Resilience, support, and feminist counterpublics in online debates of gender-based violence in Latin America
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Date
2024
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Taylor and Francis
Abstract
This chapter addresses the way social media users contest discriminatory practices and engage in ideological struggle surrounding a debate about women’s agency and safety in the Latin American online public sphere. Based on a selection of relevant Spanish-language feminist hashtags —or femitags— a thematic textual analysis of almost 10,000 X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram posts explores the arguments and articulations used by users to speak up and talk back in the discussion. Findings suggest that three themes are commonly used in these contestations of violence against women in these online debates: (1) talking back to victim-blaming messages, (2) decrying that it is about time women are able to do and go as they please without the fear of being attacked, and (3) speaking up against Latin American machismo and society’s response to gender-based violence. These social media users have used the online public sphere to resist gender inequalities, practice contention, and remind us that even personal choices such as those regarding women’s everyday lives are intrinsically political.