Abstract
In recent years, digital media have facilitated a revival of feminist ideas and campaigns, as well as a virulent and especially toxic new strand of anti-feminism. The new anti-feminism has been attributed to a number of factors, including the technological affordances of social media, the changing socio-cultural realities of men’s lives and the affective potency of a new “cultural politics of emotion” (Ahmed 2013). While acknowledging the validity of these explanations, this chapter argues that the role of postfeminism has been largely overlooked, both in the rise of men’s rights activists and in the shaping of digital gender politics more generally. I contend that the dominance of a postfeminist cultural sensibility in Western society for the past decade or more has functioned as a logical precursor to the emergence and shaping of toxic masculinity politics. This, in turn, has provoked feminist responses that, while often impressive and sometimes effective, are also potentially constrained by the mutually synergetic dynamics of individualism, neoliberal capitalism and the algorithmic politics of social media. In 2015, Rachel O’Neill asked, “Can the logic of postfeminism be mobilized by men to (re)secure male power and privilege?” This chapter responds to O’Neill’s question, using digital men’s rights to demonstrate how this is happening.
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Notes
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See, for example, Scottish MP Mhari Black http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/snp-mp-online-abuse-mhairi-black-sexist-homophobic-women-parliament-debate-a8245646.html.
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The term “mancession” was coined by Mark Perry, an economist from the University of Michigan, and began appearing in US newspapers during the financial crisis of 2008–2009.
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“Is social media doing social harm?: Meredith L Patterson and Deanna Zandt go head to head”. New Internationalist. 1 November 2015.
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The suitcase has become a powerful protest image—both on- and offline—highlighting the fact that Irish women must travel to access abortions. For example, in December 2016, the London Irish Abortion Rights Campaign (London Irish ARC) launched an online campaign asking people travelling home to Ireland for Christmas to tweet their support for Repeal with a picture of their suitcase (NicGhabhann 2018).
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Ging, D. (2019). Bros v. Hos: Postfeminism, Anti-feminism and the Toxic Turn in Digital Gender Politics. In: Ging, D., Siapera, E. (eds) Gender Hate Online. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96226-9_3
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