Papers by beatrice spallaccia
Abusive posts on social media target women engaged in online conversation with words and images t... more Abusive posts on social media target women engaged in online conversation with words and images that affirm patriarchal ideologies and fixed gender identities, to maintain cyberspace as a man’s world. This book investigates online misogyny as a pervasive yet little-researched form of hate speech. By focusing on six cases of cyber harassment directed at women in Australia, Italy, and the United States, this qualitative analysis reveals specific discursive strategies along with patterns of escalation and mobbing that often intertwine gender-based harassment with racism, homotransphobia, xenophobia, and ageism. The author provides a taxonomy of negative impacts on targets that integrates findings across cases and indicates pathways from hate speech to harms. The study suggests an urgent need for effective measures against the threat posed by misogynistic hate speech to individuals and to an open, respectful forum for online communication.
The Italian debate over gender inclusivity has recently been dominated by a ubiquitous term: ideo... more The Italian debate over gender inclusivity has recently been dominated by a ubiquitous term: ideologia del gender. This expression has been used extensively by a galaxy of reactionary forces to thwart the implementation of gender-mainstreaming policies. Recent research has shown that similar anti-gender manifestations have mushroomed across Europe, with discursive elements which recall the Italian anti-gender narrative. This article first sets Italian anti-genderism within a broader transnational movement. Second, through a feminist critical analysis of Italian anti-gender discourse, it shows that ideologia del gender should be interpreted as a new rhetorical device used to reaffirm gender-based prejudice in Italy and other European countries. Third, drawing on the work of Wolfgang Welsch (1999), the paper discusses whether this movement can be interpreted as a transcultural phenomenon, and suggests a transcultural model of culture as the antidote to the anti-gender backlash.
mediAzioni, 2020
Since the late 1960s, feminist practices and theories have increasingly influenced academic resea... more Since the late 1960s, feminist practices and theories have increasingly influenced academic research, bringing new approaches to the study of gender and sexuality, and leading to the establishment of gender studies. Today, gender studies are a broad and interdisciplinary field of research which brings together different disciplines, from linguistics and literature, to sociology, economics, and biology. This contribution aims at tracing the evolution of gender studies, from the birth of women’s studies and their institutionalisation, to the emergence of queer theories. First, this paper provides an overview of the debate that led to the distinction between sex and gender, and then questioned this binary model, thanks to the influence of LGBTQ+ studies. Second, it focuses on the intersectional approach which has been adopted by gender scholars to analyse discrimination across different axes of inequalities (e.g., gender, race, ethnicity, and class), and to explain how different systems of power work simultaneously in society. The contribution also discusses briefly how gender perspectives have influenced linguistics and translation studies, to understand how identities are negotiated through the use of language. In the conclusions, it also sheds some light on the new war on gender studies, i.e., the anti-gender sentiments which have recently spread across Europe to oppose women’s and LGBTQ+ people’s rights, and to thwart the implementation of anti-discrimination policies.
MediAzioni, 2019
In recent years, expressions like “ideologia del gender” (ideology of gender), “teoria del gender... more In recent years, expressions like “ideologia del gender” (ideology of gender), “teoria del gender” (gender theory), and “genderismo” (genderism) have dominated the public debate over gender positive education and anti-discrimination policies in Italy as well as across Europe. These terms have been used by conservative and ultra-Catholic forces to oppose the implementation of gender mainstreaming policies promoted by European institutions, and to support heterosexist and homotransphobic sentiments in many countries of the continent. The rise of a reactionary challenge to gender inclusivity has led several scholars who work in the interdisciplinary field of gender studies to start analysing the discursive strategies used by anti-gender activists and their forms of mobilisation. The present article aims to contribute to this emerging field of research on anti-genderism. By reviewing two books recently published in Italy and abroad, it seeks to provide a better understanding of anti-gender rhetoric as well as its political implication in Europe. First, it confirms the findings of previous research on anti-gender discourse, showing that “ideologia del gender” is to be understood as a new rhetorical device coined by the Vatican to fight the cultural revolution brought by feminist and LGBTQ+ theories and movements, and to ultimately restore the traditional sexual order. Second, it looks at anti-genderism in two specific countries that can be considered the cradle of anti-gender movement, i.e., Italy and France, and attempts to link its success to the ways in which feminism and gender studies have spread there. Finally, it tries to stress the discursive intersection between anti-genderism, nationalism, and populism, pointing out the dangerous effects of this synergy within the broad European context.
MediAzioni, 2018
Online gender-based hate speech can be defined as the discourse aimed at attacking and silencing ... more Online gender-based hate speech can be defined as the discourse aimed at attacking and silencing women in cyberspace through a violent and hypersexualized rhetoric, with serious consequences on their lives on multiple levels. While in recent years legal studies have worked on more effective frameworks to counter this pervasive phenomenon (cf. Citron 2014), humanities still seem to struggle to keep up with a critical analysis of online misogyny. In this contribution, I discuss how new forms of digital communication interplay with the persistent prejudice against women, and how this entanglement poses new challenges to academic research in humanities. In doing so, I argue that the pervasiveness of misogynistic discourse online shows the need to develop new trends in humanities to understand the peculiarities and socio-cultural effects of this type of hate speech. For this reason, after reviewing the academic literature that attempted to analyse online hostility in terms of ‘flaming,’ this paper identifies some key features of misogynistic discourse on the Web, and seeks to provide a taxonomy of its impacts, which will hopefully guide future research on gender-based hate speech.
Books by beatrice spallaccia
Literature, Gender and Education for Children and Young Adults / Littérature, genre, éducation pour l’enfance et la jeunesse, 2019
The contribution discusses online feminist activism as an emerging counter narrative aimed at rai... more The contribution discusses online feminist activism as an emerging counter narrative aimed at raising awareness among young generations on Internet gender-based violence. The pervasiveness of contents expressing gendered hatred on the Internet has lately produced an increasing concern on the use of the Web to silence women and girls worldwide. At the same time, online groups along with national and international institutions have recently launched several projects to tackle this problem. While some scholarly research has rightfully indicated the Web as a new channel through which ancient oppressions like sexism and misogyny can be reaffirmed, few contributions have attempted to analyse it as an effective tool to challenge such discriminations. This contribution analyses the online campaign Zero Trollerance, developed by the German Collective Peng to tackle gendered cyberhate, and it shows how such content can be used as a powerful toolkit for a feminist education to raise awareness on systemic societal issues like misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia, and to educate young generations towards a respectful and inclusive use of the Internet.
Thesis Chapters by beatrice spallaccia
PhD thesis, 2017
The present dissertation aims at recognising online misogyny as a form of hate speech, by providi... more The present dissertation aims at recognising online misogyny as a form of hate speech, by providing a qualitative analysis of this discourse on Twitter and Facebook. While recent reports in media coverage have revealed that sexist harassment is the most pervasive social problem on Web 2.0, much scholarly research has mainly focused on other types of hate speech (e.g., racist and xenophobic vilification), overlooking the seriousness of misogynistic verbal abuse.
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Papers by beatrice spallaccia
Books by beatrice spallaccia
Thesis Chapters by beatrice spallaccia