Co-Presence in Religious Broadcasting.” In Religion, Language and Human Mind, edited by Paul Chilton and Monika Kopytowska, 437–473. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
2018b “Culture, Mediated Experience and the Semiotics of Distance.” In Current perspectives in Semiotics: Signs, Signification and Communication, edited by Artur Gałkowski and Monika Kopytowska, 221–234. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2020 “Proximization, Prosumption and Salience in Digital Discourse: On the Interface of Social Media Communicative Dynamics and the Spread of Populist Ideologies.” [Special Issue on Social Media Critical Discourse Studies]. Critical Discourse Studies. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kopytowska, Monika, and Łukasz Grabowski
2017 “European Security under Threat: Mediating the Crisis and Constructing the Other.” In National Identity and Europe in Times of Crisis: Doing and Undoing Europe, edited by Christian Karner and Monika Kopytowska, 83–112. Bingley: Emerald Publishing. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kopytowska, Monika, Julita Woźniak, and Łukasz Grabowski
2017 “From ‘Patriotism’ to Hate: Axiological Urgency in Online Comments Related to Refugees”. In Online Hate Speech in the European Union: A Discourse-Analytic Perspective, edited by Stavros Assimakopoulos, Fabienne H. Baider and Sharon Millar, 42–51. Berlin: Springer.Google Scholar
Kopytowska, Monika, Łukasz Grabowski, and Julita Woźniak
2017 “Mobilizing Against the Other: Cyberhate, Refugee Crisis and Proximization”. In Contemporary Discourses of Hate and Radicalism across Space and Genres, edited by Monika Kopytowska, 57–97. Amsterdam/Philadephia: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kopytowska, Monika, and Paul Chilton
2018 “ ‘Rivers of Blood’: Migration, Fear and Threat Construction.” Lodz Papers in Pragmatics 14(1): 133–161. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kosnick, Kira
2015 “A Clash of Subcultures? Questioning Queer-Muslim Antagonisms in the Neoliberal City.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 39(4): 687–690. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Koulouris, Theodore
2018 “Online Misogyny and the Alternative Right: Debating the Undebatable.” Feminist Media Studies 18(4): 750–761. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kreft, Anne-Kathrin
2020 “Civil Society Perspectives on Sexual Violence in Conflict: Patriarchy and War Strategy in Colombia.” International Affairs, 96(2): 457–478. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kuperberg, Rebecca
2021 “Incongruous and Illegitimate: Antisemitic and Islamophobic Semiotic Violence against Women in Politics in the United Kingdom” Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict: Special Issue on Critical Perspectives on Gender, Politics and Violence. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lea, Martin, and Russel Spears
1991 “Computer-Mediated Communication, De-Individuation and Group Decision-Making.” International Journal of Man Machine Studies 341: 283–301. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, Barbara
2015 “Emergent Group Identity Construal in Online Discussions: A Linguistic Perspective.” In Revitalising Audience Research: Innovations in European Audience Research, edited by Frauke Zeller, Cristina Ponte and Brian O’Neill, 80–105. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
2017 “Incivility and Confrontation in Online Conflict Discourses.” Lodz Papers in Pragmatics 13(2): 347–367. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
MacKinnon, Catharine
1994 “Rape, Genocide and Women’s Human Rights.” Harvard Women’s Law Journal 171: 5–16.Google Scholar
Mantilla, Karla
2013 “Gendertrolling: Misogyny Adapts to New Media.” Feminist Studies 39(2): 563–570.Google Scholar
Matamoros-Fernández, Ariadna
2017 “Platformed Racism: The Mediation and Circulation of an Australian Race-Based Controversy on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.” Information, Communication & Society 20(6): 930–946. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
McEnery, Tony, and Andrew Hardie
2012 Corpus Linguistics: Method, Theory and Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
McKenna, Katelyn Y. A.
2007 “Through the Internet Looking Glass: Expressing and Validating the True Self.” In The Oxford Handbook of Internet Psychology, edited by Adam N. Joinson, Katelyn Y. A. McKenna, Tom Postmes and Ulf-Dietrich Reips. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
McPhail, Beverly A.
2016 “Feminist Framework Plus: Knitting Feminist Theories of Rape. Etiology into a Comprehensive Model.” Trauma, Violence & Abuse 17(3): 314–329. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Megarry, Jessica
2014 “Online Incivility or Sexual Harassment? Conceptualising Women’s Experiences in the Digital Age”. Women’s Studies International Forum 471: 46–55. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Motschenbacher, Heiko
2013 “Focusing on Normativity in Language and Sexuality Studies: Insights from Conversations on Objectophilia.” Critical Discourse Studies 11(1): 49–70. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Mulinari, Diana, and Anders Neergaard
2014 “We are Sweden Democrats because we Care for Others: Exploring Racism in the Swedish Extreme Right.” European Journal of Women’s Studies 211: 43–56. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Norocel, Ov Cristian
2010 “Romania is a Family and it Needs a Strict Father: Conceptual Metaphors at Work in Radical Right Populist Discourses.” Nationalities Papers 38(5): 705–721. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Nussbaum, Martha
2012 “Objectification and Internet Misogyny.” In The Offensive Internet, edited by Saul Levmore and Martha Nussbaum, 68–90. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Papacharissi, Zizi
2015 Affective Publics: Sentiment, Technology, and Politics. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Phipps, Alison
2014 The Politics of the Body: Gender in a Neoliberal and Neoconservative age. London: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Poland, Bailey
2016 Haters: Harassment, Abuse, and Violence Online. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Postmes, Tom, and Russell Spears
2002 “ Behavior Online: Does Anonymous Computer Communication Reduce Gender Inequality?” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 28(8): 1073–1083. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Postmes, Tom, Russell Spears, and Martin Lea
2002 “Intergroup Differentiation in Computer-Mediated Communication: Effects of Depersonalization.” Group Dynamics 6(1): 3–16. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Powell, Anastasia, and Nicola Henry
2017 “Online Misogyny, Harassment and Hate Crimes”. In Sexual Violence in the Digital Age, edited by Anastasia Powell and Nicola Henry, 153–193. London: Palgrave Macmillan. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Reicher, Stephen, Russell Spears, and Tom Postmes
1995 “A Social Identity Model of Deindividuation Phenomena.” European Review of Social Psychology 61: 161–198. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Richardson-Self, Louise
2018 “Woman-Hating: On Misogyny, Sexism, and Hate Speech.” Hypathia 33(2): 256–272. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2019 “Cis-Hetero-Misogyny Online.” Ethical Theory & Moral Practice 22(3): 573–587. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Sager, Maja, and Diana Mulinari
2018 “Safety for whom? Exploring Femonationalism and Care-racism in Sweden.” Women’s Studies International Forum 681: 149–156. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Santana, Arthur D.
2014 “Virtuous or Vitriolic.” Journalism Practice 8(1): 18–33. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Sitkin, Rachel A., Bandy X. Lee, and Grace Lee
2019 “To Destroy a People: Sexual Violence as a Form of Genocide in the Conflicts of Bosnia, Rwanda, and Chile.” Aggression & Violent Behavior 461: 219–224. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Suler, John
2004 “The Online Disinhibition Effect.” CyberPsychology & Behavior 7(3): 321–326. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Tadic, Bosljka, Vladimir, Gligorijevic, Marija Mitrovic, and Milovan Suvakov
2013 “Co-evolutionary Mechanisms of Emotional Bursts in Online Social Dynamics and Networks.” Entropy 151: 5084–5120. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Vick, Karl
2015 “Time Person of the Year 2015: Angela Merkel”. Time. Last accessed 30 May 2020 at https://​time​.com​/time​-person​-of​-the​-year​-2015​-angela​-merkel/
Vickery, Jacqueline Ryan, and Tracy Everbach
2018 Mediating Misogyny: Gender, Technology, and Harassment. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ylä-Anttila, Tuukka, Gwenaëlle Bauvois, and Niko Pyrhönen
2019 “Politicization of Migration in the Countermedia Style: A Computational and Qualitative Analysis of Populist Discourse.” Discourse, Context & Media 321: 1–8. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 4 other publications

Alam, Zainab
2021. Violence against women in politics. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 9:1 ► pp. 21 ff. Crossref logo
Kuperberg, Rebecca
2021. Incongruous and illegitimate. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 9:1 ► pp. 100 ff. Crossref logo
Pérez-Arredondo, Carolina & Eduardo Graells-Garrido
2021. Twitter and abortion. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 9:1 ► pp. 127 ff. Crossref logo
Rasulo, Margaret
2021. Are gold hoop earrings and a dab of red lipstick enough to get even Democrats on the offensive?. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 9:1 ► pp. 155 ff. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 27 april 2021. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.