Misogynistic Men Online: How the Red Pill Helped Elect Trump

Dignam, Pierce; Rohlinger, Deana A.

doi:10.1086/701155

Cited by 79 publications

(57 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…Secondly, Dignam and Rohlinger (2019) used an inductive content analysis method to investigate 1762 comments from the four most popular posts in the years 2013 to 2016 from the Field Reports (where users share anecdotes of applying manosphere beliefs offline) and Men's Rights subsections of the TRP subreddit. As well as observing that women were dehumanised by the community, the authors found that members were encouraged to pursue individual acts of self-improvement, and discouraged from political involvement, although supporting Donald Trump was then encouraged for the 2016 US presidential election.…”

Section: Trp and The 'Manosphere'mentioning

confidence: 99%

The men and women, guys and girls of the ‘manosphere’: A corpus-assisted discourse approach

Krendel

2020

Discourse & Society

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This study investigates how the lemmas woman, girl, man and guy are used to discursively represent and construct gender identities in an anti-feminist forum on the discussion website Reddit. The lemmas were analysed using corpus-assisted social actor analysis and appraisal theory. Similarities and differences within three sub-communities of the TRP subreddit were considered: Men’s Rights (activists who believe that men are systemically disadvantaged in society), Men Going Their Own Way (who abstain from relationships with women), and Red Pill Theory (primarily pick-up artists). The corpus was characterised by bare assertions about gendered behaviour, although the masculine gender role was less well-defined than the feminine one. Women and girls were dehumanised and sexually objectified, negatively judged for morality and veracity, and constructed as desiring hostile behaviour from male social actors. Conversely, men were constructed as victims of female social actors and external institutions and, as a result, as unhappy and insecure.

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Section: Trp and The 'Manosphere'mentioning

confidence: 99%

The men and women, guys and girls of the ‘manosphere’: A corpus-assisted discourse approach

Krendel

2020

Discourse & Society

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“…Understanding supporters’ valorization of Trump during the 2016 election also requires taking into account his opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Unlike Trump, Clinton’s gender status was a political liability (Bordo 2017; Dignam and Rohlinger 2019). Conservatives and the media began publicly branding her as a “bitch” during the 1990s (Anderson 1999) and more subtly degraded her as “bitch-like” (i.e., overly assertive and manipulative) during her 2008 primary run against Obama (Lim 2009).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Valorizing Trump’s Masculine Self: Constructing Political Allegiance during the 2016 Presidential Election

Dignam

Schrock

Erichsen

et al. 2019

Men and Masculinities

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Presidential candidates’ gendered self-presentations may help secure political support, but a ‘gendered self’ is a construct grounded in an audience’s interpretation as much as it is in a politician’s performance. The 2016 U.S. presidential election provides a unique opportunity to investigate how voters construct politicians as gendered. Based on pre-election interviews, we analyze how Trump supporters accounted for their allegiance by constructing and valorizing Trump’s masculine self—a cultural construct centered on exerting or resisting control. Interviewees (A) praised his politically incorrect spirit, (B) glorified his entrepreneurial spirit, and (C) celebrated his fighting spirit. We argue that understanding how people construct others’ gendered selves is important for scholars of both politics and manhood.

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“…There is an affinity between populism and post-truth communication practices, with populism opposing 'fundamental principles of democratic communication, namely the need for fact-based, reasoned debate, tolerance and solidarity -essential principles for viable public life in today's globalised and multicultural societies' (Waisbord, 2018: 18). The sentiments that are consolidated in these viewpoints are circulating more widely throughout Western contexts as part of a 'global rightward turn' in which populist conservatism is on the rise, 'anchored in and in many places motivated by antifeminist misogyny and toxic masculinity' (Graff et al, 2019: 541; see also: Nicholas and Agius, 2018;Dignam and Rohlinger, 2019). A distinctive feature of populism is the channelling of wider cultural and socio-political anxieties, by diverse constituencies, into a fight against a perceived threat of 'gender ideology' (Kova´ts, 2017(Kova´ts, , 2018Paternotte and Kuhar, 2018: 8).…”

Section: The Post-truth Challenge To Feminist Epistemologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Making feminist claims in the post-truth era: the authority of personal experience

Budgeon

2021

Feminist Theory

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The increased visibility of feminism in mainstream culture has recently been noted, with the presence of both online and offline campaigns embedding feminist claims in a variety of everyday spaces. By granting recognition to women’s experiences, these campaigns continue the feminist practice of generating critical knowledge on the basis of gendered experience. In the post-truth era, however, the norms governing claims-making are being significantly reconstructed, with significant consequences for critiques of gender inequality. It is argued here that these norms are linked directly to a wider context of anti-feminism in which dismissing women’s claims is consistent with the goal that opponents of gender equality have of seeking and consolidating epistemic power in the face of what is perceived as systemic male disadvantage and victimhood. Returning to earlier debates within feminism, it is argued that the kinds of post-truth rhetoric used to dismiss women’s experience provide a challenge that feminism must confront. This rhetoric is often grounded in the authenticity of individual experience; however, experience cannot provide unmediated access to truth and, therefore, cannot provide the foundation for feminist claims. On the other hand, experience cannot merely offer one of many contested versions of ‘reality’. The excesses of both foundationalist and anti-foundationalist epistemology are countered with the argument that cognition is a human practice mediated by theoretical propositions which illuminate the question of what can be known. This is the role played by feminist theory in defending the role of experience.

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Misogynistic Men Online: How the Red Pill Helped Elect Trump

Cited by 79 publications

References 44 publications

The men and women, guys and girls of the ‘manosphere’: A corpus-assisted discourse approach

The men and women, guys and girls of the ‘manosphere’: A corpus-assisted discourse approach

Valorizing Trump’s Masculine Self: Constructing Political Allegiance during the 2016 Presidential Election

Making feminist claims in the post-truth era: the authority of personal experience

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